A therapist-led recovery group is now forming in Calabasas
Getting sober is an important accomplishment. However, anyone around addiction knows stopping alcohol or drugs is not the end of the problem. Eventually, treatment ends, the structure decreases, and people return to ordinary life. The relationships, stressors, responsibilities, loneliness, anxiety, anger, and boredom existed before treatment. They are often still waiting for them.
This is where recovery has to become more than simply not using.
I am gauging interest in a weekly evening addiction recovery group in Calabasas. Our group targets adults seeking ongoing support as they build a life beyond alcohol or drugs. The group would be therapist-led and focused on the psychological, relational, and practical work that often continues after detox, residential treatment, intensive outpatient treatment, or the initial stages of sobriety.
The group is not intended to replace AA, SMART Recovery, individual therapy, or another recovery program that is working for you. It can complement those resources. It may also provide an alternative form of support for people who have tried traditional recovery groups and found that they simply did not connect with them.
If you’re interested, contact me for a brief conversation. There is no commitment. At this stage, I am simply putting together a list of people who would like to know more as the group takes shape.
“I’m Interested in the Recovery Group” to Bill Moran
What Happens After Treatment?
One of the things I learned while serving as the primary therapist in a detox treatment facility in Malibu and later working in an intensive outpatient program in Woodland Hills is that people can make remarkable progress while they are surrounded by structure.
In treatment, there are schedules, therapists, groups, accountability, and other people working toward similar goals. The environment itself supports recovery.
Then people go home.
The person who was doing well in treatment may return to the same marriage that was struggling before they left, the same financial problems, the same stressful job, or the same loneliness they used alcohol to escape. Friends may still be drinking. Family members may still be angry. Trust may not have returned simply because the person is now sober.
Perhaps most importantly, the person now has to deal with ordinary life without the substance that once changed the way they felt.
That transition can be harder than people expect.
Someone may sincerely want sobriety and still discover that they do not yet know how to tolerate anxiety without drinking, what to do when they become angry, how to spend a Saturday night, how to repair damaged relationships, or how to cope with the regret of things that happened while they were using.
Treatment can begin recovery. Eventually, however, recovery has to be practiced in everyday life.
That is one of the reasons I am interested in creating this group.
Recovery Is More Than Avoiding Alcohol or Drugs
People often focus almost entirely on the substance. That is understandable. When drinking or drug use has become destructive, stopping the behavior has to receive immediate attention.
But there is another question that eventually becomes just as important:
What was the substance doing for you?
Alcohol may have reduced anxiety, quieted the mind, made social interaction easier, provided something to look forward to, dulled resentment, interrupted loneliness, or allowed someone to avoid thinking about problems they did not know how to solve.
Other drugs may have provided energy, confidence, escape, excitement, emotional numbness, or temporary relief from feelings the person found difficult to tolerate.
This does not excuse destructive behavior. It helps us understand why simply removing the substance may leave such a large hole.
When drinking was the primary way someone relaxed, what replaces it?
Escaping emotional pain through getting high raises the question: how will they respond when the pain returns?
If nearly every friendship revolved around drinking, what will social life look like now?
If alcohol was the reward at the end of every difficult day, what happens at six o’clock when there is no longer a drink waiting?
These are recovery questions, not merely sobriety questions.
What Would We Work On in a Weekly Recovery Group?
The group would not be organized around lectures or repeatedly telling people that substance use is harmful. Most people who have experienced addiction already understand the consequences.
The work would focus more on understanding what repeatedly leads back toward use and developing something different in its place.
We might examine how stress builds before a relapse, how certain thoughts make using seem reasonable in the moment, why anger or shame can become dangerous emotional states, and how to recognize changes in behavior before a craving becomes overwhelming.
Relationships would also be an important part of the work. Recovery often requires learning how to hear the pain of people who were affected by the addiction without immediately becoming defensive. It may involve rebuilding trust slowly, establishing healthier boundaries, learning to communicate differently, or accepting that other people may need time to believe that the changes are going to last.
There is also the problem of meaning.
People sometimes spend so much energy trying to stop drinking or using that nobody asks what they are going to do with the life they are getting back. Work, relationships, physical health, faith, purpose, recreation, responsibility, and friendship become part of recovery because a life worth protecting is a powerful reason not to return to the old one.
The goal is not merely to become better at resisting a substance.
It is to become increasingly capable of living without needing it.
Is This an Alternative to AA?
It can be, but it does not have to be.
I have worked with many people for whom Alcoholics Anonymous became an important part of long-term recovery. AA offers community, accountability, identification with other people who understand addiction, and a sober social network that can be difficult to reproduce elsewhere.
If AA is helping someone, I see no reason to discourage it.
But not everyone connects with AA. Some people struggle with aspects of the Twelve-Step philosophy. Others attend meetings and appreciate them but recognize that there are psychological or relationship problems they want to explore at greater depth.
A therapist-led recovery group can serve a different function.
Someone might attend AA several times a week and participate in this group as well. Another person may prefer SMART Recovery or another mutual-support program. Someone else may be working individually with a therapist and want the additional experience of talking with other people who are navigating recovery.
There is no reason these approaches need to compete with one another.
