There’s a saying “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” It may seem trite or simplistic, but it’s also true. It is especially true if you want to make a significant change in your life. Changing our behavior, turning away from the abuse of alcohol or other drugs is not something that happens by accident or circumstance. Changes like this require a definite decision to behave differently. Recovery is not something easy or simple. Terminating our abuse of alcohol or other drugs requires that we engage in a concerted effort to do something different. We cannot simply wake up one morning with a different set of habits and behaviors. Recovery demands that we abandon one set of habits and adopt another.
It would be nice if we could just wake up one morning with a different set of habits. Recovery would be much easier if we could just make a simple decision to stop using and be done with it. Unfortunately, that is not how things work. The abuse of alcohol and other drugs is a complex set of behaviors and attitudes. Drug abuse exists amid an environment of people and places that provide the circumstances of our drug abuse. In the same way, recovery can only occur in the midst of an environment of people and places that enable us to live sober lives.
In other words, drug abuse happens in certain places and in the company of certain people. There are certain people we use drugs with and there are certain places we go to use drugs. You wouldn’t normally go to your local church and hang around the minister to use drugs. You wouldn’t normally go to visit with your grandparents when you want to use. On the contrary, you probably have friends that you use drugs with and there are places that you go where you will find others who are using drugs. Part of planning to recover from drug use means that you will stop hanging around with people that you use drugs with and instead hang around with people who strive to live as faithful Christians.
Part of planning to succeed in recovery means that you will plan to avoid the people and places which were a part of your drug abuse. Plan to succeed. Plan to stay away from the places and people that formed the environment of your drug abuse and instead surround yourself with believers.