Addiction Ends When Life Gets Bigger (Blog 3)

What Happens After Addiction?

Let’s say someone quits drinking—or gambling, or heroin, or whatever their “thing” was. Then what?

If the answer is “nothing,” they’re in trouble. You don’t just remove a destructive habit. You replace it. You build around it. You outgrow it by expanding the rest of your life until the addiction feels irrelevant.

That’s what this chapter is about: how expanding your experience of life is not just the result of recovery—it’s the engine of it.

The Recovery Industry Got It Backward

One of the biggest flaws in traditional addiction treatment is the assumption that you have to fix the addiction first, and then you can focus on your life.

That’s exactly backwards.

Addiction doesn’t go away because you “get sober.” It goes away because you start living in a way that makes the addiction unnecessary.

That’s not a metaphor. It’s how people actually change. And it’s what the Life Process Program is based on.

What Is the Life Process Program?

The Life Process Program (LPP) is the non-disease model that Stanton Peele developed over decades, and I now help deliver through coaching and training. It’s not built on abstinence. It’s not built on shame. It’s built on one central question:

“What kind of life do you want to live—and what’s getting in the way of it?”

We don’t assume addiction is a lifelong disease. We don’t tell people they’re powerless. We look at their values, their environment, their strengths, their relationships, and the rewards (or lack thereof) in their lives. Then we help them build a life that feels worth sticking around for.

And yes, that works better than telling people they’ll be broken forever.

Here’s What I’ve Seen

I’ve worked with people who felt completely defeated by addiction. People who had tried every method under the sun: 12-step meetings, detox, inpatient rehab, psychiatric meds to name a few.

What helped wasn’t some miraculous intervention. It was rediscovering life:

• Finding purpose in their work
• Rebuilding a relationship they thought they’d lost
• Learning to parent with confidence
• Writing music again
• Volunteering
• Cooking meals for the first time in years
• Making art
• Falling in love
• Traveling
• Having a stable Tuesday

Small wins turn into bigger ones. New experiences start stacking up. And the addiction? It gets crowded out.

Recovery Without a Life Is Just Emptiness

There’s a reason relapse is so common in conventional recovery programs. You can’t just subtract something from your life and expect everything else to improve.

If a person’s entire identity is built around their addiction—or their recovery from it—there’s no room left for growth.

People don’t need to be told what not to do. They need something better to do.

That’s what expanding life experience is all about. It’s not a soft, secondary goal. It’s the main event.

Why It Works

This approach works for a simple reason: humans are meaning-seeking, value-driven creatures. When we feel connected to our lives—when we see progress, beauty, purpose, challenge, and growth—we naturally move toward those things and away from destructive behaviors.

You don’t have to fight your addiction tooth and nail every day. That’s exhausting. You can just become the kind of person who’s busy building something better.

How I Know This Is True

Not just because I coach people through it. Because I lived it.

In my 20s, I was addicted to heroin. At the time, I didn’t think of it as a cry for help or a rebellion or anything poetic. It was just something that dulled the edges of my life. The more disconnected I felt, the more I used.

What helped me wasn’t being told I had a disease. It was finding reasons to stop that felt like mine. Reasons like love, purpose, curiosity, the possibility of helping others—even joy.

That’s what made the addiction start to shrink. It stopped being the center of my life. Eventually, it didn’t belong there at all.

Final Thought

If you’re trying to change your relationship with drugs, alcohol, or any other addictive behavior, don’t start with punishment. Don’t start with fear.

Start with this question:

What would your life look like if it were deeply, unmistakably worth living?

Then get to work building that life. And when you need help building it, don’t look for someone to “treat your disease.” Look for someone who sees you as capable of growth, direction, and meaning.

That’s what real recovery looks like.

—Zach Rhoads
Coach, Author, Builder of Better Tuesdays