Addiction Recovery Archives - Page 6 of 9

Making A Resolution To Kick Addiction

Posted on December 21, 2017 by JohnAdmin

While we’re still in the holiday season, the new year is drawing near – and to many, this is a reason to celebrate a meaningful ending to the year. With a new year come new opportunities, new possibilities, and a fresh start to something possibly much better after you kick addiction.

Of course, with these hopes come expectations, and with them, the distant yet noticeable anxiety of failure. Failure to be successful – especially at something life-changing – is a profound fear for many when stepping into the new year, and it’s an attitude like this that hinders progress and contributes to missteps.

Avoiding these feelings isn’t as easy as simply identifying them – you need to make peace with them, and find a way to breathe both optimism and a better chance into your new year – and carry that all way to next December, and far beyond.

It won’t be easy, but if approached the right way, you can take this New Year’s Day to be the occasion you need to finally kick addiction for good, and turn your back to an old chapter in your life, one full of learning experiences and painful moments.

Why Make A New Year’s Resolution To Kick Addiction?

People make new year’s resolutions for the simple reason that a new year is a clear-cut end and beginning – a fold in a person’s life, the time when it’s easiest to leg go of something old and dedicate yourself to something new.

It’s not just about looking forward to a new future, though. The New Year’s celebration is about the past, the present, and the future. All moments in time are considered when the new year draws close, and each for vastly distinct reasons.

First, the past. The end of a year is a time for reflection, when we can look back and think on what we did and what we didn’t do, and consider carefully what should be done going forward. It’s important to look to the past for guidance – but not to regret, or daydream of different circumstances and outcomes. What has happened, has happened – but you can change the outcomes you dislike by taking the initiative in the future.

It’s at this point that the new year offers us an opportunity to think about what we should do, and how we might do it. It’s a time for new plans, for new commitments and for new resolutions. A time when we can set ourselves up to the task of becoming better and kick addiction.

But to do so, we must time it just right. And that’s why we focus so much on the present during the new year, counting every second, living and breathing in that moment, savoring the countdown to a new year, and the beginning of a journey to a new you.

Don’t Announce It To Everyone

Announcing your goals to everyone can rob you of the satisfaction of having completed them. While it’s not nearly the same thing in any reasonable sense, it feels similar – to gain the approval of having decided to start bettering yourself, and then receiving recognition and support for that decision, can rob you of the feeling of achievement you would gain if you first worked a substantial amount towards achieving your goal to kick addiction before coming out with it.

When your goal is to kick addiction, you might not want to announce it anyways. However, that does not mean you should simply keep it a secret. Make it known to your family and close friends that you’re going to kick addiction, and that you will need their support – this means not taking drugs/drinking around you, and it’ll mean helping you stay away from a potential relapse.

If you’re supplementing your recovery with other goals – fitness goals, for example, can be extremely conducive to recovery, and can promote a great general feeling of happiness, self-appreciation and confidence – then try and work your way to creating a solid habit before you tell others about what you have been doing. The same goes for learning new languages, or playing an instrument. The rewarding feeling of recognition for a modicum of skill will help you keep going – while revealing the goal too early will rob you.

Create Short-Term Goals

A recovery journey lasts decades, and takes you to emotional places you may never have been before. Therefore, people often congratulate themselves with commemorative objects or events, to help them stay positive and reward them for, say, an extra month without booze or alcohol.

Create short-term goals for yourself that are like this, like giving up smoking or drinking for a month, or dealing with a conflict without resorting to a drug, or even finding an alternative way to work off stress.

Again, the same applies for any other commitments you may have made to improve your life this upcoming new year – by setting smaller goals for yourself, the overall goal will not seem so tremendously far away, and you’ll be able to reward yourself with a feeling of satisfaction every time you draw a little closer to your bigger, more challenging goal posts.

Be Prepared For A Long Journey Ahead

While a new year’s resolution is often a commitment to make a substantial change, some people take the opportunity to challenge themselves to do something different this year – be it learn an instrument, a new language, or a new craft.

But recovery is more than a habit you pick up for a few months, or a few years. It’ll be something you take with you for the rest of your life – and, if everything goes well, it’ll be a journey you can look back on with serene content, knowing you did enough in life to feel like you have truly lived.

With drugs and addiction, that feeling is unattainable. Drugs are the anti-thesis to life – not only do they kill in some of the most savage ways, but they also steal you away from reality, and put you in a fake world, filling you to the brim with fake feelings, leaving you defenseless for the crash of real emotion as it hits you during sobriety.

Dealing with those waves, learning to ride them, and savoring every significant moment by being fully aware of it and how real it is – that is life. And if you don’t get sober soon, that life can pass you by very quickly.

How to Talk About Addiction To Your Loved Ones

Posted on December 19, 2017 by JohnAdmin

It’s incredibly difficult to talk about addiction. Not only is it an issue that permeates you to the point where your own will becomes difficult to follow, but it can also be a tremendous source of strife in families, tearing them apart.

Finding a way through an addiction with your relationships intact takes a massive amount of dedication, understanding, love, and work – on everyone’s part. Regardless of whether you’re struggling with addiction and need the help, or if your loved one is struggling and needs your help, you’re going to have to learn to talk about addiction with one another and fight this fight together, keeping in mind that it will be very difficult at times.

If You’re Struggling With Addiction

It takes a lot of strength to realize that you have a problem. Overcoming denial is often the first step to truly making a difference in your situation, although where to go from here largely depends on your means, and the problem at hand. Sometimes, addiction warrants medical attention, medication, and strict therapy. At other times, it might just be enough to check into a treatment center for a regular outpatient program.

For when things are very serious, consider sober living in your talk about addiction. These are programs that exist as communities, designed to hold together and teach one another to live in sobriety, in their own way. Sober living communities don’t hold one single way of life to be true – they accept that everyone must walk their own path of recovery, utilize different treatments, tackle different problems, and work within different limitations.

No one can dictate your life to you. It’s on you to decide where to go – but you can seek help, guidance, and knowledge, and there are no better places for these things than in a sober living community.

