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Five Decades of Recovery Wisdom, Shared with Soul.

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The Eight Stages of the Heroic Journey

Posted on October 8, 2025, tagged as

In last month’s newsletter I discussed the value of thinking about addiction recovery as a heroic journey. I added that it can be guided by the twelve steps, as looked at in depth in my recent book, The Twelve Step Pathway: A Heroic Journey of Recovery. This month I want to look at the eight stages of the heroic journey and suggest how the twelve steps can be used as a GPS for that journey. The eight stages are:

  1. The call to adventure. Here in the AA program the alcoholic admits to defeat…. he or she has hit bottom. The is the first step in the AA program.
  2. The refusal of the call to adventure. This has been experienced multiple times in the course of the alcoholic’s illness. It describes those times in which the alcoholic experienced despair but still tried to solve the problem alone. It is useful to understand this refusal as part of the journey.
  3. Acceptance of the call to adventure and acceptance of help. In the case of the alcoholic, the help offered comes in the gifts of the AA group, a sponsor, and of reliance on a higher power. The hero in this scenario is told to seek a higher power of his or her own choosing.
  4. The adventure itself. This turns out to be two simultaneous adventures. One is the challenge of staying sober in the same world in which the hero could not stop drinking or stay stopped once abstinence had been achieved. The other adventure is the inward journey of self-discovery leading to the hero’s spiritual core. This inward journey is guided in AA by steps four through nine.
  5. The achievement of the quest. The hero has found both abstinence and the discovery of him or herself as a lovable spiritual being, a person of value.
  6. The call to return. Here the hero is told that he or she must return to the world with newfound awareness and knowledge in order to help those who continue to suffer. This is the twelfth step in the AA program.
  7. The refusal of the call to return. The is the tendency of the hero to consider him or herself cured. Nothing further needs to be done. Contact with the sponsor is let go, AA attendance drops off and then stops, and the hero gets busy with the rest of his or her life. Here the challenge is to not give in to this temptation.
  8. The return home with the treasure. In this case the treasure is the knowledge of recovery and willingness to share it with others, and to live a life consistent with the newly discovered spiritual values.

This admittedly is a lot, and it is accomplished over time. What is important to understand here is that the journey never really ends. Life will continue to offer challenges during which the hero will have to utilize the resources called upon earlier. New resources also may be discovered and called upon. Also, as recovery continues the hero will mature, and his or her concept of the higher power may acquire more depth of meaning.

There are many advantages to viewing recovery as a heroic journey. First of all, it conforms to the reality that it is a heroic journey. Secondly, it provides that individual with a viable alternative to thinking of him or herself as a bad person. Who would not rather be a hero than a drunk? Third, it provides a rationale for continuing in life as the sober hero long after the desire to drink has gone. The recovering person knows that he or she has the capacity to help others in their struggles in life, giving life purpose and value.