What Is Recovery Capital?
Recovery capital played a huge part in my sobriety. It’s important to have goals in life, and it’s the same with recovery. Sobriety is extremely rewarding after you’ve lived the life of an addict for a prolonged period of time. While sobriety alone can be rewarding, those little extra benefits can help you stay on the straight and narrow. The benefits of recovery capital make me want to stay sober and enjoy the progress that I’ve made. It’s important to celebrate your milestones, especially with your sober support network. Some people don’t, but I prefer to honor the steps that I’ve taken to be a better person.
Recovery capital relates to all of the resources needed to sustain your recovery. So what exactly does that mean? Think of it as all of the assets and resources that you accumulate as you journey through recovery. The longer you’re in it and the more you put into it, the more you get out. It’s sort of like having life experience in a way. As you get older and learn more, you gain a certain amount of wisdom and understanding. There are many different types of recovery capital, and they all mean something a little different.
Personal Capital vs. Recovery Capital
Personal capital recovery refers to the personal gains that you make during your sobriety. This is your physical and personal capital. Your health, your personal skills, and the basic needs that you attain in life. Simply having food and shelter can be seen as personal capital. There is also your family and social capital. Intimate relationships, familial relationships, and the bonds that you build through your recovery community. These are all very important to the process. Going through sobriety alone often doesn’t result in long-term recovery. There are people who have done it, but in my experience, you need some kind of community to get you through the darkness.
Speaking of community, another type of recovery capital is your community recovery capital. This is the work that you put in to help others. The goodwill you show your community in helping other people achieve sobriety. If you set up a recovery meeting or engage in any type of recovery activism, this builds up your community capital. Your community recovery associations are lifelong bonds you will build with the other members of your recovery group.
Accumulating capital in recovery is a slow process, but the entire recovery process is slow and progressive. It takes time to build capital in any situation in life. It takes a long time to build good credit. It takes a long time to build trust in others. These aren’t things that people take lightly. That’s why measuring recovery capital can be a very rewarding and fulfilling thing. Every little piece of capital you achieve is something that you earned and you should feel proud of.