If You Think They Have A Problem

If your loved one is the person who seems to be struggling with an addiction, then it’s important to distinguish between them accepting this struggle, or them denying it. Both have very different paths, and require a very different approach to talk about addiction.

An intervention to talk about addiction may be in order if your loved one is in denial. Get the family together, contact a professional, and create an opportunity for the intervention to take place. Be prepared, and be pragmatic. This isn’t a bait for a fight, but a plea to open their eyes to the reality – that they’re hurting those they love, and that they need help.

Offering Help & Talk About Addiction

If you know your loved one has a problem and they know it too, then something as simple as standing by them, and giving them your unconditional love and support can mean a great deal. You don’t have to pledge to anything specific, or even take charge in “fixing” them. Recovery is very much an individual path, but it relies massively on the help of others. But you can’t be the captain to their journey. Be there for support and to talk about addiction, not more.

How To Support Your Loved One

The first thing you should do is inform yourself. There are things you should and shouldn’t say, and things you should know. Some things are blatantly obvious: you shouldn’t shame an addict when you talk about addiction, because they often carry more than enough self-guilt and shame, and adding onto it will do nothing but make things worse. You also shouldn’t blatantly insult them – it won’t “anger” them into betterment, but will just destroy your relationship. Here are a few other examples:

“It’s not a problem.”

It is a problem. Addiction is a huge problem, and there should never be any qualms about it. This is a fight, one that you are fighting together as a family. Don’t accept the misery as part of your lives – work together to create a better life, and even when things are looking down and the thought of giving up is tempting, you must be the rock that helps your loved one work their way through it all, and get better despite it all.

Don’t undermine them by minimizing the issue when you talk about addiction.

“You’re not trying hard enough.”

You cannot truly tell how hard someone is trying, unless you are in their shoes. This goes for addiction, as well as any other mental health issue. Undermining their efforts by telling them they’re not “enough” in any shape or form when you talk about addiction simply pushes them away from you, and deeper down a hole of self-doubt.

If you don’t like that fact, then you need to consider whether this is about you or them. Your opinions of how things should be to them are irrelevant, when they’re the ones struggling with the condition.

Instead of telling your loved one that they aren’t doing enough to get better, support them in what they’ve already taken on. If you have successfully gotten help and entered treatment, it’s just a matter of getting through each day, a day at a time. There is no magic switch, no confetti and fireworks when the addiction is beaten. It’s a long road, and you must create your own happy little celebrations.

“Aren’t we important to you?”

There is no greater accusation that this. Someone who has gone out of their way to get help most definitely cares about you – otherwise, they would see no reason to summon every ounce of their willpower and strength to take a step against what has become their very instinct, need and want. Addiction is powerful, especially if it’s something as addictive as heroin or alcohol. Breaking from these substances isn’t just done on a whim – it takes incredible determination, and many years.

If your loved one is still fighting, even after a relapse or two, then that is a testament to their love for you – and their willingness to go through the pain again and again just to get to those blissful, sober days spent loving one another and being happy.

The Most Important Bit

Addiction treatment and recovery takes as long as it takes. There are no set timelines. No strict deadline for total sobriety. No statistics through which you could establish a rough outline for when you’ll have your “normal” loved one back. Life will never be the same, and it can take years for the addiction to finally take a backseat once and for all.

But that isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it can be a good thing. Now can be the moment for you to reinvigorate and reinvent your relationship, and take the time to better yourselves. Why should only one of you go into recovery and treatment? Become better people together, by undertaking a journey of your own, and embracing this change as a positive one. No matter how terrible things get, there is one thing we never lose – our ability to choose how to feel about our circumstances, and our ability to draw strength from one another to survive any ordeal.

Addiction Affects More Than Just You

Posted on November 30, 2017November 30, 2017 by JohnAdmin

Addiction is one of the toughest conditions to get through. It’s not just that you’re fighting your body – in many cases, you’re fighting against your own will. Being an addict isn’t easy, and it’s never a choice. It’s the absence of choice, and addiction affects more than just you.

What makes it even harder is that it isn’t an isolated condition. Sometimes, addicts find solace in the idea that, by giving up, they’re not really hurting anyone except themselves. After all, if addiction really is a choice, then they have the right to choose to live their lives this way.

While that’s true, addiction affects far more people than just yourself. If you’re struggling with addiction, then never forget that it’s not just about getting better for your own sake.

Addiction Affects Your Dependents

Most adults are responsible, not because of some intrinsic personal quality, but because responsibility is something most of us are given at a certain point in our lives when others begin to rely on us and our ability to provide for them. If you have a pet, a child, a disabled family member or elderly relative, then you are responsible for them, either single-handedly or alongside others.

Your dependents pay the highest price when you begin to lose the ability to care for them. Addiction doesn’t just hurt you and take away from your ability to live in this scenario – addiction affects them directly, and puts them in harms way. No child wants to grow up alongside someone struggling with addiction – and your beloved pet will lose the person they fell in love with in the first place.

Addiction Affects Your Marriage

This doesn’t just go for couples who tied the knot – if you made a long-term commitment to someone else, then addiction affects the relationship and will often lead to a growing fragility and possible break in that commitment. Relationships are demanding and the way addiction affects them is never positively.

To be with someone, you must take into consideration that they’re different from you, and you two must work together to overcome those differences, reach compromises, and live together in a way that keeps you both happy and satisfied. That means making sacrifices to certain personal goals, and it can oftentimes mean having to make selfless decisions.

That’s hard to do when addiction drives you to fulfill your inner need for the next high, more than anything else. When you stop putting your significant other first, and addiction affects the relationship by taking over, then the relationship can quickly devolve into an utter mess.

Addiction Affects Your Family

Beyond your immediate partner, your relationships with the rest of the family can also be greatly influenced and your addiction affects everyone in it. In fact, it’s not uncommon for familial ties to sour when addiction begins to take over.

