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Sobriety and You: What It Means to Be Sober

Posted on April 10, 2018 by JohnAdmin

Conventionally, a person is sober when they haven’t had much or anything to drink, as indicated by how well they can control their faculties. We commonly associate someone trying to be sober with being clear minded, alert, and aware.

In addiction terminology, sobriety is defined more clearly as the absence of any significant mind-altering substance. But the spirit remains the same. Being sober means being alert and aware – and ready.

A common misconception is that sobriety is a penance, a lifestyle choice that inherently makes like less enjoyable. But the longer you stay sober, the more you realize that the opposite is true. Getting drunk or high robs you of real emotion, experience, and time. It steals away what it means to be alive and live in the moment. And recovery can show you just what that means, and how valuable it really is.

What Is Sobriety?

Being sober or clean means not being under the influence of drugs, from alcohol to medication. You can be sober for an hour, a day, or a decade. Sobriety does not imply a length of any kind, nor does it imply a commitment to staying sober. It just means you’re currently not on anything.

But from there, you can go on to define for yourself what it means to be sober – and what it means to you to commit yourself to that sobriety. For some, sobriety is a path to clarity. For others, it’s a necessity for survival, a choice they make to live. Some people embrace sobriety, and others live their sober lives begrudgingly, as a form of obligation or punishment for being “out of control” when drunk.

Some stretch the boundaries of what it means to stay sober. In one sense, sobriety means overcoming the addiction – because how can you succumb to your addiction when you don’t indulge in it at all? Others, however, forego their drug of choice but don’t quit smoking, or drinking. Yet they never let their behavior get out of hand, either, when their new drug is something they only consume in moderation. Not everyone can do that, and no person out of rehab should try it – but addiction, just like people, comes in all shapes and sizes.

At a certain point, it becomes impossible to discuss sobriety without slipping into the philosophical, or the personal. Sobriety is what you make of it, beyond its most simple definition as a state of not being high or drunk.

Yet most importantly, sobriety is an eye-opener. The opportunities it creates can be positive and negative, and it’s not inherently always “good” or enjoyable, but sobriety does give you a chance to see things from different angles, think about your actions, and move on past your mistakes. The reason that trauma is one of the big risk factors for developing an addiction in the future is because coping with unresolved pain is one of the root causes of addiction. Deciding to be sober lets you do away with the coping, and instead start resolving.

No One Can Force You To Be Sober

Choice is an important concept to think about in the context of addiction. Life is full of choices, and the ones we make are often not thoroughly thought-out. When we act rashly, or let certain factors negatively influence our thinking, we make mistakes. Often, we regret these mistakes. It could be relatively innocuous, like slipping up in an argument and lashing out verbally, or it can result in much greater and darker consequences. Sometimes, a choice leads to another naturally, and a cascade of bad decisions leads us to a place we never wanted to be. Choice does lead to addiction, but the context and the circumstances behind why most people get addicted helps us understand that what they need is compassion, not judgment.

It’s clear that people make mistakes. And getting addicted is rarely a consequence of choosing addiction – rather, it’s a consequence of other choices. Whether or not that’s our “fault” is a question best answered based on what outcome you want to achieve. If your goal is to be a better person and move on past your addiction, then recognizing your part in getting addicted is vital. But so is letting go of the guilt and blame associated with those bad choices. Beyond that, we must understand that life is not rigid, but fluid – the choices you make today are arguably far more important than the choices you made in the past, and most of the mistakes we make can be owned up and overcome, even addiction.

That is why it’s important to choose sobriety. No one can force it upon you – it just doesn’t work. The first step to recovery is wanting it – that’s not just a 12-step philosophy, but a fact. You must choose to be sober, and you must think long and hard about why you personally justify that choice. It’s not something you can decide without conviction.

Living with that choice is empowering and scary. When you make the choice to be sober, you take responsibility for your own sobriety. Once the addiction fades, your actions are every bit your own, and as the cravings subside, you must continue to actively choose sobriety over addiction every time you wake up. It’s daunting and in the beginning, it can be really hard. But it does get easier.

Sober Living

The early days of recovery are the hardest. Not only do you have to be sober and get used to that feeling, but the brain can be quite fragile in this state. Mood swings and emotional rollercoasters are not uncommon, and you might feel equal parts ecstatic and depressed over your newfound sobriety. Getting through these days is hard even with treatment but staying strong throughout them is a sign of a steady and healthy recovery.

One of the biggest challenges is avoiding temptation. While rehab gets you up and about, and prepares you for the basics of being clean, most rehab programs aren’t long enough to prepare you completely. Sober living programs can help you by putting you in a living situation where you don’t have to worry about drugs, but still have to work to financially sustain your recovery, contribute to the community, be with other sober people, and continue your treatment.

Sober living environments can help you solidify and get comfortable in your sobriety and give you a sense of structure and normalcy. Instead of shying away from choice and responsibility, a sober living environment will help you embrace your newfound freedom and self-determination, and see sobriety not as a burden, but as the key you needed to undo your chains.

Why Sober Housing Is Effective at Preventing Relapse

Posted on March 20, 2018March 23, 2018 by JohnAdmin

Sober housing effectively provides a haven for recovering addicts, but with a harsher ruleset than most residential treatment facilities. The onus in sober housing is not to transition into recovery, but to transition into real life without fear of relapse.

Residential treatment and other similar treatments exist to help people transition from addiction into recovery. That means surviving withdrawal, fighting against the cravings, and figuring out what to do with your day without falling back onto old habits.

