Category: Addiction Recovery

The holiday season is known for cheerful memories, scents of good food, cold wind in the air, endless caroling, and memorable family nights. But there’s something else about the holidays that makes them the perfect time for recovery.

Drug recovery is hard. It’s really, really hard. Getting sober is fine but staying sober is much more difficult. This is especially true earlier on in recovery, where most recovering addicts continue to struggle and wrestle with cravings, temptations, and thoughts of guilt, shame, and emotional pain. This pain drives many to try and drown it out by relapsing, continuing the cycle.

It’s specifically in this crucial, critical time that we all need self-love, compassion, forgiveness, and hope. People who are facing the prospect of completely changing their lives and doing a reversal after weeks, months, or even years of regrettable behavior and life-changing mistakes are tackling an enormous task. This is coupled with the stress and pressure of adapting to the responsibilities and necessities of real life – all without a major coping mechanism. But through the holiday season, many recovering addicts have a reinvigorated chance to commit to a new life.

 

The Holidays Are for Family

First and foremost, the holiday season is for family and traditions. Whether your family is your biological family or the friends and assorted loved ones who helped you through your hardest moments doesn’t matter – whatever counts as family to you, that’s who you should be spending this holiday season with.

Aside from good food and presents, the holidays are for taking a break from work and for being with those who matter the most to us. It’s a time to reminisce, laugh, talk about old mistakes, ask for forgiveness, recommit to be a better person, and surprising others with gifts and signs of true gratitude. Speaking of which:

 

The Holidays Are for Gratitude

It’s not just on Thanksgiving that we should show our gratitude for all the good things in life. Regardless of whether you choose to be grateful to a higher being or just to the fact that you got another chance, gratitude matters. Our brains are wired to adapt and overcome, but also avoid danger by reliving bad experiences as a reminder of what we’ve done – this might also be part of the reason why we take things for granted so quickly, while dwelling on our fears and anxieties. Instead of celebrating our relationships, triumphs, and achievements, we lament our failures and get hung up on the things that hurt us most.

Thankfully, we’re also generally quite smart. It takes a lot of discipline, but you can teach yourself to look on the bright side of things more often. And this holiday season is an excellent time to start doing so. Embrace the small things that helped you improve this year, and celebrate the moments, thoughts, and people that helped you get into recovery and focus on getting and staying sober.

Celebrate the small victories, rather than dwelling on bad memories. It’s important to acknowledge your mistakes and ask forgiveness for moments you want to take back – but keep your chin up and face the end of this year and the beginning of the next one with hope, rather than dread.

 

The Holidays Are for Food

Of course, one can’t forget the food. Food is one of many excellent chances for new, better sensual experiences, not to mention that it’s important for recovery. Some people claim food tastes better when you’re high or drunk, but you can’t really appreciate the nuances and joys of good cooking unless you’re sober. And any holiday season will always center around the big feasts of the year.

Experiencing all life has to offer while sober is important for recovery. It gives us a better, healthier perspective on things, and affords us the opportunity to realize how much we would be missing if we were still addicted. Understanding and internalizing that life is indeed better when sober is an important step. It’s not enough to repeat it like a mantra – take every opportunity to explore new experiences, have fun in different ways, and generally enjoy life through a sober perspective, including enjoying really good food this holiday season.

 

Committing Yourself to Sobriety for the New Year

With every holiday season comes the fact that the New Year is lurking just around the corner. And with that comes the time for New Year’s resolutions, for big plans and new commitments.

It’s a good idea to continuously recommit to sobriety, even when you’ve been sober for a while. Making a little gesture to yourself, or perhaps even just writing down how you plan to continue making strides in recovery in early 2019 can actually help you continue to stay on the sober path by giving you new goals and a sense of direction. Consider setting up sobriety-related goals for yourself in early 2019 like getting a job position you’ve long coveted, or entering a new industry you like, making strides in a creative endeavor, reaching a new fitness goal through determination and drug-free discipline, and more.