Think about it – your loved ones are losing someone they’ve cared for, for many years. Beyond that, struggling with an addiction often means becoming more distant from others as you find yourself caught in a rollercoaster of emotions. If you struggle to stay sober and find yourself frequently caught in a cycle of withdrawal and relapse, then the emotional toll that has on you is reflected on those around you, as most people become prone to acting out under these circumstances.

Sure, not everyone has a great relationship with their family to begin with. In fact, in some cases, your old family might even be the root cause behind many personal issues, anxieties and difficulties. In that case, the last thing you want is to seek closure through them. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t stand to lose something.

Addiction Affects Your Friends

Friends are like a second family – or, in other words, the family we choose. The bonds we create with our friends can last entire lifetimes, and in some cases, they can be stronger than the bonds we share with our family. That makes it that much more painful when an addiction affects you and causes you to damage and risk those bonds.

Good friends care about you. Good friends will vehemently defend you. And they’ll fight you day and night if they think you’re doing something that’ll end up hurting you. A real friend will have your best interests at heart – and they’ll often not be able to stomach seeing you slip further and further into addiction.

Even if addiction affects your relationship, if you prove to them that you’re willing to fight that addiction – even just a little bit – then they’ll help you with everything they have to offer. And that kind of friendship can save your life, more than once.

Addiction Affects Your Career

We all need to work – not just to feed ourselves, but to stay sane. If we’re not doing something meaningful or useful with our lives, we’ll struggle to find a reason to live. In some cases, your career might even be the centerpiece to that struggle, if you find yourself working in a position you loathe. But if addiction affects your work and takes a hold of you because of some other tragedy, then you might find yourself fall behind in your work and lose your shot at a career entirely.

To some, that can be the greatest loss of all – seeing your life’s work fade away over your addiction. The only way to avoid that is to overcome your addiction as quickly as possible – and use your career as a tool to do so.

To some, that might in and of itself be enough motivation to get through the entire journey. For others, that might be a little intimidating – along with everything else in this list. But it’s not all dread and gloom. Just like how addiction affects others around you, it’s in their best interest to help you get better – and if you’re open to their help, and never give up, you’ll always have a shot at complete recovery. If you find you need a little extra push to stay sober, consider checking out a Houston men’s sober living or women’s recovery home to meet like minded individuals and for a supportive group of friends who also value sobriety.

7 Steps Toward Discovering A Purposeful And Meaningful Path To Recovery

Posted on November 7, 2017 by JohnAdmin

Renewing your sense of purpose is an important part of the path to recovery. After struggling with an addiction to drugs or alcohol for so long, it is normal to feel a little lost as you begin to rebuild your life. Stepping onto a more meaningful life path isn’t as hard as it looks when you follow these steps that allow you to look at your future with a brighter perspective while on the path to recovery.

Identify Your Unique Skills And Assets

Finding your purpose in life on the path to recovery should always begin with rediscovering all of those wonderful things that make you unique. Perhaps you have a knack for public speaking, and you can use this to begin talking to others about the dangers of addiction. Alternatively, you could be great with animals and decide to volunteer at a shelter. Realizing your full potential requires being willing to honestly assess your best attributes so that you can put them to good use. Keep in mind that this step should be repeated periodically as you gain new skills and personality traits that come with being dedicated to staying on the path to recovery.

Redefine Your Path To Recovery For Sober Living

In the early stages of treatment, your decision to stop using drugs or alcohol might have just been based on pure survival. In some instances, you might have even resisted getting sober. Now that you know how amazing it feels to be free from addiction, you can begin redefining your purpose for living a healthier lifestyle on the path to recovery. For instance, you could find that your purpose is to help others get clean, or you are driven to work toward that career you always wanted.

Stretch Beyond Your Comfort Zone

Living a life of purpose means being willing to step into new roles as opportunities arise. Be willing to reach out to the newcomer in your sober living community who looks like they could use a friend on the path to recovery. Sign up for a class to learn a new skill. Go back to college or start an exercise program. It takes being willing to explore new ideas for those special moments in life to arise. Choosing to do things that are hard at first on the path to recovery also bolsters your confidence as you rise up to each new challenge.

Practice Self-Forgiveness

Addiction takes a toll on your self-esteem. For this reason, a huge part of getting sober and onto the path to recovery involves learning to forgive yourself for the past and move on toward the future you deserve. Remember that the person you were yesterday no longer has to define you. Talk about your painful emotions to your counselor, sober living staff and your roommates so that you can get them out of your system. Often, just talking about your past allows you to release it and benefit from another perspective while on the path to recovery.

Be Serious About Your Sobriety

Relapse is always a constant threat that destroys the progress that you have made toward taking a purposeful path to recovery. Utilize every resource that you have available to help you stay sober. Taking advantage of twice-weekly drug testing in your sober living home, setting goals and attending therapeutic sessions all help you stay accountable so that you can thrive in your new life of sobriety.

Build Meaningful Relationships With Other Sober People

In the past few months, you have had to let go of negative influences in your life. While ending some of these relationships may have been painful, you may have also experienced a sense of freedom to be away from people that you realize you could never trust. Now, it is time to begin learning how to build positive relationships that enhance your walk down the path to recovery. The friendships you make in sober living are a great place to begin since everyone there understands what it is like to deal with addiction. Repairing family relationships also bring new meaning to life as you begin to realize what you can contribute to your loved one’s happiness.

Reach Out To Help People New To Sobriety

The lessons that you learn on the path to sobriety are meant to be shared. Talking with newcomers to your Houston sober living home helps reinforce these lessons so that you remain committed to sobriety. For instance, you may rediscover just how much you enjoy hitting the gym first thing in the morning, or sharing a new favorite recipe reminds you of how focusing on your health helps you continue to heal from your addiction.

Living a purposeful and meaningful life is a goal for which everyone should strive and having battled addiction gives you even more of a reason to push forward to grow as an individual. Maintaining a positive perspective on life is the best way to achieve this goal. Surround yourself with others that support your endeavors and be willing to reach for opportunities that accent your best attributes, and you will discover that you have found a purposeful path to sobriety.

