Glossary of Recovery Terms

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Glossary of Recovery Terms
Here are some common definitions and abbreviations that might be used frequently in these forums. This glossary is meant to help you understand recovery terminology better.

Abstinence

Becoming abstinent, stopping the use of all mood altering drugs, is the necessary first task that must be accomplished in working toward a life in recovery. However, it is not by itself sobriety. It is like paying the admission fee at the amusement park, not the attractions themselves. Abstinence is an all or nothing proposition, either you have quit absolutely, or not. To enter into sobriety requires total abstinence; the first building block of sobriety.


Addiction

A chronic, relapsing disease characterized by compulsive drug-seeking and use and by neurochemical and molecular changes in the brain; sometimes used synonymously with "dependence."


Alcoholism

Alcoholism is also known as "alcohol dependence." It is a disease that includes alcohol craving and continued drinking despite repeated alcohol-related problems, such as losing a job or getting into trouble with the law. Alcoholism includes four symptoms:

Craving--A strong need, or compulsion, to drink.
Impaired control--The inability to limit one's drinking on any given occasion.
Physical dependence--Withdrawal symptoms, such as nausea, sweating, shakiness, and anxiety, when alcohol use is stopped after a period of heavy drinking.
Tolerance--The need for increasing amounts of alcohol in order to feel its effects.

Character Defect

Even though Alcoholics Anonymous introduced the Disease Model to the world, it never quite shook the moral approach to alcoholic behavior that prevailed before. In Steps 4 & 5 of the AA program, it is suggested that the recovering alcoholic create a "moral inventory" and admit, "to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs." Then, in Step 6, the alcoholic is advised to become ready to have God "remove all these defects of character".

The idea that alcoholic behavior is caused by "defects of character" is not universally accepted. While most recovery programs emphasize honest self-examination as an important part of the recovery process, not all of those would characterize the undesirable attitudes and behaviors that might be uncovered by such examination as "character defects". To many, in fact, the belief that one has a character defect is itself a delusion which has to be gotten over before one can lead an emotionally healthy and fully responsible life.

Codependency

"In its broadest sense, codependency can be defined as an addiction to people, behaviors, or things. Codependency is the fallacy of trying to control interior feelings by controlling people, things, and events on the outside. To the codependent, control or lack of it is central to every aspect of life.

The codependent may be addicted to another person. In this interpersonal codependency, the codependent has become so elaborately wound up in the other person that the sense of self - personal identity - is severely restricted, crowded out by that other person's identity and problems.

Additionally, codependents can be like vacuum cleaners gone wild, drawing to themselves not just another person, but also chemicals (alcohol or drugs, primarily) or things - money, food, sexuality, work. They struggle relentlessly to fill the great emotional vacuum within themselves.

Also known as "codies."


Compulsion

An irresistible impulse to act, regardless of the rationality of the motivation: An act or acts performed in response to such an impulse.

When applied to psychoactive substance use, the term refers to a powerful urge-attributed to internal feelings rather than external influences- to take the substance (or substances} in question. The substance user may recognize the urge as detrimental to well-being and may have a conscious intent to refrain. These feelings are less characteristic of alcohol and drug dependence than of the psychiatric syndrome of obsessive-compulsive disorder.


Delerium Tremens DT's

Delirium tremens is a disorder involving sudden and severe mental changes (psychosis) or neurologic changes (including seizures) caused by abruptly stopping the use of alcohol. Rapid pulse rate, elevated blood pressure, and temperature elevation also may be present.


Denial

If the first step toward recovery, for most programs, is the admission that one has a problem with alcohol or drugs, those same programs see, in an individual's refusal to buy into every detail of their techniques and teachings, evidence of denial - denial that there is a problem in the first place, denial that the problem is as severe as others may think it is, denial that the individual needs help dealing with the problem.
Treatment professionals and recovery programs that diagnose failure as the effect of denial view denial as a form of dishonesty. Others, however, are more ready to accept an individual's testimony of his or her feelings at face value and work to help the individual determine the validity of those feelings and the accuracy of his or her self-assessment. Labeling any testimony as "denial", to that point of view, does not help a person develop toward the honest and accurate appraisal of a situation that all agree to be a necessary precondition to dealing effectively with problem behaviors.


Enabling

Enabling is defined as reacting to a person in such a way to shield him or her from experiencing the full impact of the harmful consequences of behavior. Enabling behavior differs from helping in that it permits or allows the person to be irresponsible.

PROTECTION from natural consequences of behavior.
KEEPING SECRETS about behavior from others in order to keep peace.
MAKING EXCUSES for the behavior. (School, friends, legal authorities, work, family members.)
BAILING OUT of trouble. (Debts, fixing tickets, paying lawyers, providing jobs.)
BLAMING OTHERS for dependent persons behavior. (Friends, teachers, employers, family, self.)
SEEING THE PROBLEM AS THE RESULT OF SOMETHING ELSE. (Shyness, adolescence, loneliness, child, broken home.)
AVOIDING the chemically dependent person in order to keep peace. (Out-of-sight, out-of-mind.)
GIVING MONEY THAT IS UNDESERVED/UNEARNED.
ATTEMPTING TO CONTROL. (Planning activities, choosing friends, getting jobs.)
MAKING THREATS that have no follow through or consistency.
TAKING CARE OF the chemically dependent person. (Doing what he/she should be expected to for themselves.)

