The ultimate goal for any addict, regardless of what kind of substance they used to abuse, is permanent sobriety. It’s to be able to look back, never forget what happened and yet still enjoy life with a cleared conscience, a crisp mind and a circle of friends and family.
Achieving that state of sobriety is what drug addiction treatment is for. From detox and rehab to group therapy, medication and self-disciplined recovery guides, there are countless ways to combat addiction depending on what you’re addicted to, what stage of recovery you’re in, and how well you’re reacting to a given treatment option.
One factor that gets overlooked when discussing recovery is the sheer power of proper lifestyle changes. Through some much-needed tweaks to the way you live, you can entirely supplant the craving for drugs with different mental stimuli, and rewire your brain to forget the drugs, and instead rely on other stimuli.
You’ll never quite forget what it was like to be high, and you’ll never quite forget the darker days. But you can teach your brain to return to the way it was before the addiction kicked in, and you can live a sober life free from relapses. And here’s why lifestyle changes are so integral for that.
Good Habits Can Replace Drug Use
It’s really as simple as that – drug use often (not always) abuses brain plasticity and makes significant physical changes in the way your brain works while you’re on drugs. At first, the drug is a voluntary choice. With time, addiction can feel like a trap.
Getting out of it requires you to not only be motivated enough to renounce your addiction, but also replace drug use with something else. Drug use is often a maladaptive behavior – it can be a coping mechanism for stress, trauma, abuse, or peer pressure.
The tough but highly rewarding challenge is to replace it with a set of adaptive coping mechanisms, including good sleep, better food, and exercise, going out with friends who care about you and meeting new people, and becoming part of a family, community or company that includes you and gives you a sense of purpose.
While maladaptive coping behaviors are always rewarding in the short-term – like drug use – they only cause more issues in the long-term. Adaptive behaviors on the other hand require a bit more of an investment to get into in the short-term, but keeping them up over the course of months and years produces changes both physically and mentally that help you deal with your emotional issues, see things rationally, and achieve an objectively healthier form of happiness.
Healthy Eating Can Help Your Mind
Research shows that food has a relationship with mental illness. Eating the right foods can help you combat depression, anxiety, and even addiction. Of course, the food alone won’t do it – a quality diet is great, but it isn’t a panacea. Understanding the impact of something as simple as a diet change on physical health, emotional health and your self-esteem, however, is a great primer on why lifestyle changes should be pursued.
And the benefits don’t stop after long-term sobriety. You continue to benefit from a good diet through longevity, better physical condition, and of course, potentially lower healthcare costs.
Exercise Is a Perfect Recovery Tool
Addiction is powerful because it hijacks the part of the brain dedicated to regulating pleasure. Exercise can help you restore that part back to normal. It’s been common knowledge for a while now that physical health and mental health heavily correlate, and that one can help prevent issues with the other.
Many people, however, lack the motivation or conviction to follow through with regular exercise. Struggling with drug addiction can give you the motivation to kick your addiction to the curb and hit the gym instead.
Fitness as the Key
However, if you have the aptitude for it, then you can turn exercise into a goal – a new healthy obsession. Note, that the term obsession here doesn’t refer to an actual obsession. There’s a thin line between obsession and passion, and having a healthy passion for fitness (one that won’t cost your health) can be a good way to keep sober, and it’s not just for the fact that exercise is conducive to better mental health.
Having a goal, such as a competition, weight goal, or sports benchmark, gives you something important to strive for while helping you improve yourself, transform yourself, and steal away the power that addiction used to have over you.
Seeking Out a Goal
If you’re not the type to get serious or competitive about physical exercise and fitness – be it training for a specific sport, training for martial arts, training for weightlifting, Crossfit tournaments, or just training for the sake of bodybuilding – then you can adopt a different goal as part of your recovery process.
If you discover a new love for video games, hiking, or Victorian literature, then get serious about it. Turn your hobby into a hobby you can profit from, emotionally and perhaps even financially. Write and talk about what you love. Go to conventions and meet new people. Get into any form of competition if that’s what you’re about.
Once you discover something you can be a fully-fledged enthusiast about and dedicate yourself to it, you create something that a.) will benefit you in the long-term, and b.) give you more reason to remain sober. You make yourself accountable. Why give up what you’ve worked hard to learn and achieve for another hit? Why let go of your newfound long-term happiness and true joy for something as artificial as a drug high?
Changing the way you live and embracing an aspect of life you can be truly passionate about is one of the best ways to apply everything you learned in your first few days of sober living. It’s fulfilling, rewarding, and best of all, you’re doing it for yourself. Working on yourself is a great way to differentiate who you are from what you once were – by undergoing a personal transformation, you can come to closure and officially separate yourself from the past.
It won’t be easy – dedication never is. But it’ll be worth every minute spent and every ounce of sweat lost.