4 Signs You Need Help With Addiction

Posted on October 19, 2017 by JohnAdmin

Addiction – regardless of what form it takes – permeates you. Not just your mind or your body, but your person. It changes people, it changes their priorities and thoughts. And worst of all, it’s incredibly hard for someone with an addiction to realize and acknowledge that they have a major problem. Here are some of the key signs to look out for that indicate you need help with addiction.

You Can’t Stop Thinking About It

You’re reminded constantly of your cravings, and you want to satisfy them, to the point that if you’re not thinking directly about the high itself, then you’re thinking of ways to get to that moment. And if that’s not the case, then you’re in the middle of executing those thoughts. It’s even worse when you decide to limit yourself to a certain amount (only gambling with a set budget, or cutting down your alcohol use to a specific amount of alcohol) but then end up completely blowing that limit apart.

The pattern is clear – those who have an addiction will first be able to notice it by how:

They’re often preoccupied with their addiction, even when they should be doing something else.
They avoid making plans with family, friends or other loved ones.
They appear anxious, sad, or irritable if they don’t get their fix.
Their previous activities and enjoyments are less enjoyable or take a total backseat to their addiction.

If you no longer devote any time to the things you used to enjoy doing and deliberately go out of your way to lie to friends and family about your compulsive behavior, get caught and still can’t stop, then you have a severe problem. It’s then time to get help with addiction.

You Exhibit the Physical Symptoms

The trouble with physical symptoms are that they are numerous, and depend highly on a person’s drug or behavior of choice. There are a few common threads indicating you need help with addiction, however these could be signs of pure overwork or stress, as well. For example:

Being physically exhausted, and getting little sleep.
Massive weight loss/weight gain.
Bloodshot eyes.
Signs of malnutrition.
Frequent nausea and/or headaches without a fix.
Bad breath.

While these symptoms are not always indicative of addiction, exhibiting one or more of these symptoms should be a cause for alarm, and can be a sign of other problems. you may consider seeking help with addiction if these symptoms are common for you.

You’ve Tried to Stop Yourself, But Need Help with Addiction

Emphasis on “tried” – an addiction can be characterized as a type of compulsive illness, wherein you’re either constantly returning to your old habit (a chronic symptom) or you’re unable to break away to begin with (relying on the addiction in moments of stress or discomfort, including withdrawal). In those cases you might need help with addiction recovery to make it stick for the long term.

The basic concept behind an addiction is that a certain behavior elicits a powerful reward, powerful enough to motivate continuous use. If you try to stop, withdrawal sets in, putting you in a situation wherein eventually, your brain is desensitized to any sort of pleasure aside from escalating behavior/drug use, and stopping the behavior completely puts you under extreme amounts of physical and emotional stress (further encouraging a relapse). Seeking help with addiction can put you in an environment better suited to dealing with the process of recovery, such as a Houston sober living community .

Even for people who make it through the initial stage of recovery, cravings can be powerful enough that they preoccupy a person’s mind for months and even years to come.

It’s important to think of addiction not as something you need to eliminate day one, but rather as a compulsion within your brain that first must be suppressed, with much effort, for months and months before things start to truly revert to normal. Don’t beat yourself up for “failing” (relapsing) now and again – the idea is to get back on the horse and keep pushing towards your first long-term sobriety, even if you require help with addiction.

You’re Struggling with Mental Illness

No one wants to paint a picture of mental illness immediately condemning someone towards addiction, especially as it is an inaccurate picture. But the correlation cannot be denied. Among those struggling with drugs, an overwhelming 40% tend to have a mental illness of some sort.

Self-medication – the act of using prescription drugs or illicit substances to cope with the symptoms of a mental illness – is a common initiator and contributor to the growth in addiction. A poor focus on mental health care and a lack of public understanding regarding the nature of common mental illnesses contributes to this, as it creates a hostile environment for people who struggle with a mental illness.

If you’re prone to episodes of severe depression, anxiety, have panic attacks, or have been diagnosed with a mental illness, then consider whether any of the other signs apply to you as well. Some people struggle to keep their depression in check without medication – that does not constitute an addiction. But being emotionally dependent on antidepressants after months of use, to the point that they become your only way to be happy not only constitutes as an addiction, but hinders your progress towards coping with depression without meds.

These drugs are prescribed as a temporary solution, not a life-long crutch – an addiction could be the result of a lack of alternative therapies, highlighting the need to treat mental illnesses and addictions with a more comprehensive treatment that covers both issues.

If you have numerous symptoms of either addiction or mental illness, visit a therapist or doctor to see if you need a diagnosis.

Forging Lifelong Friendship In Recovery

Posted on October 5, 2017December 22, 2017 by JohnAdmin

Drug recovery might sound like the last place to find everlasting friendship, but it could very well be one of the best places for meeting people interested in real connection. Forging lifelong friendship in recovery happens more often than you might expect.

Here’s a quick overview of why you shouldn’t be surprised in the slightest at the possibility of newfound friendship in recovery:

#1. We Seek Help in Dire Times

Humans are social animals – we survive in a pack, not in solitude. In fact, exile and rejection are so deadly to us that we feel real physical pain when someone pushes us out of our social standing. It is ingrained within us to fit into a group.

Today more than ever, finding a group that matches our personality and perceived emotional needs is easy. In the past, conforming to society or seeking to change it was the only way to survive – today, we can move in and out of social circles and find new ones through the Internet.

But this also comes at a price. The transient nature of connectivity in the modern world makes real connection harder to come by – “social networking” is superficial, and often wrought with half-truths. We tend to isolate ourselves instead of finding new groups to belong to. While seeking a community, we drive each other into solitude.

Addiction is sometimes seen as linked to this problem. When people have problems, they seek help – and when they have no one to turn to, they might turn to alternatives such as drugs. But when drugs are the problem, the only solution to turn to is people. And it is from friendship in recovery that we find our way towards sobriety.

