Changing People, Places, and Things In Recovery

“When you get into recovery you only have to change one thing… everything”. People, places, and things. If you’ve been to any recovery program you’ve heard the saying “change your people, places, and things” when you get sober. This saying can seem generic and obvious to many which it’s meant to be. The hard part is actually following through daily with changing our lives.

What Does It Mean To Change People, Places, and Things?

When a person starts their journey in recovery they need to take an inventory of their lives. This means analyzing their living arrangements, environment, friends, family, hobbies, work/career, Etc. Anything that is going to lead us back to our old ways must be cut out of our lives. This can be major things such as negative family members or minor things such as planning a new route to work to avoid bad neighborhoods. We need to build an entirely new life around recovery and get rid of our old life that was built around addiction.

When it comes to changing people, places, and things in our lives we have to be firm and set boundaries. Old habits and old friends will find ways to creep back into our lives if we allow it.

Changing People

“Show me your friends and i’ll show you your future”.

That quote is incredibly accurate. Within the world of recovery not only is that quote accurate it’s life or death. Anyone happy in recovery is surrounding themselves with like-minded positive people. Changing people once we get into recovery is the most important thing we can do. If we continue to hang with people who are still drinking and drugging it’s only a matter of time before we start up again.

This can be very hard especially if the negative person we are trying to cut out is a family member. We need to set those healthy boundaries and respectively tell that person that their attitude or actions are affecting our recovery. Hopefully, they will understand and respect that decision, if not we may have to cut them out of our lives altogether.

Many people are going to be put in difficult positions when changing the negative people in their lives. Everyone has a few family members that party too hard, gossip, or are just a negative emotional drain on our lives. It may seem rude and disrespectful to cut these people out but it’s not. When we get into recovery, we make a daily choice to stay away from the substances and lifestyle that destroyed us. We need to be vigilant and firm with who we allow into our lives.

If you have a negative family member you simply can’t cut out, work to change the dynamic and cut down on the frequency you see them. Check-in with them once every 2 weeks instead of every week. When they start to drink or become toxic leave and when they ask why, tell them the truth.

Changing Places

Changing places is the one that is often overlooked. A person may be doing well in recovery, they have built up a solid foundation and say “I’ve been doing good for 8 months I think it’s ok to go to that club tonight, I can handle it”. The tricky part is many times they will go to the club and be fine, but that tells our brain that it’s ok and we can start doing it more often. Before long we are going back to the bar or club 2 nights… 3 nights a week. Then we start to see old friends who are still partying. Before long we are partying again.

“If you don’t belong don’t be long”

I routinely use this quote to remind myself about places and events I know aren’t great for my recovery. If I have a wedding or family party I have to attend and there is going to be a lot of partying, I come late, drive my own vehicle, park in the back, and leave early. I can still go pay respect and see everyone but get out as soon as I need to. Once again some people may construe this as being rude, it’s not rude and anyone who supports your recovery will support your decision to leave early. If they don’t support your recovery then they’re someone who shouldn’t be in your life.

Changing places can be anywhere that brings up old memories or habits. If our job is negative, get rid of it. I will even drive different routes to work or friends’ houses to avoid the old streets in the city. There is no benefit to driving down those streets, even if it’s a shorter route.

Changing Things

My first question was “Things is a broad word what things do I need to change”. The answer I got was “anything you need to, anything negative, anything reminding you of the past.”

A good example of this for me was a gym bag I had. I use to keep all my drugs and paraphernalia in this big gym bag under my gym clothes. It was always my excuse when I wanted to go get high I would say “going to work out” or “I need a change of clothes that’s why I need my gym bag”. When I got sober I still needed a gym bag and this bag was a beautiful brand new 100$ gym bag, yet every time I looked at it I was reminded of all the spots I hid drugs inside it. The bag got tossed out. No reason to have something that reminds me of drugs near me every day.

Changing things is going to be different for everyone. For some it’s a gym bag, for others it’s the layout of their house or bedroom. If it bothers you or triggers old memories, change it, change it, change it. One of the main goals of recovery is to repair our brains and create new positive connections. If my bedroom reminds me of the years I sat in there and got high I need to change the layout and even throw some things out and buy new furniture, paint it, anything that changes it.