The seeds of healthy growth are sown in the transition stage; in early recovery, they begin to take root. The foundation for the individual identity is set in place here, bringing new found stability. Early recovery can be a time of unparalleled personal change, hope, and excitement; it can also be a time of trauma, especially at home, where the family members are still functioning with out a strong, healthy family system. Even as growth begins, tensions and set backs are to be expected. During early recovery, the alcoholic and coalcoholic are still extremely dependent on their relationships with their recovery programs. Their main focus at this time is education about alcohol ism and the process of recovery in general, and on the specific ways in which each particular individual has experienced these realities. To facilitate this education, they learn recovery language, which helps them organize their past experiences and under stand their ongoing thoughts and feelings. By internalizing this new language and the abstinent behaviors that were set in place during transition, they begin to solidify their new alcoholic or coalcoholic identities. The healthy behavior they practiced in transition starts to become less conscious and more automatic as their impulses to drink or take care of the drinker finally begin to decrease.

As their abstinence stabilizes, the alcoholic and coalcoholic start reconstructing the drinking past. Facing this long- denied reality can be an extremely challenging task. “I think the scariest part for me was when the cri sis period after quit ting ended,” remembers Sheila, who recently celebrated her eighth year of sobriety. “In the first few months, I was so single- minded about not drinking that the rest of the world barely existed. Dealing with the screaming urges was painful and difficult, but it had a kind of simplicity to it, like I was in an emergency and there was no time to second- guess myself. But as the urges got less and less, the rest of my life suddenly came into focus, and I saw the devastation the drinking had done. Facing those issues was the hardest part of the whole journey for me.”

• Continue detachment and a reduced focus on the family.
• Learn and practice recovery language.
• Maintain close con tact with external sup ports.
• Continue to learn abstinent behaviors and thinking.
• Begin to break denial over the past.
• Maintain a focus on individual recovery.
• Stabilize individual identities: “I am an alcoholic and I can not control my drinking” or “I am a coalcoholic and I can not control the drinker.”
• Maintain parenting responsibilities.

Excerpt from The Family Recovery Guide by Stephanie Brown, Virginia M. Lewis, Ph.D. and Andrew Liotta