And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.

1 Thessalonians‬ ‭5‬:‭14

Once you’ve had a taste of passing it on, it’s easy to see the way recovery works.

This principle is not unique to recovery, of course. In many, if not most, areas of life there exist different flavors of mentorship, discipleship, sponsorship, apprenticeship etc.

The student learns from the teacher and then becomes a teacher himself. The master craftsman shows his trade to the apprentice and a years’ long training has begun.

It’s no different for us in addiction. When we walk into the doors of a recovery meeting, we find that there are many recovered people there eagerly awaiting our arrival.

They’re there, it seems, solely to talk to the newcomer and show them the way. And this is true, to a point.

As we keep coming back, we see them also share their own difficulties from time to time. Though they’ve solved their addiction problem, they continue to talk about root issues and a spiritual malady.

Part of our solution to drinking is a realignment of our focus from our own issues onto the bigger problem: a spiritual brokenness. We are told that when this spiritual problem is solved, we straighten out otherwise.

And this doesn’t make sense. But the testimonies of others all say the same thing, so we give it a shot.

Sure enough, God works in mysterious ways. Somehow as we seek out a relationship with God and his will for us; as we try to clean up our lives and make things right with others, the problem of addiction does fade into background noise.

And as we step further into the sunlight, the last cog in the whole recovery mechanism is the first one we were attracted by—we begin to pass on this, our own experience, to the next person.

God, help me encourage the next person in recovery.