 

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ESH
Experience, Strength and Hope.

F.E.A.R.
Face Everything and Recover

F.I.N.E.
F--kedup, insecure, neurotic, and emotional

F.U.B.A.R.
Fixed up beyond all recognition

Functional Alcoholic

Someone who can function in spite of his alcoholism (masking his disease). Most functioning alcoholics have maintenance levels of alcohol in their systems. They wake up in the morning, begin drinking up to that level and then maintain it.

A person who appears to function in society when under the influence of alcohol. Upon closer inspection is found to have established a network of enablers who facilitate the apearance of functioning; i.e: drinking partner who is also the workplace manager, relative who transports to work, etc.

Tongue in cheek definition: Functional Alcoholic-“the person’s drinking doesn’t bother me, yet.”


G.O.D.
Good orderly direction

HALT
Hungry, Angry, Lonely and Tired.

H.O.W.
Honesty, open mindedness, willingness

Higher Power

The term is closely connected with the idea of powerlessness at the core of AA's 12 Steps. The basic concept is that individual human beings don't have the power sufficient to defeat their addiction, so they must call on a higher power - super-human or supernatural - to help them in their battle.
Alcoholics Anonymous introduced the term "higher power" in an attempt to ease the way for people who entered the AA program as atheists or agnostics. It derives from a passage in the chapter of AA's "Big Book" entitled "We Agnostics", in which Bill Wilson writes, "Lack of power, that was our dilemma. we had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously."
"Higher power" is a controversial term. To many religious people, the term "higher power" demeans and depersonalizes the idea of God. To people who are not religious, it may seem to be an outdated euphemism, at best; at worst, it's an evasive tactic to avoid acknowledging the religious nature of the AA program.

Obsession

A persistent, unwanted idea or impulse that can not be eliminated by logic or reasoning.
A recurring, unwanted idea that cannot be eliminated. Obsessive ideas are often unreasonable and disturbing. Preoccupation with an obsessive idea can interfere with normal daily activities.

PAWS

An acronym for Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome. Post-acute withdrawal is a bio-psycho-social syndrome. It results from the combination of damage to the nervous system caused by alcohol or drugs and the psychosocial stress of coping with life without drugs or alcohol. The symptoms of PAW typically grow to peak intensity over three to six months after abstinence begins. The damage is usually reversible, meaning the major symptoms go away in time if proper treatment is received.

TYPES OF PAW SYMPTOMS:
1. Inability to think clearly
2. Memory problems
3. Emotional overreactions or numbness
4. Sleep disturbances
5. Physical coordination problems
6. Stress sensitivity

Powerlessness

The first Step in the Alcoholics Anonymous program is the admission that "we were powerless over alcohol", and the concept of powerlessness is a major element in many recovery programs. The idea that the addict is powerless over his or her drug of choice is not, however, universally accepted.
Many addiction and substance abuse experts feel that it is a disservice to the recovering person to emphasize powerlessness, that in fact it is within anyone's power to resist the urges, to give up the habits and behavior patterns that are involved with drug abuse. Some programs, such as LifeRing, just ignore the idea of power completely and substitute the concept of strength; to them, recovery from addiction involves strengthening the sober self, just as recovery from a physical injury involves strengthening the body.

Recovery

To return to an original state; "the recovery of the forest after the fire was surprisingly rapid"
convalescence: gradual healing (through rest) after sickness or injury
the act of regaining or saving something lost (or in danger of becoming lost).
In terms of codependency, recovery is you regaining your own life. Returning to the original you, prior to codependent issues overtaking your life. Saving yourself.

Alternately, here's another view of recovery;
At any given time, there are a number of people who are working, deliberately and through particular disciplined behaviors, to end their dependence on alcohol or drugs. The term "recovery" can serve as convenient shorthand for that complex and difficult effort.
For some, the term has a more definite meaning. Those people, usually encouraged by the programs that they are using to end their addictive behaviors, think of themselves as being "in recovery", and they contrast that state with the state of being "in relapse" - i.e. actively drinking and drugging. To such individuals, recovery is more than convenient shorthand; they view recovery as the condition in which they intend to spend the rest of their lives, and remaining in recovery, for them, is quite literally a matter of life or death.

S.L.I.P.
Sobriety lost it's priority

S.O.B.E.R. (my fav!)
Son of a b*tch everything is real

Sponsor

The idea of a "sponsor" is almost exclusively an AA idea. The newcomer to AA is encouraged to "get a sponsor", that is, to find someone with significant experience in AA and sufficient length of sobriety to be credible, who will guide the newcomer through AA's 12 Steps and make certain that he or she stays the course. Members of AA are encouraged to call their sponsors when they experience the urge to drink, or even when they are confused or discouraged.
In practice, sponsorship seems to many, even within AA, to be of questionable value; over-zealous or insensitive sponsors can drive a person away, and the sponsor himself may experience a good deal of emotional upheaval if one of the persons he is sponsoring drops out of the program and goes back to drinking. Sponsorship is a relatively late addition to the AA program; there is no mention of it in the early editions of the Big Book. And it has not been adopted by other recovery programs, even by those that follow AA's lead in other regards.