Many men in recovery have described their substance of choice as a love of their life. While people in recovery can go through a certain grieving process to mourn the loss of drugs or alcohol in their life, men have expressed feeling like they’re going through a break up. Drugs and/or alcohol was a primary relationship in their life, something they had a certain love for, and an entity they could count on in a deep way. Jokingly, men in recovery quip that they aren’t looking for relationships early in their recovery process because they just got out of a relationship with their substance of choice.

Part of the recovery process for men is finding new loves of their life and building a relationship with them. Throughout the recovery journey, men discover all kinds of activities which they can fall in love with from physical fitness training to meditation, yoga to hiking, surfing to rock climbing, art, music, and much more. What is outside to them is easy to fall in love with. What is inside to them and what becomes their whole life is sobriety. Falling in love with sobriety is the most important love affair a man will have in his recovery, but it can be difficult to come by.

Sobriety, which for Tree House Recovery in Portland, Oregon, is defined by total abstinence, is a hard choice to make in life. When men have lived large portions of their lives in complete dedication to drugs and alcohol, the idea of living without these substances can be intimidating. Living sober is not always easy- experiencing all of life’s ups, downs, challenges, and celebrations, and feelings in between. Living sober is inarguably better than living under the influence and causing a string of mounting negative consequences.

The interesting catch about sobriety is that sobriety is what men make of it. If men make sobriety a bother, they will always be bothered by their choice to live sober. If, however, men choose to make sobriety the love of their life, something they can’t live without, something they look forward to everyday, they will be endlessly rewarded.

Tree House Recovery of Portland, Oregon is a men’s addiction treatment center that teaches our clients how to roll with life’s punches and use the tools they’ve learned throughout the treatment process to stay on top of anything life throws at them. Call (503) 850-2474 to see how we can help you today.