 

A Great Time to Reconcile

Tis the season to be jolly, but there’s likely a lot in your past that you’re not particularly fond of. This holiday season can be a chance for you to try and make up for some of what might have happened, seek out reconciliation, and work on your relationships with those that matter the most to you, be they family or friends.

It’s possible that you won’t be forgiven – at least not easily. It takes a lot of time for certain wounds to heal, just as it takes time to fully recover from an addiction. No matter what others might say, stay steadfast in your goal to continue being sober, and continue working on your recovery.

With the end of the year comes the end of another series of long memories, some good, some bad. Remember to celebrate your victories, move past your mistakes, and recommit towards a better near future. And with friends and family at your side, you’ll have a great start to the new year.

 

We’ve all seen the quotes floating around motivational pages on Instagram and in other corners of the web, like “knowing is half the battle” or “believe you can and you’re halfway there.” Sure, it would be really nice and convenient if you could leap through half of your entire recovery journey in just one step. But recovery is a journey that is too long to be halved in a single step. That isn’t meant to intimidate you, but to help you understand that, yes, things are going to get rough, but the path forward will become clearer over time, and as each day goes by, recovery gets a little easier.

There are days when platitudes and snippets help and might even give you that last little kick to get out of bed and stick to your schedule. There are days when you do that all on your own, maybe even while humming a little tune. And then there are the days when you don’t get to sleep at all and try to find every way possible to keep yourself from making a decision you’ll regret. Over time, those harder nights become less and less frequent, and you find your life being about all the things other people usually live for – family, work, love, dreams, passions, struggles, responsibilities, legacies, and deep personal questions.

But none of that happens until you take the first step. Without that first step, life will never have the fullness and meaning it could have. While that first won’t be “half the battle”, it’ll be the start of something beautiful, difficult, defining, and completely unexpected in many ways. To heal, you have to first accept your addiction.

 

Why Acceptance Matters

Accepting and acknowledging an addiction might sound like two separate things at first, but it’s really the same. Many addicts in “denial” are already aware that they have a problem, but they choose to ignore that fact. This is especially true in cases where it is extremely self-evident.

They’ll work hard to tell themselves they don’t have a problem, and often that is because being addicted is still seen as a sign of weakness, moral failure, and lack of strength of character. Too many see the possibility of being addicted as a sign that they’re bad, or irrevocably broken. Some might even go so far as to come to the wrong conclusion, and think: oh, this is completely my fault, and I could stop at any time, but I don’t because something inside me is rotten.

The truth is that millions of Americans across all races, ages, sexes and classes struggle with addiction. They all have completely different stories of how they got there. Many started after or during a life of crime, but many others have lived normal or successful middle- and upper-class lives, simply succumbing to a bad habit after picking it up through friends, a stressful experience, or a stint of experimentation. No matter how an addiction begins, it always turns into something vicious and self-replicating. Like a chronic disease, it comes back without proper treatment and care. It’s a problem with biopsychosocial roots, factors that are physical, mental, and social.

But to begin care, you need to first realize you’re sick. And to do that, you need to accept that you’re addicted. That is why it is a crucial first step.

 

The Importance of Understanding That Addiction Is Treatable

Just as it’s important to realize that addiction is a sickness, it’s also important to understand that it’s a treatable one. You’re not struggling for nothing – you can get sober and stay sober, but it’s the staying sober part that’s particularly tricky. Over the long-term, staying sober gets easier and easier, especially as you age and build yourself a stable, purposeful life surrounded by friends and family – but while you’re young, and especially in the early stages of recovery, staying sober can be extremely difficult.

A lot of addiction treatment programs start off by putting you in a drug-free environment to help take your mind off temptations and cravings a little bit. Places like sober living homes forbid drugs and drug use, while helping tenants through therapy sessions, schedules, in-house rules, community events, group meetings, and more.

Others are designed to help in different ways, offering resources and scheduling regular therapy sessions while you continue to live your life.