With time, staying sober gets easier. But stress, tragedy and loss can still affect you heavily, compounding over time without proper coping skills. With addiction fresh on your mind, the possibility of relapsing remains high in early recovery. Yet even years later, people can still slip back, sometimes with fatal consequences. Sober housing can help many people better manage these challenges and develop stronger defenses against relapse.

What Is Sober Housing?

Sober housing provides a sober living environment for people struggling with addiction, looking for a treatment program to help them transition into real life after recovery. Sober housing allows tenants to life in a drug-free environment, and gives them the freedom to pursue their hobbies, if they follow the rules of the house as a template for their own responsibilities after recovery.

Often, sober housing tenants will be asked to seek/have a job, participate in certain events, perform mandatory drug testing, perform chores, and obey house curfews.

Most sober housing environments are built on a similar ruleset, with certain rules changing from group to group. In general, sober housing:

Does not allow drugs on the facility and will have regular drug testing.
Requires that all tenants pay rent on time.
Has a curfew, and limits on allowing guests onto the premises.
Makes it mandatory to seek work/education while going through the program.
Has no limits on how long a tenant may stay.

How Sober Living Prepares People

The established rules in sober living communities allow individuals to follow a guideline for living life without drugs – they provide structure, the kind tenants can take with them anywhere and everywhere.

But sober living is more than just a set of rules binding people together. Sober living means living in a community, coexisting with various people struggling to stay sober, each with their own methods and preferences, all sharing their desire to stay clean but with wildly different backgrounds and futures.

Just like real life, sober living is often about living in a diverse environment and becoming part of the group. You maintain your unique individuality, your approach to sobriety and treatment – but the ability to interact with others, support them in their quest, and seek support from them allows people to develop meaningful friendships, gain and give trust, and work together as a community. The community is central to combatting addiction outside of the context of recovery. We must stick together to support one another, be empathic towards each other’s struggles, and offer a helping hand when the odds are too great to face alone.

A united community is important to avoiding addiction in society. It is often the isolated and the ostracized that struggle the most with mental illness and addiction, because being unaccepted or discriminated against fosters negative thinking, low self-esteem, and can even lead to trauma.

In sober living communities, everyone can find a place to be with others, in a group, making friends and sharing notes. It is about more than just discipline and responsibility in a temptation-free environment. It is about the benefits of a tightly-knit community oriented towards compassion and support.

Transitioning Into Real Life After Treatment

Sober living environments mimic real life, with an added enforcing factor. Anyone with addiction issues can join into a sober living program, but they must follow the rules to stay in the program. In real life, all rules are optional. You must force yourself to follow certain rules and structures, for your own good. In the same way, relapse is always a danger no matter how long you have been sober – but you still have the power to continuously and consciously refuse to use ever again.

When transitioning into real life, you will find that you have the freedom to do anything – and the power to choose to do the right things. By transitioning into real life too early, that temptation to steer off the right path can be very powerful, and highly attractive. Sober living can help you steel yourself and maintain your sobriety, finding alternative ways to deal with stress, cope with the cravings, and manage your struggles and challenges without opting for old habits.

The freedom to do anything, and the power to do the right thing. No matter how bad things get, sober living treatment gives you the ability to choose sobriety every time, even if it is the harder choice to make at first.

Learning To Live with Relapse

In addiction recovery, a relapse is defined as a deviation from the program, when someone who was previously clean uses again. Relapses occur for many reasons, from specific triggers that cause extreme urges and cravings, to emotional distress too great for someone in early recovery to handle.

Relapses are most common in early recovery, when a person is still learning about their sobriety. However, it is not only the relapse that deals damage to your recovery – your perception of it affects how you act going forward. Many people relapse once or twice and give up, seeing it as a sign of emotional and mental weakness, and choosing a life of addiction as their only option.

This is terrible thinking. Relapses are not failures, they are setbacks. And life is full of them. Very rarely does someone do something perfectly. We all make mistakes, and have crude, difficult beginnings. Relapses are not a sign that you are incapable of getting better, they are a sign that you still have much to learn about your own addiction and what keeps you sober.

In other words, a relapse can be a teaching moment, and it always should. It should teach you to be mindful of certain triggers and avoid certain stimuli until you are more capable of confronting it, until you have a more solid foundation under your sobriety.

When you relapse, the best course of action is to get back on the horse, so to speak. Most people will hit a snag at some point in their early recovery, and the key to overcoming it and letting it not happen again is to simply not give up and be mindful.

If you let mistakes and misfortune turn into reasons to give up, then your recovery will be short lived. But if you turn them into learning opportunities to keep going, you are going to get through this addiction no matter what.

Benefits Of Living A Sober Lifestyle

Posted on March 16, 2018 by JohnAdmin

Sometimes, the call to get sober comes from the outside. An accident, a loss or a wake-up call might compel you to see that the damage you’re doing is serious, and not just a matter of choice. But to many who take the first step towards realizing their addiction is a problem, the prospect of going sober – and staying sober – means the death of all that is fun. They see their new sober lifestyle as an amalgam of obligation and chastity – having to live just to stop hurting others, a punishment for their bad choices and mistakes.

This is extremely wrong. Sobriety is never a punishment. And neither is it something you should be doing strictly for others. When your addiction starts to grow into something terrible, and the consequences start to pile up, then it’s abundantly clear that you need to make a change. But that should be a change for yourself, for the better. And sobriety is that change. A sober lifestyle is neither boring nor painful, and in many ways it’s far more exciting, energizing and life-changing than addiction could ever be.