I discuss this in greater depth in Alternatives to AA: Finding the Recovery Path That Works for You, where I look at AA, SMART Recovery, psychotherapy, medication, spirituality, and other approaches that can become part of an individualized recovery plan.
Learning to Recognize the Pattern Before the Relapse
A relapse rarely begins with the first drink or drug.
There is usually a sequence.
Stress increases. Sleep becomes worse. Someone becomes isolated. Resentment builds. Meetings or therapy appointments become less important. The person begins remembering the enjoyable parts of drinking while forgetting how bad things eventually became.
Then the thinking starts to change.
I’ve been doing well.
Maybe this time will be different.
I deserve a break.
One isn’t going to hurt anything.
By the time the substance appears, the relapse may have been developing for days.
This is where approaches such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can be useful. We can learn to recognize triggers, thoughts, emotions, cravings, and behavioral changes early enough that there is still room to respond differently.
I explore that process more fully in How CBT Helps Addiction Recovery: Triggers, Cravings and Relapse Prevention.
A weekly group creates another opportunity to notice these patterns before they become crises. Sometimes another person recognizes a change in us before we recognize it ourselves.
The Importance of Connection in Recovery
Addiction tends to produce isolation even when a person appears highly social.
There is often an increasing amount of secrecy. People minimize how much they are using, hide consequences, avoid difficult conversations, and begin organizing their lives around protecting the addiction.
Recovery asks for something different.
It requires increasing honesty, which can be uncomfortable. It often involves allowing other people to know when things are not going particularly well rather than waiting until everything has fallen apart.
A good group can provide an unusual kind of connection because people do not have to spend as much time explaining the basics. Someone else in the room may already understand what it is like to wake up promising never to drink again and then change their mind by evening. They may understand the embarrassment of repairing relationships, the strange emptiness that sometimes follows early sobriety, or the frustration of feeling that everyone else expects life to be wonderful simply because the drinking stopped.
That kind of identification can be powerful.
The group I am considering would combine that peer experience with a therapist’s attention to the psychological patterns, relationships, and emotional issues that can influence recovery.
Who Might Benefit From the Group?
I envision the group primarily for adults who are already engaged in recovery and want continued support.
That could include someone who recently completed detox, residential treatment, or an intensive outpatient program and wants more structure as they transition back into everyday life. It could include someone who has been sober for months or years but recognizes that the same emotional or relationship patterns continue creating problems.
It may also appeal to someone attending AA or another mutual-support program who wants additional psychological depth, or someone who has tried traditional recovery groups and is looking for a different kind of environment.
The group would not be intended as a substitute for medically supervised detoxification. Someone who is actively drinking heavily or is at risk for significant alcohol withdrawal should first receive appropriate medical evaluation because alcohol withdrawal can sometimes be dangerous.
The purpose of this group would be the continuing work of recovery, not acute detoxification.
My Approach to Addiction Recovery
My approach is integrative rather than tied to a single theory of addiction.
CBT can help us understand triggers, thoughts, cravings, and behavioral patterns. Motivational interviewing can help when someone genuinely wants change while another part of them still wants the benefits they associate with drinking or using. Exploring family history, relationships, grief, shame, anxiety, depression, or trauma may help us understand why certain patterns became established.
Sometimes the deeper questions are existential. A person has stopped drinking and now has to decide what kind of person they want to become and what they are going to do with the life in front of them.
For clients who want faith incorporated into recovery, I am also comfortable addressing the spiritual dimensions of change, responsibility, forgiveness, suffering, meaning, and hope.
No single one of these approaches explains every person.
I am much more interested in understanding the person sitting in front of me than in making the person conform to a treatment philosophy.
Why a Weekly Group?
Individual therapy provides privacy and the opportunity to focus deeply on one person’s circumstances. Group work offers something different.
Other people challenge our assumptions. They recognize our rationalizations. They may have already faced the problem we are only beginning to encounter. Sometimes hearing another person describe what they are doing makes something obvious that we could not see when talking about ourselves.
There is also accountability simply in returning each week and being known.
But the group would not exist merely to report whether someone drank that week. Sobriety matters, but the conversation should become larger than that.
What is happening in your marriage?
How are you handling stress?
Are you becoming increasingly isolated?
What are you doing with your time?
What happens when you are angry?
Are you rebuilding relationships?
What are you avoiding?
What are you building?
Those are the questions that can turn abstinence into recovery.
A Recovery Group Is Now Forming in Calabasas
I am currently determining whether there is enough interest to begin a small weekly evening addiction recovery group in Calabasas.
I have intentionally not selected a night yet because I would first like to hear from people who are genuinely interested and learn what evenings may work best. Once there is enough interest to form a useful group, I will finalize the schedule, group size, fee, and other details.
Reaching out does not obligate you to participate.
If you are interested, contact me and simply mention the Recovery Group. We can have a brief conversation about where you are in recovery, what you are looking for, and whether the group is likely to be appropriate for you.
Call/Text or Message “I’m Interested in the Weekly Recovery Group” to Bill Moran
Recovery does not have to mean spending the rest of your life thinking about what you are no longer allowed to do. The larger possibility is building relationships, responsibilities, interests, meaning, and a way of living that gradually makes returning to alcohol or drugs less attractive.
The goal is not simply to stay away from the old life. It is to build one worth staying present for.