There is no medication to treat addiction in most cases, and while some medication can be used to help with the symptoms of the disease, or to combat the effectiveness of certain drugs, addiction itself is only treatable through psychological means. More accurately, addiction is treated through time. However, how much time is completely subjective. It’s also difficult to substantiate what it might mean to be “treated”. It is accurate to describe recovery as a life-long pursuit – but that doesn’t mean you’ll spend your entire life struggling not to use drugs, constantly hounded by the thought of relapsing, in fear and in shame of your past.

Addiction is treatable, but every person’s journey through treatment is different, and based on their circumstances and actions.

 

Steps or No Steps

Some places use a set number of steps to help people visualize their journey. There are many who argue that this is very helpful, while others say that it is too restrictive and dogmatic, and not indicative of the experiences many have while going through recovery.

Ideally, a professional therapist and a doctor can help you find the right treatment plan. Often, this means finding therapeutic tools that help you cope with the stress of early recovery while exploring ways to tackle future struggles without resorting to drug use. However, you might also find the 12-step program useful. It doesn’t hurt to try different treatment methods and see what you personally think helps most.

In the end, it’s just important not to go through recovery alone. Loneliness often perpetuates addiction, by leaving you to struggle with your own cravings and anxieties. But through the help of professionals and with the support of family and friends, you can put your anxieties to rest and find ways to combat and ignore your cravings.

It can be very difficult to overcome an addiction. The first challenge is to quit using – the second it to stay clean. Cravings, temptations, mood swings and irrational thinking all soon follow, making it harder and harder to stave off a relapse. Some make it through in the first try, and others take several runs to get to a point where they can fully commit to sobriety.

Yet as difficult as addiction can be on individual, each case it about much more than a single person. For every addict, there’s a family, there are friends, there are members in the community. With every case of addiction, there is a higher potential for accidents, injuries, and casualties. Some addicts in denial may claim that it’s their right to do as they please – but their actions often have widespread consequences, especially for close loved ones and relatives.

If your loved one is struggling with their addiction and has taken it upon themselves to get better, they’ve made a huge step in the right direction. But now comes the tough part. Now comes the part where you have to do your best to support your family member in their fight against addiction. Here are a couple things you should know while helping your family member.

 

Keep Yourself Sane

Your first and foremost responsibility is to yourself. Even if you see yourself as someone who works hard to put others first, you have to recognize that your ability to function and help relies on your sanity and physical wellbeing. As an adult, you have to be able to set boundaries and requirements. If you’re not sane, you can’t help others. It’s a really simple equation, and not one you would have to dwell on for long. It does you no good to be perpetually sleepless or descend into depression over your family member’s addiction.

If you’re working to help your loved one with their addiction, know when to draw a line between helping and enabling. You can help your family member stick to making the right decisions, but if they’re actively sabotaging themselves, it’s not your responsibility to pick up the pieces. A person has to want to get better to get better. Struggling with sobriety and relapsing is normal – but intentionally skipping out on meetings, avoiding calls, and attending rehab out of spite are not signs of cooperation.

You also have to know what you need as a minimum in order to feel healthy and normal. Get your sleep, find time for yourself, and set aside time to take care of your own responsibilities. Offering support and helping family is important, but not if you neglect your own needs in the process.

There’s a distinct line between acting selfishly and taking care of yourself enough to be able to help others – find that line and stick to it.

 

Read Up on Addiction

Knowledge is critical when fighting an addiction. Many people harbor a long list of misconceptions on the nature of addiction, due to years of pop culture references, biased misinformation, or the beliefs of their parents.

Behavior that might make no sense to you or might seem inexcusable may be a little more understandable with the right context. What might seem like a good way to help may actually be enabling your family member’s addiction or making them feel worse in such a way that it leads them to relapse and quit treatment. Knowing what to say and what not to say goes a long way towards helping your family member in their struggle against addiction, and it can help you better empathize with their situation as well.

It also helps to better understand and be able to identify the warning signs of a relapse, or of addiction in general. Understanding how certain risk factors contribute to both addiction and relapse can also help you figure out how your family member might have gotten addicted in the first place, and how you can help them mold their environment in such a way that it won’t happen again.

Knowledge about addiction can also save a life. Learning to recognize an overdose and knowing what to do about it can be critical at some point in your life.