On its own, a sober lifestyle is nothing more than just you not taking drugs or alcohol. But delve deeper into what that affords you, and you’ll come to realize that there are countless benefits to living a sober lifestyle. Here are just a few that immediately come to mind.

Much More Time & Money

The first thing you might notice during a sober lifestyle is that you have a lot more time on your hands – and a lot more money. Addictions cost a tremendous amount of money and can often financially cripple entire households. The exact cost never really matters – people deep in an addiction will seek out whatever is available, from expensive high-quality prescription medication to the least reputable black tar on the streets.

When you’re leading a sober lifestyle, you can finally put that resourcefulness to the test in productive ways, seeking out work and finding ways to use your time to support yourself and your hobbies.

The Ability To Stay In Relationships

There is only room for one person in an addict’s life – themselves. Addiction is a disease that rewires your brain to be selfish – more than anything else, you are made to care about the next high. Breaking that mentality while using is nearly impossible and keeping up a believable façade becomes harder the longer you use. Eventually, it’s on your partner to choose to stay and support your recovery or leave to save themselves from emotional destruction.

One way or the other, there is no way relationships can last or be healthy if either or both people struggle with addiction. But with a sober lifestyle, you have the chance to try again – and be happier than any high in the world.

You Get To Look Much Better

Drug addiction not only causes your health to deteriorate through organ damage, but it can drastically alter and affect your physical appearance. This isn’t just a matter of hygiene – abusing drugs excessively will take years off your clock, worsen your complexion, and give you serious health issues that can change the way you look, from hypertension to diabetes and heart disease.

Drugs like methamphetamine are especially well-known for affecting your physical appearance, while many irreputable sources of heroin can be spiked with other more dangerous substances, damaging your immune system, and eliminating your appetite.

By abstaining from drugs, you will find your complexion return to normal, your health improves, you gain or lose weight, and find the time to care about your appearance much more, caring for your hair and skin and appearing healthy once again.

You Have More Energy With A Sober Lifestyle

Even though drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine can give you unnatural amounts of energy and motivation, these boosts are just temporary. Drug use over time will lead to a lack of proper rest, sometimes developing into full-blown insomnia. Beyond that, constant drug use wears your body down, decreasing your energy reserves, cutting into your appetite, and generally leaving your body frailer – even to the point of damaging your immune system and vital organs.

Some people develop lesions and suffer severe symptoms from common infections, while others become unhealthy through poor hygiene and malnutrition. Addiction can make us forget to take care of ourselves, and can disrupt our natural instincts towards restful sleep, good food and regular washing. This only becomes worse as the addiction progresses into cycles of withdrawal and relapse, where often, individuals develop co-dependent illnesses like anxiety and major depression.

You may not realize it, but even “casual” drug use cuts into your regular sleeping schedule and can rob you of a lot of energy. Going sober early will not only save you from a host of physical complications and months of serious rehab and recovery, but it will give you a boost of energy and make you realize just how lethargic you have been feeling.

A Consistent Scale

A lack of appetite or rapid weight gain are symptoms of certain drug use – for example, cocaine and prescription amphetamines, as well as methamphetamine and other stimulants will often cut into a person’s appetite, causing drastic weight loss and malnourishment. In fact, some dangerous crash diets go so far as to recommend illegal stimulants or “weight loss supplements” with stimulant ingredients as way to quickly and efficiently lose weight.

Alcoholism, on the other hand, can lead to several different health issues including rapid weight gain due to the excess of liquid calories being added to a person’s diet over the course of the day. Other drugs can also affect the body’s metabolism and appetite, causing your weight to spike or drop significantly.

By going clean, staying clean and nursing your sobriety, you gain a shot at a stable and healthy weight. Some turn from an addiction to drugs or alcohol to an addiction to food or develop eating disorders to cope with post-rehab stress. It is important to continue to address your stress after rehab and figure out better and healthier ways to cope with problems, rather than utilizing negative coping mechanisms and damaging your physical and emotional health in the process.

Beyond these benefits of a sober lifestyle, there are several others. For example: most cases of drug use and alcoholism lead to a steady decline in mental faculties, due to brain damage. Reversing this can take time, but you can improve your cognition in the long-term by staying sober. And of course, sobriety is about more than just enjoying better physical and mental health. It’s about your social health, as well. Through sobriety, you can have more fun than ever – it’s just a question of knowing where to look.

Tips To Avoid Relapsing

Posted on March 7, 2018March 7, 2018 by JohnAdmin

To most people in early recovery, there’s nothing more terrifying than failing. Falling back into your old ways and continuing to be consumed by the addiction. But that’s not necessarily failure. There’s a common misconception where many people feel like if they make one mistake – one misstep – they have failed themselves. Failure is giving up sobriety and using until you pass away. Failure is when you quit all hope of getting better because of a relapse and no long attempt to avoid relapsing.

Relapses, on the other hand, are not failures. They’re mistakes, but they’re mistakes we can learn from. For example – a relapse can teach you how to avoid another relapse, if you pay attention to the signs. But that doesn’t mean that we should embrace relapses as a regular occurrence, either. You should avoid relapses – but don’t let them consume you entirely and rob you of every hope for lasting recovery.

To get sober and stay sober, you have to want to be sober more than anything else – but it’s not enough to just want something. Addiction treatment can be long and arduous, and it involves many exercises, therapies, and steps. If you want to avoid another relapse, or avoid relapsing ever again, then here’s what you need to do:

Find Some Friends

Recovery is an individual task – but it’s best done together. Individual therapy is not enough to heal from addiction. It takes more than the knowledge of a therapist and the ability to tackle and improve your thoughts to overcome addiction – time and time again, the stressors of the real world will test your ability to cope with difficulty, and the cravings will grow stronger and stronger.

