Has anyone ever felt like your recovery program isn’t working all that good? Like, you know it’s helping a lot, and you are following the instructions: you go to your meetings, follow the steps, meet with your sponsor or coach or whomever, but you still feel the pull. You are sober, you can stay sober now, everything is helping but if you are consistently going home at night and still experience craving, does it really feel like it’s working?

You are doing great, you’ve got some sober time, but maybe the excitement of early recovery is wearing off, and you feel like you might be one wrongly-timed trigger away from a total relapse despite all the work you have been putting in.

I am about to tell you why.

Let’s take a minute to check out Maslow’s Hierarchy of Psychological Needs. This little guy is the map for if you want to level up. The problem is, there are no short cuts.

This hierarchical pyramid has 5 levels. At the bottom, the first, most important, foundational level, that comes before anything else in the pyramid, is the Physiological level: oxygen, water, food, rest, regulation, elimination. For those who have heard me talk about cravings, this should be familiar. If we don’t have these essentials, we don’t live. Simple as that.

The second level of the pyramid is Safety, third level is Belonging, up from that is Esteem, then Self-actualization.

The premise of Maslow’s theory is that a person cannot satisfy any level without first fully addressing the level below. One can attempt to satisfy any level, but the effects of any progress will be short-lived without the solid foundation of the level below. No level will stick without the level below it being locked-in tight.

For instance, nobody gives a shit about their Safety level if they’re starving. They will put themselves in harm’s way to get food. You would risk jail if you were starving, you would risk a beat down to get that water. Right?

Any attempts at Esteem are short-lived if that person is being physically or psychologically abused (Safety) The desire to reach one’s highest potential (Self-actualization) is thwarted if that person has little Esteem.

See how that works?

Which level do you think a sober support group falls into?

Yes, Belonging.

Sobriety focused support groups are fantastic for satisfying this level of Maslow’s maze. It will also help satisfy other levels like Esteem, and Spirituality (which can be placed at the Self-Actualization level), and maybe even a little of the Safety category if the group members can support them in their escape from abuse. Or they may feel safe in the group but are still craving when they get home because the survival essentials are not there, and that feels unsafe because it triggers fear.

Which level can support-group meetings not satisfy?

That’s right. The survival essentials can only be fully satisfied by the person themselves. That’s if they even know they’re supposed to, or how to properly do it: because remember, most will just quit the drug or behavior and do little else but go to meetings.

Brass tacks, the Belonging to a group doesn’t mean much after that person leaves the meeting if their survival brain thinks the body is malnourished, not resting, toxic, dehydrated, and blah blah blah.

The survival brain needs the basic survival essentials fully satisfied in order to level up—otherwise it’s all a temporary illusion. For as long as these physiological essentials remain unsatisfied, the alcoholic will experience cravings for a drug to take their place because, thus far, that’s the only program it knows.

While these meetings may help a recoveree stave off the urge to use the drug that day, they are ultimately used like medication to suppress reoccurring symptoms which are rooted in the levels below, and the addict will continue to struggle with cravings and urges despite their participation in the program.

This goes the same for any of the higher levels of the pyramid. The cravings will persistently beat down the door, even if you’re financially secure, have a ton of friends, a satisfying job, health insurance, a great spouse, and everyone admires and respects you. None of it matters if I have not satisfied the essentials for survival in the proper way.

The cravings will persist regardless, and you will continually need to take all the things that give you a temporary feel-good fix, like a drug (more, more, more). The things used for the temporary feel-good effect may or may not be your drug of choice. Whatever it is, it may throw you off balance, so be careful.

If we already feel well and good, because we’re taking care of basic health, and our system is healing and running properly, there isn’t much need for all the extra stuff that’s often used too much. There’s no need to keep attending meetings three times per week for the rest of our life, because we already feel good, because we are getting back to running a system in the fashion it was designed for and not abusing it, bogging it down, and keeping it wanting.

I’m not saying the pyramid levels need to be done in their exact order. You wouldn’t want to wait until after you lock down healthy eating habits to look for a job and housing. But, the natural foundation of our health must be addressed, and it’s just nice to snuggle and pet Scaredy Cat and make him purr while working on all the other stuff.

Scaredy Cat is the name I gave to the part of the brain responsible for Cravings. (Click the link)

Unfortunately, many can no longer discern what’s even natural anymore. Artificial is the new “normal” now, with the definition of what’s normal changing daily.

Like I said, we take our basics—the essentials that should already be there naturally—for granted. Phrases like, “Good enough,” and “I know I should probably work on that . . . maybe later,” ease into our habitual excuses while our priorities stray from being a natural living Man or Woman, to a simulacrum of species who appear to not belong to this planet at all.

In general, as a society, we spend most of our day inside a box, self-caged by our offices, homes, cars, and shopping centers. Tinted sunglasses, windows, and carcinogenic pastes block our eyes and skin from the vital energy of the sunlight that our bodies are designed to absorb and use.

These days, it’s not a simple task to get fresh air into our lungs if we live near a big city, nor is it easy to find a space free of digital radiation waves messing with our bioelectrical system and degenerating our body cells.

Our shoes insulate our “soles” from Mother Earth’s electrons. We forgot how to effectively communicate with anything that isn’t electronic. We have become conditioned to live in excess. We live out-of-balance, using more than we need, and far too busy maintaining that excess to have any drops of compassion left for much else.

Our diet of information literally drowns our consciousness in a virtual matrix of uselessness and draining distractions. Don’t get me started on what has happened to our food. I even know of some people who dislike the taste of water, but that’s understandable considering they most likely have never drunk from uncontaminated sources. Tap water is contaminated. What human being doesn’t like water?

Circadian rhythms—our rest/work cycles, which should coincide with the natural clock in the sky and yearly seasonal changes, were launched out the window with a catapult a long time ago.

The parts of our skin that we don’t hide beneath paint and product are draped in the finest hormone misbalancing petroleum-based fabrics. The sounds entering our ears and hearts resemble nothing of the musical winds, waves, birds, frogs, crickets, and streams; no, we download an app for that when our anxiety reaches sleepless heights.

We no longer live in the habitat we are designed to inhabit. We are practically out of sync with just about everything we were designed to do. We are like fish living on land. It’s no wonder why the body and mind seem out of whack. It’s no wonder Scaredy Cat sounds the alarms and moves the masses to reach for anything we’re told will give an inkling of comfort—if only for an hour, anything to relieve the suffering in this alien world.

Aaaand . . . I’m done.

There was a saying that I minimized when I got sober, “the only thing you need to change is everything.” Overwhelming, I know. But it doesn’t stop when you get sober. There is no possible way I could fight cravings forever. I needed to remove these crazy cravings before I could leave survival mode and begin thriving.