 

Create a Drug-Free Environment

This is potentially a no-brainer, but it helps to double-check. Make sure there are no drugs around the house and help your family member readjust to their life in such a way that avoids places and things that might remind them of their addiction. Convince them to cut off old friends and stay away from their old watering hole and take a different route to work.

It can be a difficult adjustment, and short of moving away completely, there are still risks that old memories can pop up and trigger cravings – but doing your best to create an environment free from temptation can help reduce the chances that your family member might spontaneously cave in to their inner voice.

 

Help Them Stick to the Program

It’s important to work with professionals to ensure that your family member gets the right type of treatment, and the long-term resources necessary to continue staying in recovery after treatment. Say your first step in treatment is to help your family member get into rehab. After rehab, consider looking for a sober living environment for your family member.

Once they’ve adjusted to normal work-life and having responsibilities once again, help them adjust to living at home while encouraging them to go to group meetings, do their daily rituals, or exercise more often. If your family member has a one-on-one therapist, it can help to speak with them to know what you should encourage or watch out for at home. Every case is a little bit different, and specificity matters when guiding a person through recovery.

 

Help Organize A Support System

You shouldn’t be doing this alone, if possible. Communicate with the rest of the family and with your loved one’s friends and get everyone on board to help out and contribute to the recovery process. This can drastically reduce your workload and help your family member considerably.

For most addicts, having a larger, more available, and more reliable support system with different people working together to help out is more effective than relying off a single person, feeling guilty about having such an impact on them, and watching them struggle to balance their life under the pressure and stress.

 

Residential treatment, or rehab as it’s known colloquially, is perhaps the most well-known form of addiction treatment. You sign into a program at a treatment clinic, living there and partaking in a preordained schedule, going through different treatment modalities based on what you respond to the most.

In some cases of addiction, medication is involved to help you wean off the drugs and get sober safely. In some cases, certain therapies are used while others are avoided. Residential treatment addresses the addiction first, then works with the individual to help them figure out why they turned to drugs in the first place, offering alternatives so they can continue living outside the clinic.

Sober living homes are different. The biggest difference is that a sober living home or community is essentially just that – a home or community – whereas residential treatment takes place in a clinic or treatment facility. Sober living communities provide a place to live without the temptation of drug use, while otherwise continuing with life in a normal fashion: going to work or school, engaging in hobbies, socializing, and taking care of chores. Both effectively share the same goal but utilize different methods. Both are effective for different reasons. And it’s best to use both: but in what order, and why?

 

What’s a Sober Living Home?

A sober living home is a drug-free facility where sober people live together according to a set of rules, otherwise enjoying all the usual freedoms they would otherwise enjoy. However, it’s the rules that make sober living different from regular living. While rules differ from place to place, there are general rules that most sober living facilities agree upon. These include:

• No drugs.
• Strict curfews.
• Mandatory chores or contributions.
• No violence.
• Tenants must apply for work/school.

The spirit of a sober living home is to create a community where a tenant can live drug-free as long as they need to. Unlike other treatment facilities, sober living facilities have no limit on how long a person can stay at the home. These facilities are meant to help people reintegrate into normal living, by helping them remember what it means to be a responsible and accountable human being, while relying on healthier ways to deal with stress.

 

What’s Rehab?

Residential treatment or residential rehabilitation takes place in a rehab center/treatment center. Rehab is abstinence-based, just like sober living. It also relies on keeping people away from their usual circumstances by bringing them into drug-free environments, just like sober living. But there are many things that make rehab unique. Here are a few key differences:

Rehab centers usually work in stages, or programs. These are fixed for a certain number of weeks, working through a set program with a group of individuals. These programs represent timelines rather than strict guidelines, and individuals are still treated in a unique fashion corresponding to their needs and circumstances.

Rehab centers follow a myriad of philosophies, some approaching treatment utilizing the 12-step program, others following a religious or faith-based approach. Many rely on psychotherapy as a key part of the treatment process. Others adopt group therapy and therapeutic community practices, much like the 12 steps, but without the framework of the steps themselves.

