When we are struggling with finding a safe place to live, good food to eat, enough clothes to wear or finding supportive friends, gaining and achieving recovery can be excruciatingly hard. Gaining a solid, strong recovery is even harder.

It is hard to be mentally stable and be able to move further along in one’s recovery journey if there isn’t a place safe to sleep at night, healthy food to eat or enough clothes to keep one warm and dry (or cool and dry).

If any of these things (you don’t have a safe place to live or good food to eat or enough clothes to keep one warm and dry) are happening in your life, one thing that can help is to tell your treatment provider that your person-centered plan needs to be updated or redone. That way you and your treatment provider and people in your natural support system can write a new plan or you can update your old one to include any areas that need to be focused on any basic needs that aren’t being met.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

The noted Psychologist Abraham Maslow theorized a hierarchy of needs that helps explain this.

Maslow theorized a hierarchy of needs where items mentioned lower on the chart need to be fulfilled before a person can fulfill the needs or desires farther up the hierarchy.

When asked about basic needs, people in recovery stated they find the hierarchy of needs to be true for them in their recovery journey. In order for one to stay in a solid recovery, one’s most basic needs such as a place to stay, food to eat and water to drink, are an important part of any recovery journey.

Having a place to stay and something to eat are not always the same as being safe, secure, comfortable and well fed. It is important to one’s recovery journey to feel safe and secure, not just where you live, but in one’s surroundings. Having food that is healthy that will help one be well is also important.

People in recovery acquire safety and security by having things like health insurance, a safe place to live that one is comfortable living in, and safe places to go. Treatment stability, knowing what to expect is important at any time, but especially in the second stage on the hierarchy of needs.

After basic needs are met, people move on and are able to pursue better relationships, find friendship; and as they move on and grow relationships, they find that they feel better about who they are as people.