You need others for support, both as a way to rant and blow off steam, and as a way to hear from them, help them with their problems, and depend on one another. Group therapy and other sober group activities is a new way to meet new sober friends, and plan outings.

You don’t have to find dozens of new acquaintances – spreading yourself too thin isn’t a good idea either. Instead, hang out with different groups and find one or two people you really vibe with. If things work out, they’ll work out – if not, keep looking. Having a pal or two can make addiction recovery a lot easier – it gives you a person to talk to about issues most people would never understand, and the fresh perspective on a similar yet completely different struggle can give you new ideas on how to tackle your own addiction and help avoid relapsing.

Having someone close in your social circle also gives you the comfort of knowing that if things get turbulent, you have someone you can call and talk to. Relapses often happen because a single thing pushes you off the edge – hopelessness. Many are triggered by different factors, from cravings to old memories and more. But they give in when something inside of them convinces them that recovery won’t work.

A friend can help stave off that moment, and keep you sober. It won’t be easy, and some cases are harder than others, but it’s clear that reliable friends are important and can help you avoid relapsing.

Get A New Hobby

Hobbies are not just a way to spend time, but they’re a way to keep yourself stimulated, physically and creatively. From sports to art and academics, finding a hobby you can truly embrace and stick with is one of the most powerful tools for maintaining sobriety and avoid relapsing.

Hobbies are not just distractions for when you feel stressed, or when you need some time to yourself. They are meant to provide an additional focal point to your recovery and give you a progressive series of goals to strive towards, improving yourself and thus making gradual but significant steps away from addiction, and towards your new sober lifestyle.

A good hobby can also serve as an adaptive coping mechanism. That means it gives you a way to release stress and blow off steam without further worsening your situation, instead helping you adapt to it by improving your cognition or your health.

Drug use is a classic example of a maladaptive coping mechanism. While it does help you forget your problems, it creates an entirely new and incredibly destructive problem. The same goes for any form of addiction, including an addiction to food, or even to typically healthy activities like exercise. Too much of anything can be terrible – and if approached with the wrong mindset, something harmless can become a maladaptive coping mechanism.

To put it differently, your hobby should be something that makes you stronger, letting you face your problems head-on, rather than simply giving you a direction to run away from your problems.

Learn Your Triggers And Avoid Relapsing

Relapses do not happen out of nowhere. When addiction treatment begins, it is normal for someone straight out of withdrawal to experience powerful cravings. Sober living facilities and residential treatment facilities exist to help people cope with these cravings.

When treatment ends, and time passes, the cravings begin to go away. But certain triggers can bring them back. For example – the sight or sound of an old neighborhood, meeting an old friend, having a meal at a specific restaurant, hearing a specific song. These are cues for old memories to come flooding back, alongside powerful emotions, and the subsequent temptation of addiction.

Understanding these triggers, and learning which triggers you can easily ignore, and which you have to live with, is important to avoid relapsing.

With time, simply ignoring your triggers won’t do. But to overcome them, you need to get to a point where you can manage cravings and ride them out without giving into them. Before then, knowing what can and will possibly trigger your cravings can be very helpful.

When you feel a relapse coming on, it is important to think back on these tips. What triggered it? Who should you call? And what can you do? Begin by taking a deep breath, and thinking of a single, simple thought that motivates you. Prepare that thought now and use it as a mantra – a phrase that reminds you why you stay sober. For some, that phrase can be to remind them of their loved ones. For others, it’s to remind them of their dream. Whatever it is, hold onto it, call your friend, and do not give in.

It’s Time to Get Serious About Staying Sober

Posted on March 1, 2018February 28, 2018 by JohnAdmin

The biggest advantage you have in the fight against addiction is in the power of your own will to get better. In the early days, it’s normal to feel almost powerless. The cravings and the temptations will be stronger than ever right after you stop using, and that is why many people seek help with staying sober when starting out.

But as time goes on, once the drug is out of your system and early recovery has begun, your will becomes more instrumental than ever. You must to keep staying sober – everything else comes second.

Of course, your will alone is not enough. Any temptation or memory of the past can trigger a powerful craving, one that can be incredibly hard to resist. Whenever things are not going your way – and as life goes, that can be quite often – the urge to use grows stronger, to forget your troubles and defeat the stress. Some days are worse than others, and at times, it feels like life is taunting you.

But the longer you stay clean, the rarer the bad days get, and the more you feel happy about yourself and your life. To get to that tipping point, however, you may need every ounce of help you can get your hands on. Thankfully, there are more than enough resources out there to get you started and keep you on the right path. Here are a few essentials for getting serious about staying sober.

Find A Hobby While Staying Sober

A big part of successful addiction treatment is finding the ability to enjoy yourself without drugs. Life is meant to be lived, but addiction often robs us of the joy of living. It will not come back easily, but finding a hobby that draws you in can be a great first step in staying sober. For many, it is something related to exercise.

Getting active causes your body to release endorphins, allowing you to feel good without any external substance. What is often referred to as the “runner’s high” is not exclusive to running and applies to a wide variety of sports and activities.

Other sports and hobbies that do not necessarily involve physical prowess can also be a great introduction into sober living. Take chess and reading, for example, or painting. Regardless of your talent, activities like painting and writing allow you to express yourself and your emotions in ways you might not be able to in conversation or everyday living.

