This is a question that seems to be can be best answered with the narratives of individuals who have endured the process of recovery and still live with it. Part of the reason why recovery is so challenging is because to effectively move away from addiction causes a massive change in thinking and defining one's world and one's self. These are powerful elements and to undertake them requires a fundamental transformation in belief systems. It goes beyond and deeper than "I am going to stop using," and rather seeks to reconfigure one's own sense of self because it carves out a reason as to why addiction happened, how it impacted one's life, and how it will not play a defining role again. Think of it like this: Addiction causes the individual user to lose their own sense of self and autonomy. The life lived within addiction subsumed a life that probably already had something in it where voice was denied. Once one makes the conscious choice to stop the cycle of addiction, they are using their voice for the first time in their lives and advocating a sense of autonomy which did not exist. This is powerful, richly evocative, and brings out subterranean demons and aspects of self which, on first glance, can be quite unappealing. To effectively undergo such a process and then live with it is a challenge.
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