Another thing that sets rehab centers apart is the detox process. Most sober living homes do not offer detox facilities – and while not all rehab centers provide detox, some do. Medically-guided detox may be necessary depending on how severely a person is addicted.

 

Going from Rehab into Sober Living

In most cases, it’s best to go from a residential treatment program into a sober living community. Residential treatment programs are extremely effective for breaking people out of an addiction, but it can be difficult to make the jarring transition back into an old life without relapsing.

Sober living can act as a buffer in between. Sober living homes often have no rules on how long a tenant stays as long as they continue to pay for rent, meaning you have freedom over how long you choose to stay in a sober living home before you go back to your old life, or move forward into a brand new one.

Going to rehab first and sober living second gives you the best of both worlds. But it’s not the only option.

 

Straight to Sober Living

Some people don’t need rehab. Rehab is perfect for breaking a severe addiction, and it’s not a bad idea to seek medical attention when working through withdrawal symptoms, but a sober living home can be enough to break an addiction if caught early enough. The point of sober living is to emulate normal life but without drugs, and sometimes that’s just what people need in order to get better and move on with their lives.

Addiction treatment begins in the mind, but there are treatment facilities that specialize in helping people tackle addiction in a way that best suits their needs and circumstances. There is such a thing as an ideal way to tackle an addiction, but that ideal is individual, and there are realities that stand in the way of offering everyone the best treatment possible.

Alternatives exist to offer reliable yet affordable ways to help people with addiction who may lack the time or resources to fully devote themselves to recovery – for example, outpatient programs exist for people who struggle with addiction, but cannot sign into a residential treatment program that would pull them away from work and life.

Rehab and sober living homes are not the only way to treat addiction. It’s possible to treat an addiction through outpatient programs and community resources, through group meetings or 12 step programs. Everyone’s path is different, but most people have more than one path to lasting sobriety. Before you choose a treatment plan for yourself, be sure to go over all your options. Consult a professional for a recommendation and go with what you think is your best shot at getting better.

One of the more uncomfortable parts of the recovery process is withdrawal. During withdrawal, the body violently objects against abstinence to drug use, and essentially causes a plethora of painful symptoms in response to sobriety and staying clean. This process is more uncomfortable for some than for others, and different drugs produce varying withdrawal symptoms.

Withdrawal symptoms also have a significant mental impact and are part of the reason why breaking an addiction is difficult alone. Withdrawal symptoms can often leave a person discouraged from trying to break free from their addiction due to the combined effects of extreme physical discomfort – from flu-like symptoms to shivers, nausea, and severe headaches – and mental effects such as anxiety, confusion, and more.

In some cases, such as in rare cases of alcohol withdrawal, quitting drug use can bring about a series of other symptoms. Delirium tremens, for example, happens in about 5% of people with alcohol withdrawal, occurring separately roughly a day or two after the last drink.

A big portion of addiction treatment involves helping people through the withdrawal process. There is no easy or safe way to bypass it – the point of withdrawal is to remain drug-free long enough for the symptoms to pass – but in some cases and with certain drugs, rehab centers and recovery clinics utilize medication to help the withdrawal process. After withdrawal, it can take another few weeks or months for cravings to significantly subside, and years for them to grow insignificant. Every case is different – but most cases of drug addiction must endure the pain of withdrawal.

 

Surviving Withdrawal Symptoms

Thankfully, withdrawal symptoms range from mild to severe – and they often end up mild. This does not mean that they’re ever pleasant – all withdrawals are uncomfortable at best. But with proper medical attention and in the care of a professional recovery facility or sober living home, chances are that you will get through the process completely unharmed.

The duration and assortment of possible symptoms depends heavily on a variety of factors, although the biggest are:

• Drug of choice.
• Age and physical health of the addict.
• Genetic factors and medical history.
• The duration and severity of the addiction.

The symptoms all vary, but these are most common in almost all cases of withdrawal:

• Flu and cold symptoms, including nausea, runny nose, fever.
• Muscle aching and insomnia.
• Agitation and anxiety.
• Heavy sweating and shivers.
• Abdominal pain, bowel movement issues including diarrhea.
• Tremors.
• Elevated and slowed heart rate.