Journaling is a common way to relieve stress and tension at the end of the day, and reflect on the day, thus improving mindfulness – an important factor in addiction treatment. It also allows you to hone your focus and keep your cognition sharp – these are both important, because long-term drug use often diminishes your ability to think critically and be focused while staying sober.

Another important part of picking out a hobby is to be social again. Making new friends related either to your sobriety or to a hobby you really enjoy is an important part of staying sober. By building connections and creating casual relationships, we begin to build a life that allows us to be accountable to others as a friend or acquaintance and gives us time to look forward to outside of time spent alone, in the company of your own thoughts and temptations.

That, and the people around you can become major cornerstones in your long-term battle against addiction, by providing vital support while you are staying sober.

Surround Yourself With Support

Addiction is not a disease best fought alone – in fact, it may be impossible to fight addiction alone. People who get sober without treatment do so more often out of their connection with others, rather than their own will. This because addiction often erodes people’s self-esteem and causes you to be more likely to feel shame or fear, rather than be motivated by your odds of success.

But when we see sobriety not only as something that can benefit us, but as a way to fulfill our obligations to others and be someone we can feel good about, it becomes much more powerful.

That is the power behind accountability. By surrounding ourselves with people who care about us, we can be accountable to them in the fight against addiction.

Support is more than just that, of course. By making new friends in circles of sobriety, such as group meetings and sober living communities, you can help motivate others to work on staying sober and be motivated by them and their struggles. Creating a network and relying on a trustworthy social circle can greatly improve your motivation to keep on fighting, day after day.

Get With The Program

Addiction programs exist of reason: many of them work. We have come a long way since the early days of addiction treatment – from medication to help combat some of the most addictive and powerful drugs in the world, to therapeutic treatments that help patients completely change the way they think and act with hard work and dedication, to treatment programs that cater themselves entirely to a client’s circumstances and needs.

If you can afford to take time away from work, or need to be in a safe, temptation-less environment, then facilities such as residential treatment clinics and sober living communities can make a huge impact and set you on your way towards long-term sobriety. For those who cannot afford such a commitment, outpatient programs of all shapes and sizes exist to fit to your schedule.

Get Professional Help

Friends and family are integral to better overall health – having a solid support system and a trustworthy social circle in your life is important regardless of your mental health. But when it comes to addiction, it probably is not enough to only look towards your friends and family. While they are important and will be a cornerstone for your continued sobriety long after initial treatment, a professional therapist, and other experts with an assortment of skills and tools can help you tailor a very specific and highly effective treatment to combat your addiction and equip you with the skills you need to continue fighting addiction long after any program typically ends.

Addiction is not defeated in rehab – but rehab, or other related treatment options such as sober living, can teach you more about yourself and your relationship with drugs. That knowledge will be instrumental to avoiding relapses, dealing with difficult and tense situations, surviving the fallout from broken relationships or other losses and tragedies, and generally learning how to enjoy life after addiction, and continue to avoid falling back into it.

Benefits Of A Luxury Rehab In Houston

Posted on February 9, 2018September 28, 2018 by JohnAdmin

Inpatient residential treatment, also known as rehab, is one of several options for early addiction treatment and can be seen as one of the best choices for people who really want to get better but need all the help they can get to work their way through the first few weeks of treatment. There is no doubt that addictions can ruin lives – and for many, especially people with a certain public image or an appearance to keep up, there is an onus placed on taking care of the problem discretely and effectively. Luxury rehab options might produce the illusion of taking a trip to paradise under the guise of treatment, but getting clean and staying clean is never easy, no matter how nice the view is. That said, it can still be extremely effective and a luxury rehab provides many benefits to those trying to get clean.

If you are considering a live-in residential treatment option and need the best, then luxury rehab is for you. Here is why.

Confidentiality & Privacy

Above all else, luxury rehab providers understand that the vast majority of their clientele want an environment in which they can feel comfortable being themselves, an environment for healing where they do not have to worry about publicity or responsibility. For just a little while, these places of treatment are meant to help clients focus entirely on getting better in every way possible.

Of course, like with every addiction treatment, progress is impossible if the client does not want to get better. But a standard for luxury rehab is that they facilitate your recovery without you having to worry about the outside world for just a little while, keeping your information and treatment details confidential so you can focus on recovery to the best of your abilities.

Excellent Facilities & Amenities

There is something to be said for a treatment center with good facilities – primarily that they help give you something to do when you feel like you need something to keep you busy. After a certain point, an addiction becomes more than self-medication or a social activity, and it turns into a personal habit, something to do with your hands when you are bored and need something to fill in the gaps between the moments.

Boredom can be a killer – and with how severely and quickly addiction pushes many other habits and activities out of your life, pretty quickly it will be normal for you to think of lighting up, snorting, or getting ready to shoot up just because you have some time to kill, and nowhere in particular to be.

Rehab is meant to act as a reboot for life itself after addiction, first helping you with your initial sobriety and withdrawal, and then helping you figure out what you should actually be doing with all the time you are spending sober.

Golf, swimming, lifting, writing, painting, crafting, singing, or building. There are a million hobbies out there, from writing limericks or journal entries, to deeply enjoying and taking pride in your passion for avian photography.

You could even sit at a desk once a day, listen to some of your favorite music, and produce a few lines of unrelated poetry, just letting your mind flow in places it has not flowed in for years, drinking in the love and passion for your personal art in ways that was not possible when you were getting high.