Friendship in recovery can be the people you attend meetings with, other people in your sober living building, or the other patients in a rehab clinic. It can even be the other people you talk to about addiction online. Treatment brings people together, and creates the perfect environment to open to one another.

#2. Treatment Encourages Us to Be Real

You cannot treat yourself without being honest about yourself. You can maintain sobriety through sheer will for a while, but if you don’t examine the cause or effects of your addiction, you won’t make much progress towards long-term sobriety.

Some people get addicted because of a tough time in their life. One thing led to the next, and after a few months, it became an unmanageable problem. Others found themselves medicating a deeper issue, such as a case of childhood trauma, or severe depression. And others yet had no obvious reason to turn to drugs other than unfortunate circumstances, yet find themselves struggling with symptoms of anxiety and paranoia due to their drug use.

Beyond being honest with yourself, successful sobriety requires you to be honest with others. There is little room for secrets surrounding your addiction in a recovery community – the key to helping one another stay motivated and sober is friendship in recovery as well as trust.

#3. Sobriety is A Common Cause

The first step to friendship in recovery is finding something you have in common with another person. In a recovery community, everyone has something in common. And while addiction and sobriety is not enough to ensure a bond of lasting friendship, it can be the perfect first step needed to test the waters and make new acquaintances. It all starts with talk about challenges, temptations and goals, and from there you might find out that both you and your next-door neighbor share a passion for sports, or music, or Indian food.

You may be surprised at who you’ll find friendship in recovery with if you keep an open eye and an open mind.

#4. Beating Addiction Together Is Friendship In Recovery

To beat an addiction, you have to become a good friend. That may sound like a strange statement, but upon further examination it quickly makes a lot of sense. Firstly, addiction is not something you can overcome without changing.

Here’s how you would have to change: To remove the emotional aspect of addiction, you have to dedicate yourself to living a new kind of life, one you can enjoy without psychological detriment. Depression, anxiety, fear, stress – life is full of instances wherein we are filled with dread, uncertainty, doubt and anger. People with a history of drug addiction need to know how to deal with these issues without falling prey to a relapse.

As such, beating an addiction means learning how to deal with yourself, be in control of your emotions, and return to a state of fulfillment even in dire and complicated situations. It also means understanding self-love. Self-love is knowing what you are worth as a person: it’s neither narcissism nor self-deprecation, but rather a security in knowing that, flawed as you are, you have the potential to be and do whatever is necessary.

Effectively, an addiction treatment program teaches you how to be secure with yourself and it teaches you to control and manage your emotions. Right off the bat, that gives you the potential to find friendship in recovery. Friends are there to support each other: they are sympathetic to each other’s struggles, and encourage each other to do better in life. Good friends don’t jump in and rescue each other at the slightest sign of danger – they toss a lifebuoy and yell “swim harder!”.

Few challenges are as substantial as overcoming addiction. Addiction strips people of their control and self-love, and regaining those two things takes time. But once you have found a place in life where your past is no longer a threatening force that looms over you, but a series of unfortunate circumstances and mistakes you have learned from, you can begin to appreciate what it means to achieve something substantial – and you can sense when it’s time to encourage someone, and when it’s time to step in and help them with all your might.

Good friendships aren’t just forged through fun and social amicability. Good friendships are forged through hardship. And addiction is a hardship you cannot overcome alone. The social aspect to recovery can never be understated, because it is imperative that people realize they are not alone in their struggle. Others have beaten their addiction before you, and you’ll have the power to help others continue to evade their old habits and maintain a sober life.

Ultimately, you are responsible for your life and your sobriety. But recovery is a team effort, and you’ll likely find many people among your team whom you’ll be honored to call friend.

A Bird’s Eye View Of The Recovery Process

Posted on September 28, 2017September 28, 2017 by JohnAdmin

The addiction recovery process is meant to be a comprehensive treatment, one that addresses the issues most commonly found in cases of addiction. There is no strict system to it, as that would too heavily restrict what needs to be an individual, unique approach every single time.

The addiction recovery process, just like most health issues related to mental health, cannot be “fixed” through a cookie-cutter approach. There are several specific treatment models designed to facilitate the recovery process, but they are all built to achieve the same end-goal: long-term sobriety. A state of living wherein someone who used to struggle with drugs not only completely abstains from them, but can comfortably live a contented life without major cravings or fear of relapse.

For some, getting to that point is a very long road. For others, it’s a journey, but one that may take a few months rather than a few years. However, the general structure of the journey remains the same; and it always starts with the first step.

The First Step

In the addiction recovery process, the first step to recovering is to stop. And to do that, you need to acknowledge and understand that you have an addiction to begin with. The first thing most people must fight against when starting their road towards getting better is the denial that they have a problem to begin with.

Some people insist that their behavior is normal, controllable, or based in choice rather than compulsion. There is usually a strong element of fear that must be overcome before the realization truly kicks in that a problem has been growing for quite some time.

Overcoming denial means overcoming fear, and to do that, you must dispel that fear. That’s where modern-day addiction science can take its first shot at helping you. Many people struggle with the idea of being addicted because they don’t want that label attached to themselves – there is an extreme negativity surrounding drug addiction, to the point where it is treated as a status of personal failure rather than a medical condition requiring treatment. The stigma around addiction is still alive and kicking today, and dispelling it is the most effective way of beating denial.

By telling people that getting addicted is not a matter of choice, but that they have the power to get better if they so choose to, you can empower them to see addiction not as a moral failure but as a challenge in life.

Come Out To Friends And Family

If your realization was not already fueled by a staged intervention, then it is important that you come out to your family and closest friends and explain your drug addiction. This isn’t just to have a clear conscience, rather, it’s to seek support. Without support, sobriety cannot last very long – regardless of whether you find it in your friends or your family, you need to surround yourself with people who believe in you and your ability to get better.

Coming out to your friends is also an effective way to find out just what relationships you should dearly hold onto, and what relationships you should let go. This is especially true if the people you hang out with are a contributing factor to your drug addiction. Good friends don’t let other friends get on the slippery slope to dependence, and you need as many good friends as you can get in the early recovery process.