Duration of these symptoms varies wildly on the drug, while severity varies entirely based on a person’s health and genetic makeup, and the extent of their drug habit.

 

Seek Medical Help

If you stopped using drugs to get clean and stay clean, the first thing you must do is find a clinic or sober home and get help. Withdrawal symptoms are not always severe, but they can be – and even if you previously experienced mild withdrawal symptoms, that is no guarantee that this time will be the same.

The duration of a full withdrawal process depends on the type of drugs you use. Cocaine, for example, takes up to about two weeks to fully withdraw from. After that, mood swings, irritability, and depression due to cocaine use can take several weeks or months to subside.

Heroin and prescription opiates can cause strong cravings, but their withdrawal symptoms are often quite mild, although it takes several days for withdrawal to be finished. Alcohol and benzodiazepines carry the most risk for fatal symptoms and last the longest – withdrawal symptoms from benzodiazepine addiction can take weeks.

While the most effective course of action is to let a withdrawal process run its course, medical supervision is by far the safest way to tackle withdrawal, as some cases may require pharmacological intervention to ensure a patient’s survival.

 

Why Do Withdrawals Happen?

Withdrawal, just like tolerance, is not entirely unique to addictive drugs. While withdrawal symptoms are stronger in substances that are considered addictive and can elicit the necessary response in the brain to become addictive, most psychoactive drugs create a series of mild to severe withdrawal symptoms, including medication and substances that are considered generally non-addictive, such as anti-depressives and coffee.

First: drug dependence or physical dependence is necessary for withdrawal symptoms to exist. It is possible to have an entirely behavioral addiction, where drug use is only addictive insofar that it is used as an unhealthy coping mechanism, allowing therapy to effective treat someone by helping them work through their pain and utilizing different, much more healthy coping mechanisms. But in most cases of addiction, the addiction comes from a form of physical dependence on the drug, where the brain basically struggles to let go of the drug, making anything less than regular use intolerable and abjectly painful.

Drug dependence is separate from drug addiction. Where drug dependence describes a brain that has become used to a certain dosage of drugs and reacts negatively in response to abstinence/cessation of drug use, addiction focuses on the behavior that often results from either physical dependence, emotional dependence or, most commonly, a combination of both. This type of out-of-control compulsive drug use can be a result of physical dependence, but the two are separate.

The brain gets hooked on drugs because it’s not used to the effects drugs have on the brain. When you take something addictive, the brain first must adapt to the substance, to normalize it. This happens through the buildup of tolerance; wherein higher and higher doses of a drug are necessary to elicit the same high.

Over time, the brain adapts to drug use and makes it the normal state of being, leading to withdrawal symptoms if drug use is stopped. Our brain is a very adaptive organ, but that adaptiveness makes it susceptible to something like addiction. This can, in turn, be life-threatening, as addictive substances are often damaging to the brain and other organs, as well as causing life-changing or fatal accidents and other severe consequences.

 

Recovery is a challenging time in life, especially early on when the experience of prolonged addiction is still fresh and tough on the mind. Aside from being physically addictive, drug use often creates a psychological or emotional dependence on the substance as a form of coping in times of hardship.

For most, fighting an addiction counts as a stressful life experience – old memories come flooding back, temptations and cravings make life a constant challenge, and you find yourself struggling to cope with emotions that you have spent a long time trying to drown out, perhaps without even knowing it.

Developing an addiction to a drug causes the brain to change and creates pathways that manipulate the way you think and feel. Yet despite this, drugs are an amazing short-term coping mechanism. They allow you to forget, drown out, and generally deal with nearly anything. At least, for a few hours.

After that, however, everything gets worse. As such, most illicit drugs (and some legal ones) count as maladaptive coping mechanisms, helping you escape trouble without doing anything to deal with the issue at hand. When you go into recovery, you cut this out of your life – for the better, in the long-term, but at the cost of feeling inexplicably terrible for quite some time in the beginning.