Luxury rehab is designed to make you fall in love with sobriety – providing the facilities to help make that happen. You are here to learn how to live with yourself again, be happy in your own shell, and find a reason for living and loving life outside of the context of addiction. It is not easy, and it will be easier for some than it might be for others. But it is an approach that always works, varying only in the time it takes to find and discover that one habit that captures you and sets you on a permanent path away from addiction.

Take your time to explore all your options. Do things you would have never done before. Pick up old habits and hobbies and see how they suit the new you. Rediscover yourself as a person and take some pleasure in the curious journey of figuring out just what it is that brings you joy and happiness after years of artificial joy and artificial happiness in drug form.

Programs Beyond Luxury Rehab

Luxury rehab is one of many first treatment options for those in addiction recovery. Some people opt for it, others do not – but at the end, there has a lot more to do after rehab is over, and hopefully many more years of sobriety ahead of you.

Figuring out how not to be scared of that, and not to be scared of relapse, can take a while. Addiction and the way it conditions people to the pain it causes others has a way of producing cynical and anxious thoughts. Getting away from that line of thinking and into another takes practice, and time – like any other habit, only more intense.

That is why a quality rehab program should also do its best to prepare you for the next step and provide the tools and abilities to seamlessly transition you from your current treatment into the next. There are other options of course, but they do not provide the same benefit as a luxury rehab when it comes to recovery.

Things to Consider

Luxury rehab centers put you in a world completely unlike the one you know. The biggest difference is a lack of drugs – but there is more than just that. It is an isolated environment, a little community built around health and wellness.

It is an environment you cannot rely on, and one that exists solely to be made obsolete in a client’s mind – you are meant to grow past rehab, rather than get used to it and the lifestyle it provides you.

That includes moving past the fear of addiction, to a point in your life where you feel confident enough to face the world and its temptations without reverting to the past.

If you or someone you know needs help managing the recovery process, contact us today to see how we can help: 877-394-8810

Why Community Is Important For Recovery

Posted on January 11, 2018January 11, 2018 by JohnAdmin

It’s important for every single person in recovery to feel empowered and inspired. We need to believe in ourselves if we want to accomplish anything in our lifetime – but it’s harder for people who struggle with addiction to believe in themselves than it might be for others. Sometimes, an addiction can feel stifling – it steals a person’s agency, and saps at their will. That’s why community is important for recovery.

Alone, addiction will consume you. Alone, addiction can destroy you.

But you’re not alone. And if you’re not alone, but with people who believe in you, then they can help you realize the importance of believing in yourself.

Ultimately, addiction is the journey of an individual fighting their way out of a persistent and oppressive cycle of addiction. You must accept your problem, make a commitment to fight the addiction, find a way to quit for good, and come to terms with all mistakes and actions so you can find peace for the future. It’s not just about being passionate and strong-willed – it’s about compromise, forgiving yourself, and seeing just how far your capacity for hope stretches.

Because of this, having others is important. It’s a long and difficult road ahead, and the support and motivation that others bring to the table is necessary if you want to make it through. To fight addiction, you’ll need your friends, you’ll need your family, and ultimately, you’ll need to understand community is important for recovery, and you want people you can trust and open up to.

Addiction And Isolation

Isolation feeds addiction. Think of the human soul as a mirror, and a shape within the mirror. The only way to clearly see ourselves is through the mirrors others help hold up to us. Some mirrors are twisted and warped, giving us a false image of ourselves.

Others are clear and truthful, sometimes painfully so. We have the power to shape ourselves, and change what we see in those reflections when we interact with others – but it’s not easy, and it takes time spent with other people to truly help us see the changes we make, and adjust.

When we’re alone, we can’t tell what the shape in our mirror looks like with nothing to reflect off of. It’s impossible for us to objectively look inside, without some sort of inner bias, either derogatory or complimentary. So, when addiction takes a hold of you and grips tight on your shape, its changes are hard to see alone.

Over time, the changes become more drastic – and with addiction comes regret, shame through stigma, and self-doubt. Even when masked with aggressive self-importance, these negative emotions feed negative behaviors, reinforcing a twisted self-image.

Without others to hold a mirror up to what we’re turning into, it’s difficult to realize that you’re hurting yourself – and that it’s time to turn around. And even when you know where the problem lies, for many it often feels too late to do something about it. That negativity grows without anything to counter it, without anyone to tell you differently.

In isolation, addiction feeds itself, and that’s why community is important for recovery. But if we can find others to help us see who we are, and what we must change, and others yet who can show us a version of who we might be, and what we can still do, then there’s hope, and that’s all anyone ever needs.

Why We Need Each Other

Some people help us see our flaws clearly, without judgment or bias. Some people help us see our strengths, and realize their potential. We all need people like that in our lives, to help us overcome some of life’s greatest challenges without cannibalizing our own spirit with negativity and self-doubt. Community is important for recovery not only to have a group of supporting people, but to see within ourselves what we might not be able to.

It’s not a selfish way to live – rather, it’s a reciprocal philosophy. Not only are you at the center of your own network of loved ones, but you’re part of someone else’s network. By aspiring to be the kind of person who can help others shape themselves into someone better, kinder, and more loving, you’re taking massive steps away from addiction and towards a life with more meaning and fulfilment.

We all need each other, in some shape or form. We need social bonds, both close and far, abstract and concrete. We need our partners and families, our friends, and closest loved ones – and we need greater concepts, like society and community. Understanding how these concepts affect an individual’s problem with addiction has to do with understanding why we all need to be social, and what we miss by struggling with loneliness.