Explore The Options

Once someone accepts that they are struggling with an addiction, it’s time to find out what to do about it. Often enough, addictions are coupled with other things, such as different substances, behavioral addictions such as sex addiction or gambling addiction, or mental health issues such as mood disorders and anxiety. It may be worth going to a psychiatrist to talk about your family history and recent history of mental health, just to ensure that you have a full understanding of what you’re dealing with.

Addiction treatment facilities exist all over the country, but to effectively treat someone, they need to understand what issues they face. A sober living community can be highly effective, but it might not be helpful to someone who experiences deep anxiety and panic attacks. Supplementing a sober environment with regular therapy can be a much more effective approach, addressing both issues without causing further detriment.

Some cases of addiction and/or mental illness require medication, while most do not. The addiction recovery process is a combination of individual and group therapy, sobriety-oriented experiences (rehab, inpatient treatment, sober communities) and a focus on developing new interests and cultivating hobbies.

Find Ways To Maintain Sobriety

The recovery process begins by getting help. Rehab facilities, inpatient/outpatient treatment, sober living homes: these treatment models are meant for early recovery, when getting back into living life without drugs requires guidance, structure, and support.

However, after a while you are expected to be able to live on your own again without the fear of a relapse. That is the second phase of the addiction recovery process, and the phase that technically lasts for the rest of your life. The goal is simple: don’t use drugs again. To be more specific, live life in a way that makes drugs unnecessary. Many people turn to drugs due to stress, and the overbearing complications of living in an abusive situation, within poverty, or in some other struggle. Others turn to drugs because they’re young and young people often make mistakes.

Either way, long-term abstinence means incentivizing yourself never to use drugs again. To that extent, people often get into new and old hobbies, dedicated themselves to their career, or turn their attention towards family, cultivating responsibilities to keep themselves accountable, and cultivating pride in their own work and ability to create or perform.

Getting Back To The Addiction Recovery Process

Relapse rates are quite high, due to the nature of addiction’s chronic effect on the brain. Until your brain has reversed the effects addiction, the potential for relapse is there. All it might take is one particularly personal tragedy.

When that happens, when you relapse in the middle of recovery, then beating yourself up about it will only make things even worse and destroy even more of your recovery process. Instead, pick yourself up and get right back to staying sober. Relapses need to be avoided, of course – and if you do relapse, then the guilt you feel may be justified. But that does not mean you should give up now.

Live Again

Ultimately, the bird’s eye view of the recovery process trails off into unseen distances after the initial recovery period, when life has achieved a post-addiction balance that doesn’t involve any drugs.

Addiction cannot be replaced by another obsession. But it can be replaced by an appetite for life.

Is It Possible To Tackle Multiple Addictions At Once?

Posted on September 26, 2017September 26, 2017 by JohnAdmin

Addiction is a tough nut to crack – there are an estimated 25 million people in the US struggling with addiction in some shape or form, and while our ability to treat multiple addictions has massively improved, we are still far away from making it a painless process to follow and stick to. It gets especially tough when you run into cases of people who have multiple addictions, creating a need for better recovery practices.

There is more to beating addiction than going to rehab and saying sorry to a few people – it’s a personal and reflective journey through the things you’ve done in life, and it’s an opportunity to change yourself. However, that change takes time, dedication, and will often be beset with issues and speed bumps.

It stands to reason that when someone must fight multiple addictions at once, then their struggle will be exponentially harder as they go through quitting and recovering from the effects of each substance. But the reality is a little bit different.

The Reality Of The “Drug Of Choice”

It is not uncommon to be addicted to two or more things. Some people struggle with alcohol and other drugs. Some people couple an eating disorder with their substance abuse. Some people struggle with sexual addiction, as well as compulsive gambling. Some people self-medicate and are addicted to video gaming. However, it often isn’t until people begin trying to treat one thing that they discover the potency and reality of their other “thing(s)”.

The way multiple addictions can creep up into your life is not necessarily as a set of substances, but as a set of symptoms exhibited through one or more substances. Your drug or drugs of choice do not necessarily reflect why you became susceptible to multiple addictions in the first place, and getting hooked on one kind of drug does not make you immune or disinterested in other narcotics or influential substances.

The substance you are addicted to greatly affects the physical treatment plan necessary to help detox you, ensure a safe withdrawal period, and help undo the damage possibly dealt by your multiple addictions – but at the end of the day, addressing the mental consequences (and potential causes) of an addiction will always require a similar path, one determined not by what you take but by why you take it.

Co-Morbidity Is A Single Challenge

Co-morbidity is the existence of more than one mental illness in a patient. In addiction, a co-morbidity is often the combination of addiction with anxiety, or depression, or trauma. Typically, co-morbidity implies a relationship between the addiction and the mental health diagnosis – and in all cases where such a relationship exists, the treatment that is prescribed needs to address both issues rather than simply focusing on one.

In the case of multiple addictions, it is much the same. The risk of developing multiple addictions is not just a theory, and treating someone struggling with more than one form of addiction still requires a comprehensive, all-encompassing treatment that molds to their circumstances and issues, and addresses all vices and negative coping behavior as part of a single list of symptoms related to environmental factors and psychological/emotional concerns.

It’s not to say that multiple addiction can be solved with a cookie-cutter approach. Rather, troubles with someone’s mental health and physical health must be seen as joint issues related to one another rather than entirely separate. In this case, several addictions must be treated as one person’s struggle towards sobriety.

Multiple Addictions And The Mind

No, this does not mean that there is such a thing as an “addictive personality”. A person’s personality does not tie into their likelihood of getting addicted, unless they have a diagnosed mental illness or other environmental factors such as loneliness, trauma, family issues and peer pressure. However, what it does mean is that people with a predisposition towards multiple addictions (not any specific kind, such as with a genetic predisposition) will likely develop an addiction from any highly addictive substance – and often enough, people use more than one kind of drug. It’s not uncommon to abuse both alcohol and stimulants, for example, or marijuana and pain medication.