This seems like the absolute worst time in your life to start making other changes. After all, piling a challenge onto another challenge would just serve to burn you out, right? Well, in the case of recovery, making positive life changes – specific ones – could actually boost your chances of a successful recovery from addiction, and help you carve out a life free from drugs. A life you can be happy with, a life that prepares you to cope with any trouble without having to turn back to old habits. Here is how.

 

Making Changes in Life Can Improve Recovery

Many people struggle with recovery because of the fact that they often rely on addiction as a way to cope with problems in life. This leaves them unprepared for a large amount of stress, coupled with past regrets, self-doubt towards their own future, and the dread of facing a life filled with responsibility.

Making positive life changes can help shift a person’s perspective and, most importantly, equip them with the emotional tools they need to handle the challenges they are facing and are about to face.

Perspective is important. For some, sobriety is a new lease on life, the ability to make better choices and stay true to your promises. However, for many others, living a happy sober life might seem impossible. Instead, they see it as unavoidable, a life-long penance for their sins. This is arguably the worst way to approach your sober future.

Perspective helps – by approaching sobriety as an opportunity rather than a judgment, you can relieve yourself of a lot of sorrow and anger. There are many ways to enjoy life, and very few of them involve making your way to the bottom of a bottle. By embracing your recovery as the time to shift focus onto something better in life, you move away from a completely negative view of your life, and find hope where there was none before. This is a great first step.

From there, it is just a matter of figuring out what to change – and why.

 

Exercise, Diet, and Addiction

If you have never particularly liked the treadmill, or dreaded PE class, then the idea of exercising to help with recovery is more like throwing napalm into a forest fire. However, exercise does help – and it does not have to involve a lot of cardio or doing circuit training in the basketball court. Any form of active movement, from going hiking to doing rounds in an Olympic pool or playing water polo, counts as exercise. Even more unconventional forms of exercise, like dancing or combat sports, can work as amazing stress management techniques while doubling as a great help for recovery.

This is because, as mentioned previously, perspective is important to getting through the early stages of recovery and beyond. And the best way to help shift your perspective to a more positive note is by being more positive – getting a regular hit of dopamine through exercise can help tremendously, even if the first few weeks might feel a bit rough.

The key with making it all last is finding something you actually enjoy. Don’t write something off without at least trying it – from hitting the weight room to exploring the ins and outs of competitive rowing, try your way through different forms of exercise until you find something you legitimately enjoy.

Aside from bringing a better mood to the table through dopamine releases, exercise can work as a positive coping mechanism, and the fact that it keeps you feeling fit and looking great can be a great confidence boost, too. Just don’t overdo it – too much exercise is still a bad thing.

The same rules apply for eating. Addicts are not known for particularly good physical health, largely because addiction makes it difficult to keep track of what you’re supposed to be eating, and when you’re supposed to be eating. But don’t force yourself to gorge on salads or follow a fad diet to lose your extra pounds, or put on some more – instead, go for a healthy and balanced diet that you can afford, and enjoy. There are plenty of resources online to help you cook your way to a better you.

 

Finding New Hobbies in Early Sobriety

Exercise is one thing, but if you’re not totally crazy about how you get your weekly exercise in, then you need another hobby to focus on. Having more than one hobby does not hurt, either, and they’re a good way to fill time between work, sleep, and therapy sessions. You could try to pick up old hobbies and continue where you left off, or explore new alternatives.

Having hobbies might be difficult at first, especially when it feels like nothing quite sticks. Keep trying – early recovery is a weird time for the mind, and with a little bit of patience, you will find yourself in a better place.

 

A Chance At A Better Future

The road to recovery is quite long, and very bumpy. While being positive and hopeful about the future has its perks, there will be days when you’re not quite feeling good. There is no shame in that – optimism only goes so far. While making positive life changes can help make recovery easier, it won’t necessary be “easy” – thus, remember to take time and rely on other people from time to time, especially in the beginning.

Find groups to stick to, be with friends and family, and accept that it is okay to be vulnerable sometimes. It does get easier.