The necessity of taking it One Day at a Time

In my experience, the ability to approach things one day at a time is singlehandedly the most indispensable tool for sustaining recovery, no matter what the addiction. Mind is capable of needlessly imagining an infinite future of abstinence and that often creates the fear and panic that can drive one back to their addiction. After all, how will you ever know if you've successfully kicked your addiction, if the goal is to stay clean forever? But just for today, that is both doable and measurable.

In this context, came across this interesting article on SPAA Recovery website that I thought I'd share here. Below text quoted from - http://spaa-recovery.org/one-day-at-a-time/

“That’s it, I’m done!” we said, sometimes only minutes after sexually acting out. We lowered our heads in shame and vowed with tears in our eyes—never again. We often repeated this vow to our partners. Our days of watching porn and acting out were over.

Yet after only a few months, a week, or even a few hours, we found ourselves back at it again. We doubled down on our solemn vows. Maybe picked up a self-help book --, believing we could think our way out of the problem—and solve it on our own. But we failed to recognize that our best thinking got us here.

Countless, painful failures taught us that we lacked the willpower to keep our promise. It didn’t matter how many times we slipped or how strongly we wanted to pick ourselves up. Some of us knew that one more slip would end our relationship, break up our family, or worse, drive us to the edge of insanity or death. And still, we acted out.

When we have a cold we can’t wish away the illness. We can’t say, “Be gone, flu!” If we want to get better, the only choice we have is to take our medicine. The same is true for the illness of addiction. We addicts may have lost our ability to control our acting out behavior, but we can always choose to take our medicine.

In the spirit of wanting recovery, we arrive at a simple decision: “I will do everything in my power to stay sober, just for today.”

That’s it. No laundry list of rules, no extravagant promises. We found that keeping our plan simple goes miles toward its success. A full year without porn might seem like climbing Everest. But one single day? All of us have stayed sober for just one day—that we can do.

Here is one method that works for us. We remind ourselves “one day at a time,” especially when the urge to sexually act out flares up. Right then, we commit to stay sober for the next 24 hours. If that seems out of reach, we set our goal for the next hour, or the next ten minutes. The idea here is to pump the brakes on our sexual urges before we plunge off the cliff. We pause before we act.​

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