The substances you struggle with and the reasons you became addicted to them directly affect the kind of treatment you will have to seek to get better and stay sober. The danger becomes keeping you from developing an overt emotional attachment to something potentially very dangerous and damaging.

For example: going from a heroin dependency to becoming a fitness fanatic is a positive change. There are many ways to indulge yourself in long hours spent at the gym if you eat right, and recover properly. Meanwhile, an addiction to food can become problematic. Stress eating to deal with the newfound problems of your sobriety will lead to added pounds, a miserable mood, and many unfortunate symptoms of rapid weight gain, as well as the dangers of obesity down the road.

Replacing you love for alcohol with a love for coffee can be dangerous, but typically is not. Black coffee, or coffee with minimal additives is rarely dangerous even in atypically large dosages – however, chugging several extremely caffeinated drinks with highly concentrated amounts of caffeine within quick succession can very rapidly and adversely affect the heart and even cause arrhythmia.

The list goes on and on – there are many things you can indulge in to satisfy your cravings for pleasure, but nothing can replace an addiction and still be considered healthy. In moderation, there are countless substances and behaviors that can make life interesting, fulfilling and enriched. But when abused, anything can hurt you. And drugs, given their addictiveness, are easily abused.

The key here is not to think of a thing capable of replacing your multiple addictions – it’s to replace addiction with life. Instead of struggling to regain control over yourself in the face of a substance, it’s about living life and enjoying it in its entirety again. It’s about using recovery as an opportunity to express gratitude and realize self-love. To put it differently, addiction must be tackled as a situation that requires replacement, rather than a vice requiring another source of gratification. A men’s sober living in Houston is a good option to consider for that reason.

How To Make Your Addiction Recovery Stick For The Long-Term

Posted on September 21, 2017 by JohnAdmin

Drug addiction is not a matter of choice, but it is a matter of survival. Addiction recovery is not just about deciding not to follow an unhealthy lifestyle – it’s about prolonging your life in general, and making yours a happy one again.

But getting there – to the point where it seems possible to live without drugs again, and stay satisfied – is tough. It’s a long road, and not everyone makes it. However, there are many ways to ensure that you’ll stay on the right track, even if you fall off the horse now and again.

Before we can go into how to make your addiction recovery stick for the long-term and work on your sobriety, it’s important to first understand why addiction is so hard to beat; especially if you haven’t had to suffer through it.

Why Addiction Recovery Is So Difficult

Addiction is a combination of different physical and psychological symptoms, which appear in tandem but rarely in their entirety. Each case of addiction has its own unique factors, its own unique causes and inherent risks, and its own ideal method of treatment. Some people suffer from a highly emotional addiction, one where the issue lies more in their pre-existing mental condition rather than a neurological issue. Others suffer through an addiction that runs in the family – some alcoholics tend to have an inherent risk towards developing an addiction towards alcohol, and this risk is hereditary. Addiction recovery needs to be approached differently depending on the circumstance of the addiction in the first place.

There are different risk factors concretely tied to developing an addiction. While substance use does not necessitate any pre-existing conditions, and all addictive substances carry the inherent risk of creating a physical dependence, some people are at far more risk than others. Here are some of the more common risk factors:

Mental health disorders: Depression, anxiety, ADHD and post-traumatic stress are all tied to an increased risk of addiction. When coping with the massive stress tied to mental illness, many people see drugs as an effective short-term solution, despite their long-term consequences. There is also a higher risk of abusing medication.

Peer pressure: Teenagers are susceptible to this, as they are inherently less aware of risks and tend to ignore dangers in the face of high social rewards (i.e. fitting into a certain social circle).

Loneliness: A lack of personal connections with others can turn people towards drugs to escape many of the mental consequences of long-term loneliness, such as depression.

Family problems: Being on bad terms with your family tends to increase the risk of using drugs, due to a lack of support.

Genetics: Family history of addiction tends to correlate with a high risk of addiction, especially for specific substances.

Chronic illness: People struggling with chronic pain have a higher likelihood of becoming dependent on painkillers, especially due to the prevalence of opioid prescriptions in cases of chronic pain.

Each of these risk factors have their own hard counters – chronic illnesses can be addressed through alternative treatment methods, genetics can be used as a warning to avoid certain substances, families can be replaced by a strong network of life-long friendships, and dedicating yourself to being open and meeting more people can cure loneliness.

Even mental health issues can be addressed with modern-day psychotherapy and other forms of therapy – and in many cases of addiction, they must be addressed to truly help someone overcome their drug dependence. Besides treatment, much of which takes place during rehab, the hardest part of addiction is sticking to sobriety long after you’re done with a residential program or outpatient treatment program.

This process, often hardest in its “early recovery” stage, requires a system of commitment and a proper understanding of how to steal back the reward system of your brain after addiction hijacks it.

The Science of Commitment

Psychological health is really all about learning how your mind works, and then tricking it into working as well as possible. As humans, we’re subject to all sorts of psychological problems – we tend to avoid pain and suffering for good reasons, but that also means we at times rob ourselves of opportunities to grow by avoiding rejection, and instead suffer the ire of loneliness. Sometimes we experience so much pain and misery that we develop a trauma.

Sometimes, all our ills compound into a dependence on the immense short-term high of a drug. Our minds begin to rely on things like alcohol, cocaine and opioids to forget about all the things that worry us and instead just be satisfied, or even happy. Our mind becomes committed to drugs – in our brains, drugs rise to the top of the agenda and take over everything else.

Taking that drive back to develop a commitment towards something else isn’t quite so easy, because drugs come with an inherent abnormally high pleasure factor. There’s nothing else on the planet as immediately satisfying as a dangerous drug. So, you must utilize some discipline to get to the point where the commitment really sticks and you can begin your addiction recovery.

Commitment in the scientific sense, that is, sticking to one partner and making things work, is part of the essential toolkit we humans carry around to make and raise babies. We commit to a partnership at least long enough to ensure that our offspring survive in this world, and that takes years. This is because ultimately, it’s worth it – it’s natural, and we’re inclined to do so.