Beyond those we care about the most, we need groups and communities into which we can belong. While having a family, or a family of friends is important, it’s equally important to feel that our lives are well-lived by having a greater impact on those around us – inspiring others in a recovery community to stay strong and stick to their treatment, for example. This sense of community is important for recovery and for long term success.

Why Your Recovery Needs A Support Group

A support group is more than a circle of people meeting regularly to discuss their problems. It’s an opportunity for people to accept their problem, and trust others enough to talk about it openly and honestly.

And with enough time, a support group is a place where people in long-term recovery can help change someone else’s life for the better, by giving them hope and showing them what can be done, and how what might seem impossible is, in fact, completely doable.

Support groups come in all forms. You could find a local independent support group, or one connected to an organization or treatment center. You can even turn your tightest circle of friends into a support group, and inspire them to tackle their own problems like you tackled addiction.

Community Is Important For Recovery And Continued Sobriety

Sobriety means to be clean, and sober – but fighting addiction is about much more than just seeking to stay sober. Addiction is a life-changing event, and there’s no coming back from it. The only way out, is forward and through. And when you’re done, you’ll be someone else. You have to be someone else in order to defeat addiction – and that can be both scary, and incredibly taxing.

This is because when addiction takes hold of a person, it becomes not only a source of grief and problems, but a coping mechanism for all those problems. It blinds people to what’s around them, and stunts a person’s ability to deal with life.

In recovery – and even in sobriety – coping without drugs whenever something happens is difficult, especially if it’s traumatic. But with the right people, and the right treatment, you can be ready to face any challenge in recovery. The key lies in finding that a community is important for recovery, and trusting that the community believes in you, and therein trusting yourself.

Sticking To Your Sobriety For A New Year’s Resolution

Posted on January 4, 2018February 12, 2018 by JohnAdmin

No one ever said sobriety would be easy – but to many, the idea of long-term sobriety can seem almost unattainable. And with the way addiction works, overcoming that point of view and working towards a new and hopeful future is difficult, but that’s what January is for. A new year, and the beginning of something better – for everyone who struggled with life in 2017, 2018 can be the one chance you need to make things better. Sticking to your sobriety might be the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do – and there is no straightforward rulebook for keeping clean. Everybody has their own methods, their own tricks. But with a little bit of help, some simple advice, and the right treatment, you’ll be able to walk your own journey to a better you.

Here’s what you must do to stick your new year’s resolution, and live a sober life this 2018.

Get Support For Sobriety

One thing must be said: this is your journey. It’s on you to get better, to follow the advice and the steps of others, and to find your own way to manage the disease and enjoy life again. Nothing will change that – and no one can live your life for you.

But there is a massive difference between giving up and putting it all in the hands of someone else, and asking for support from those you trust the most. Getting support is vital for anyone’s sobriety, even if you never enroll in a formal treatment program. You may not need the advice of a professional, or any medication. You may not even need to attend any meetings or go to a special residential treatment center to get clean.

But you will need the help of others to keep you on the right track, push you to stay strong when you begin to falter, and consistently remind you of what you must do to achieve your life-time goals. Support doesn’t mean surrounding yourself with people who support your habits and keep you from growing. It means surrounding yourself with the people who hold you accountable to your actions, inspire you to do better, and remind you that it’s okay to falter sometimes, if you never give up.

Finding people like that can be difficult, but thankfully, through local treatment centers, group therapy and the Internet, it’s easier than ever to make new friends and create the circle of support you might need to stay up on your feet.

Remember that, usually, it isn’t just about you. If your support group includes others going through a similar but different journey of self-discovery and addiction, then remind yourself that you have a duty to play as part of their support group, too. That role of being a giving and useful part of someone’s life can help you, by giving you something else to stay sober for.

Avoid The Past

Addiction is more than just an internal struggle – for many, it’s a fight against the temptations around them, as well. Many people have trouble getting out of their addiction because life continuously pulls them back into it. While protective environments help stifle this issue by completely removing people from the temptations present in their usual life, there is no getting around the fact that, at some point, a patient must come back home.

It’s important to start the new year right by cutting yourself off from the parts of your past that most strongly remind of your worst days. Sometimes, this might mean moving to a different neighborhood, or leaving old acquaintances behind. If you want to keep your early recovery from being jeopardized, taking steps to provide yourself with some fresh scenery can go a long way.

Beyond that, avoid thinking too much about the past. That does not mean you are supposed to run away from bad experiences or traumatic memories. Instead, it’s important not to dwell on them. Addiction feeds on some of our most negative emotions, including shame and fear. Part of denying the disease is learning to part from those emotions, and getting past the past.

Find Meaningful Hobbies

Beating addiction is not just about replacing the ritual, or finding things to keep yourself busy. It’s ultimately about finding other things to care about – things that genuinely give you pleasure and make you happy. For some, it’s exercise and competition. For others, it’s the pursuit of various creative arts. Others like to mix and match various hobbies, trying new things out rather than devoting themselves to a single discipline.

The trick to finding out what exactly works for you is trying it all out. Visit local clubs, watch YouTube tutorials, try things at home, buy a few beginner kits and see where your exploration takes you. You might discover a deep passion for woodworking, or learn to enjoy diving.

Set Short-Term Goals

One way to easily lose yourself in recovery is losing track of time, and routine. A lot of people who slip towards a relapse first notice themselves slipping and quitting certain habits or rules. If you have a strict schedule you first started upholding when you decided to quit and go straight, pick that schedule back up every time you feel yourself slipping.

