To get back on track, we must let ourselves be instructed by our mistakes. Remorse becomes a prompt to honor relationships that we have granted insufficient respect. Wasted time demands that we make the most of our remaining years. Past deceptions insist upon a full and deep dedication to honesty. When we are ready to push through the obstacles, even decades' worth, we can reach the good life waiting on the other side. Then life gets so much better.

Those who lose their way in substances remain stuck at the age they were when they first began their habit. While their peers are gaining skills for living by coping with hard times and coming out the other side, they are getting high and putting off this necessary education in enduring life's travails. Instead of transcending foul moods, they seek to control them. Rather than taking a brisk walk, talking to a friend, praying, listening to music, meditating, or gazing at the open sky, they dodge sadness, stress, and insecurity by alleviating these feelings chemically.

Eventually, the relationship with the substance becomes the central relationship of the person's life, with loved ones an increasingly distant second. True intimacy becomes impossible. A polished surface is presented externally, to the extent that many become charming and socially adept to an extreme degree. Their loneliness becomes vast as they become more and more skillful at hiding their interior reality. As their self-loathing grows, their need to numb themselves and put on a show of confidence gets more intense.

Denial of the harm caused by use of substances becomes an ongoing need to distort reality. Blaming everyone and everything but themselves, they must continually fabricate explanations of why things keep falling apart. Children are harmed, marriages lost, parents alienated, jobs forfeited, or artistic talent squandered, yet still people in trouble with substances go on locating the origin of their misfortunes in the actions of others - rebellious children, selfish partners, critical parents, lousy bosses, a society unkind to artists. Their efforts at deflection convince no one but themselves.

Anyone who tries to point out the connection to substance use is likely to be summarily rejected. No matter how lovingly someone renders the confrontation, truth-speakers tend to be dismissed as worriers and control freaks. In the meantime, the illness worsens and the damages add up. The focus on getting high becomes increasingly urgent as the big pile of harm keeps getting larger and the need for avoidance becomes more desperate.

At some point, an occasion of terrible appraisal occurs. When the mountain of harm is clearly perceived, an interest in change may be spurred. The writer Carolyn Knapp explained that at her sickest point nothing and no one mattered to her except drinking. One day while babysitting for her sister's children, she nearly lost her grip on the small child in her arms and came close to shattering the girl's skull on the pavement. This was the event that sent her into a treatment program. In her book, Drinking: A Love Story, Knapp eloquently describes how this moment of reckoning began the process that was to change her life.

The impetus for reclaiming one's life and doing the relentless work of recovery has to come from within. Feelings squelched during the years of denial must be taken out and experienced, one by one - resentment, insecurity, anger, self-hatred, shame, grief, guilt, vulnerability, jealousy. The longer someone has been walling off these emotions, the greater the backlog. No matter how vast the accumulation, the person has to remain diligent and truthful on every level while going through the process. Returning to the habit of evasion, even without actually using a substance, can instigate a relapse back into distorted ways of thinking that threaten what has been achieved.

A woman in her late forties with a six-year sobriety began to isolate herself when her beloved father became gravely ill. Her best friend begged her to resist this instinct and surround herself with supportive people. Instead, she reverted to her previous pattern of living as though no help was available and she was alone in the world. Then, when her father died, she broke her sobriety and returned to the instant obliteration of pain that she had relied upon years before. After his funeral, she almost died in a weeklong binge. Then she lost her job when she tried to return to work hung over.

Her friend was frightened and angry in equal measure. Her well-considered advice had been scorned, and it seemed her loving support had come to nothing. She yearned to do something - lend her friend money, help her get a job -- but she was aware that attempts at rescue would be counterproductive. Realizing it was best to keep her distance for a while, she knew that skills mastered during the sober period would still be there when her friend was ready, as well as the AA community to which she had become attached. The six-year sobriety would serve as a source of hope as this surge of reckless self-destruction played itself out.

Eleven months later, waking up one morning in bed with a man she did not recognize, the grieving woman was jolted into reclaiming her sobriety. Her recovery community welcomed her back with warmth and understanding, as did her friend. They resumed their relationship with gusto. In AA meetings and in self-reflection, she took on the demon of her bitter self-sufficiency for the first time. She was able to face the hurt she had absorbed in early childhood when her father had not yet become sober himself. Confronting these interlocking sources of bitterness and hurt, she was able to reach the first anniversary of her father's death more certain of her sobriety than ever. She dedicated her recovery to him.

Life does not get better, so long as we avoid the pain that spurs us to evolve. We do not develop emotionally, because we block out our feelings rather than bear them. We cannot become fluent at intimacy, because we keep ourselves hidden. We do not become confident, because we duck out of challenges rather than do the kind of work that instills self-worth.

Once we turn this pattern around, however, life's full bounty becomes available to us. Lost time cannot be regained, but we can enter a period of rapid evolution. We can choose to acknowledge how we contribute to our own unhappiness, instead of making excuses and trying to shift responsibility onto others. A commitment to honesty and self-scrutiny puts us on track for a good life, no matter how long we have diverged.

Adapted from: Life Gets Better: The Unexpected Pleasures of Growing Older, Tarcher/Penguin, 2011.