Trick Yourself into Sobriety

The trick is not committing yourself to sobriety. Sobriety isn’t fun by nature. We’re not inclined to deny ourselves the pleasure of drugs (that’s the whole problem). It can be fun, but not because of what it is – rather, because of what you can make of it. Instead of making a commitment to sobriety, make a commitment to something you really enjoy. Pick any hobby you feel passionate about, and use it as a replacement for drugs – turn to it in times of stress, hone your craft or your ability, get better and better and use it to release stress when things get a little much during addiction recovery.

The take-away point is this: learn not to focus solely on your sobriety.

Instead, learn to focus on living again. Drugs rob you of the ability to really live, to feel and love and focus on others and the things you enjoy the most. They make life dull and boring, they take out all the things that make it worth living. You must bring those things back through your addiction recovery, and remind yourself of how awesome sobriety can be, not how awesome it’s supposed to be from the get-go (you may be disappointed).

Prevent Relapse – The Best Ways To Stay Sober

Posted on September 14, 2017September 15, 2017 by JohnAdmin

There is a reason why the relapse statistic is quite high when looking at the numbers in addiction recovery, and that reason isn’t a matter of willpower or a lack of personal responsibility – it is a testament to the fact that relapses are part of the recovery process, and they’re common in early recovery even when trying to actively prevent relapse.

That doesn’t make them a good thing. However, neither does a relapse signal the total failure of your recovery process. Trying to prevent relapses from occurring first requires an understanding of what they are, why they occur, and what causes them. It also takes time and patience. While recovery is all about growing, early recovery can be a time of fragile emotions and mood swings. The body, the brain, and the psyche must get used to long term sobriety, and the stress of not only staying sober but dealing with life’s many complications and challenges along the way while working through the issues that an addiction tends to bottle up and bury inside you.

It’s a highly emotional experience, and everyone struggling with addiction goes through it in their own, unique way. Some struggle far more with the emotional aspect of addiction than others. Others struggle with physical dependence.

Understand What A Relapse Means

Relapses, like addiction itself, are learning experiences, moments wherein we can potentially discover new ways to control our behavior, focus our thoughts, and learn a bit more about ourselves. When a relapse does happen, it’s typically due to a trigger. Identifying the trigger and avoiding it during early recovery can prevent relapse, and later, provide the potential for growth by overcoming the old memory.

The most important thing to know about relapses is that they’re not the end of your journey. Think of them as speed bumps, obstacles in the road that slow your progress but only temporarily.

Relapses occur because the relationship between the brain and addictive substances is immensely strong. People spend years struggling with addiction not because it’s so much fun to fight your way through the emotional roller coaster and host of physical withdrawal symptoms repeatedly, but because being a functioning human being in society requires staying sober long enough to get things done. They sacrifice and sacrifice for weeks, months and years, and some people have entire families depending on the success of their recovery.

Addiction hooks its claws into your brain and your mind, creating a hole for itself that is hard to fill out again. Learning to prevent relapse can teach you more about how to slowly undo that grasp, and replace the void in your mind with new, awesome experiences and fresh living sensations.

Find New People To Hang Out With

One of the first things to do when deciding for a life of sobriety is some self-reflection. This involves figuring out what aspects of your life are worth keeping, and what aspects should be abandoned. For the most part, it can mean entirely changing your definition of friendship – and who you are friends with. Announce your decision to go clean and stay clean, and see how many of your friends are willing to support you and respect your decision to prevent relapse, so much so that they’d be willing to drop their own vices at least around you to avoid any complications.

In most cases, it’s for the best to cut off your relationships to anyone who got you involved in drugs, from booze to harder things, and instead focus on making new friends. Fresh new friendships can make early recovery much more bearable, help prevent relapse, and be far more interesting than forcing yourself through the first few months all on your own. Aside from providing immense amounts of support, new friends can bring excitement and new perspectives into your life. They can replace the temptation to drink or use with the temptation to learn more, try new things, and meet more people, all while helping to prevent relapse.

The trick is figuring out where to find new people to hang out with. You have several options depending on what you’re most comfortable with. If approaching strangers in the real world at the gym or in malls is too frank or forward for you, then consider the advantages of anonymity and distance in the online medium. Meeting people through the Internet is no longer strange, but has rather become the norm with the rise of blogging and social media.

Find New Places To Hang Out At

Aside from finding new people to spend time with, another solid way to avoid the triggers of the past in early recovery is to find new places for new memories. Consider making a routine for yourself involving a part of town you usually don’t spend much time in. Hit the gym if you don’t already, and visit parks. If you can afford the time and money spent on it, get a pet like a dog for both the companionship and the excuse to go on long walks. The responsibility of taking care of a pet and the stimulation of a daily walk can keep your mind off the need to use, and give you a calming way to remain stress-free.

Avoid dive bars, raves, dance clubs and the homes of friends who still use drugs. Instead, look towards new ways to spend your weekends and nights – sober raves are an option, or you could enlist in workshops, meet new people and learn new things.

Join A Sober Living Home To Help Prevent Relapse

Sober living homes, or a sober living community, are facilities dedicated to providing strictly sober lodging to people out of rehab looking for a way to integrate back into life and prevent relapse. Sober living facilities have a few general rules that differ from home to home, but for the most part, they involve having a strict curfew, a no-tolerance anti-drug policy, mandatory unannounced drug testing and the requirement of either being in school, having a job, or looking for either. These are homes designed to both get people back on their feet while giving them an environment in which they can live among others who are struggling with addiction, so the residents can bond and share their experiences and learn new things from each other.

People all have one reason or another to turn back to drugs, and convincing themselves otherwise will take time. With time, you won’t have to actively prevent relapse anymore – you’ll be able to live life fully, knowing you have it in you to achieve and maintain long-term sobriety even if the worst happens and you find yourself back at square one. Because recovery only ends when you give up on yourself in the fight against addiction and let it end you instead.