If you feel your motivation to staying sober fading, it’s time to revive your enthusiasm by focusing on something else entirely. Set a short-time goal or challenge, or, if it’s a drastic lack of enthusiasm, pick up a new hobby.

Go On A Journey This Year

Let 2018 be the year to take your first fundamental steps towards truly achieving long-term sobriety, by dedicating yourself to a new you. Set goals for yourself, work hard to achieve them, and focus on the present instead of looking back to your past mistakes and stumbles.

After the remorse of addiction kicks in, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the consequences of some of the things you might have done or said. Forgiving yourself and getting to the point where you truly believe you can still turn things around and be someone good is important, and very difficult. But if you manage to reach that point in your recovery, then you’ll be well on your way towards a life of lasting sobriety.

Top 6 Reasons to Go Sober This Holiday Season

Posted on December 11, 2017 by JohnAdmin

Regardless of how you’re spending your holiday season, it can generally be agreed upon that there’s something special to this time of year. Traditions are, in some aspect, important to us – and if it’s a particularly positive and festive tradition, then it’s important that we carry it on, and use it to enrich the childhoods of our children, and take the time to think back on the rest of the year. But there’s more to the holiday season than traditions – this is a time to look back on the year and reflect. Getting yourself to go sober is much the same – you face the decisions of the past, and strive to make a major change. And just as the new year is an opportunity for new commitments, sobriety is the opportunity to live life again, without the brain fog of addiction.

Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa; regardless of what celebration you’re preparing for, now is the right time to stick to your sobriety and see it through, all the way into spring and through the rest of the new year.

Why? Well, we put together a brief list of six simple and inarguable reasons why you should go sober for this holiday season.

There’s Holiday Cheer To Be Had

The holidays are a time for family to come together, have a wonderful time and a delicious meal, bond over old memories, or make new ones. With families often being split apart across the country due to generations moving from the countryside to the city, and from city to city, the holidays are a good opportunity to get together and be one big family – or, simply spend the days with your favorite few people.

For kids, the holidays are often about candy and presents. Every kid hopes for something in their stocking or under the Christmas tree. But that doesn’t mean the spirit of the holidays is in shiny red boxes and pretty department store ribbons. It’s about being with others.

You can’t enjoy your time with others when you’re still caught up in addiction. Not only because it’s hard to be around someone who isn’t getting clean, but because without a clear head and sober thinking, you’re bound to miss the holidays – and everything that comes with them.

Make Sobriety Your Present to Yourself

Making yourself go sober doesn’t have to be a chore. It’s not a punishment for sin. It’s not meant to make you feel shame or guilt for your past choices.

It’s hard to see it as anything other than miserable when the withdrawal kicks in, but sobriety is life. Living without drugs or alcohol opens your eyes to what life can really be, and lets you experience those moments that make living worth it. Being with family and spending time with the people you love is a crucial part of the holiday season – thus, there’s no better time to get help and commit to sobriety, than right now.

Create a Pledge For The New Year

With the holidays comes the inevitable conclusion to another year – and the beginning of the next. And with every New Year’s Day come countless new commitments to self-improvement.

However, many people don’t follow through with these commitments. Whether it’s the pressure, the gratification of announcing your goal, or just an inability to make new habits stick for a wide variety of several possible reasons and circumstances, the truth is that it’s not easy to make a substantial change in life – and sobriety is no different.

But the hardest part of getting yourself to go sober in the long-term is being sober for long enough that it begins to stick. This initial period of sobriety can be even harsher than the rest of the journey. Using the motivation of the new year to get a kickstart into your sober journey can help mitigate this.

You’ll Have Money To Spend (Elsewhere)

People sometimes underestimate just how much addiction costs. We’re not talking about the cost of treatment or insurance, or the cost of losing a shot to a better career – buying and using drugs, including cigarettes and alcohol, will put a major dent into anyone’s weekly budget and can lead people into a downward spiral of financial difficulty and debt.

But by saving all that money spent on addiction, you can instead use it to get better or get yourself something nice for Christmas.

It’s not just a thing for the holidays, either. You’ll experience steady savings throughout the entirety of your sobriety – which, ideally, will be the rest of your life. That money can instead go towards actual self-improvement, coping mechanisms, and better sources of entertainment.

You’ll Actually Remember Christmas Eve On Christmas Morning

Blacking out from drug use isn’t entirely uncommon – and with alcohol, it’s even normal to forget what you were doing the night or day before. If you’re struggling with alcoholism and have been struggling with it for a few years, then you’ll know that Christmas is one of those days when you’re bound to get very drunk.

But if you go sober, then you’ll turn a clouded and unknown night into a memorable part of your holiday season – one you’ll remember for a while to come, even.

Of course, just because you can remember something doesn’t make it good. The key to go sober and stay that way, not just in the long-term, but throughout the holidays, is by spending time with people you like. If your family is what drove you to use drugs to escape them, then make your own family. Spend the holidays with friends.

Don’t let your addiction ruin the holidays – and reclaim them from the bad memories (or lack thereof) you might have had in the past.

The Holidays Will Become Something Good Again After You Go Sober

When you’re struggling with addiction, you need good things in life. They help remind you why you should go sober, and why life is worth living with a clear mind and an open perspective.

Starting your sober journey over the holidays gives you a head start on the new year – treat this as an adventure to be had, an odyssey that’ll take you years and even decades.

Sobriety doesn’t end, and in a way, neither does recovery. That doesn’t mean the struggle never ends. In time, things get easier – and you’ll learn to wonder and love and live life again.

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.