ADDICTION MYTH #2 “YOU HAVE TO WANT TO CHANGE.”

How many times must someone try before you believe they want to change?

How many promises must they make?

How many mornings must they wake up devastated by what happened the night before?

How many times must they lose everything, rebuild their lives, and find themselves doing it again?

And how many times must they tell us they’re desperate to stop before we actually believe them?

We tell people they have to want recovery badly enough

But what if wanting to stop has never been the problem?

What if someone can desperately want to stop and still experience a compulsion that feels impossible to resist?

When someone succeeds, we say they were ready

When someone struggles, we question their motivation

And when someone relapses, we tell them they must not have wanted it enough

But what if we’re wrong?

What if their continued behaviour tells us absolutely nothing about how desperately they want their life to change?

Perhaps the question was never whether they wanted to change

Perhaps the question is

What is happening in this human being’s experience that makes wanting to change insufficient?

Because if wanting to stop were enough, why would anyone who desperately wants to stop still be struggling?

Maybe it’s time we stopped questioning their desire to change and started questioning their desire to change and started questioning our undestanding of why they can’t 

Infinite Recovery Project
People Not Pathology