In a 12 step meeting, it’s not unusual that you’ll hear somebody say “well, if nothing changes, nothing changes”. This cliché basically means that “if you keep doing what you always did, you’ll get what you always got”. I actually find the latter to be more fitting. As an addict, if I literally don’t change anything, things will get progressively worse for me, and at that point if I still don’t change anything I’ll be likely to relapse, so it’s not that things aren’t changing, they’re actually getting progressively worse. If I don’t do anything, I’m going backwards. The disease of addiction is progressive.

Sometimes, I also hear people claim that they’re “stuck” on a step, or they feel “stuck” practicing a certain behavior, or that they feel they’ve “hit a wall” in their recovery. In this writer’s opinion, there is no “stuck” in recovery. My predecessors told me that “you’re either moving forward or you’re moving backwards”. Then they’d reiterate “you’re either working on your recovery or you’re working on a relapse”. I was also told that “recovery is an uphill journey”, if you don’t continue to moving forward, then you start sliding backwards really fast. So I believe that if you’re claiming that you’re “stuck” it’s actually just some nonsense your disease is telling you, you’re not stuck, you’re actually going backwards. Again, this disease is progressive, it doesn’t stand around and wait, sometimes it may move slow, but it’s always moving.