addiction recovery process Archives - Page 2 of 2

Changing the Perception of Addiction as Failure

Posted on February 21, 2018 by JohnAdmin

Addiction is not a failure, yet many have the perception of addiction being failure. To many people, someone who is addicted is morally challenged, emotionally immature, and weak-willed. Addiction is a sign of weakness and failure to them, rather than a disease.

This shows a fundamental lack of understanding in the general population of what addiction is, how it occurs, what it feels like, and what it means to fight it.

Thankfully, addiction is not incredibly common. Only about 6% of the US adult population struggle with substance use. That is enough to make it a nationwide issue that affects most families, but not enough to make it something most people can intimately relate to. So, to truly and effectively fight addiction, at home and in the streets, we must understand it and change the perception of addiction.

The first step to that is dispelling any false notions, such as how addiction is formed, or what being addicted says about a person’s character.

Addiction Can Happen To Anyone

Addiction does not discriminate based on willpower, mental health, intelligence, or personality. Some people are more susceptible to addiction than others, but this depends on their emotional state and the drug itself as much as it depends on their genetic predisposition (family history), and more.

People with addiction cannot be described with a single stereotype – it is a disease that affects people from all backgrounds, all statuses, throughout all ages and races, and across both genders despite the perception of addiction commonly held by the public. Highly influential lawmakers and politicians, celebrities and business people, managers, and academics. From the poorest and least successful to the richest and most gifted, addiction rears its head and wreaks havoc.

Risk factors exist. However, so do protective factors. While eliminating risk factors can go a long way in preventing addiction in families, it is not a guarantee. However, identifying risk factors and protective factors can give very important context to some families who wonder why someone they know, and love is struggling with addiction. Risk factors include:

Emotional vulnerability and excessive stress.
A disharmonic/dysfunctional home environment.
Peer pressure/addicted peers.
Age & sex (teens and men are more likely to use drugs, while women are quicker to become addicted to them).
Risk-seeking behavior.
Mental illness & self-medication.
Drug use in the family/addiction history.
Lack of opportunity/widespread oppression.

However, protective factors play a role as well. These factors alleviate the risk of addiction in children and adults:

Supportive family members/parental involvement.
A satisfying job & manageable stress levels.
An interconnected community.
Upwards social mobility.
Better education on addiction.
Readily-available counseling and mental healthcare.

However, while these factors tie into why someone may or may not become addicted, they do not imply that addiction is a necessary result of the above risks, or that a protective environment will completely discourage drug use. Life is complicated, and we cannot control all its aspects. What we can do is understand why things might have happened through the right perception of addiction and help those in need find the road they need to better themselves.

Addiction does not begin out of nowhere, either. It is important to address the meaning of choice in addiction.

The Difference Between Choice And Addiction

The key point towards explaining what makes addiction so heinous and why its victims deserve compassion rather than judgment, is the concept of choice and motivation, and what the brain has to do with it all.

Science has addressed that addiction stems from a reaction in the brain’s reward pathways tied to the use of certain drugs. They change the way you think, coupling the motivational processes of the brain with drug-seeking habits. This creates a loop where, instead of thinking about your passions, your future, or even your relationships to others, you relentlessly crave the next high. Nothing makes you as happy as getting the next high does, and resisting that craving is unbelievably difficult.

Yes, addiction always begins with a choice. Multiple choices, in fact. You cannot trigger an addiction with one high – but you can activate the mechanism that leads to addiction, making you much more likely to use again after the first usage of an addictive drug. It is this perception of addiction that is often misunderstood, yet still dangerous.

Generally-speaking, people choose to use drugs before they become addicted – but that can always be considered a mistake, and no human goes through life without making them. Only unlike many other mistakes, the consequences for this mistake are life-changing, and can be often avoidable with proper treatment, support, and compassion.

Just because bad choices lead to addiction does not mean that recovery is as simple as “choosing to stop.” The conscious choice of getting better is an important part of the recovery process, but it is only the first step. This perception of addiction that simply “choosing” to get better is all it takes is what makes relapses so much more damning and painful than they should be.

Relapses, which occur when a sober individual loses their sobriety and goes back to using, are part of the recovery process. They can be wakeup calls, providing those in recovery with a much-needed reminder or lesson that can help them along the way. But if approached from the point of view of failure, they can end sobriety entirely and spell someone’s doom.

Addiction itself is the punishment for making “bad choices”, even when they were simply misguided attempts at escaping from some other pain, or to fit in. But once addiction begins, choice alone is not enough to do the trick. Treatment, on the other hand, can work wonders. If people choose to get help.

The Perception Of Addiction Starts At Home

Addiction is a widespread issue, touching people in all walks of life across the country. But individually, it is best if we put our focus on our families and communities, doing what we can to make things better and change the perception of addiction. If you have a family member in rehab, or in recovery in general, then be sure to communicate with treatment centers to determine how best to help them.

If you have been sober for a while, you might find it helpful to help others and support them on their journey out of addiction. By encouraging people to get help, and proving the efficacy of modern addiction treatment methods, everybody can do a little bit to help fight the issue.

Preventing Relapse In The New Year

Posted on December 28, 2017 by JohnAdmin

Relapsing during addiction recovery is when the urge to use overwhelms you to the point where you fail to resist it, and you find yourself using again. This is more than just a simple error or mistake – to most people, it’s an act of self-betrayal that can take a lot of emotional strength to overcome. Not only do you have to come to terms with the fact that you’ve gone against something very important to yourself, but you must find a way to forgive yourself to move forward and do your best in preventing relapse before it happens.

Addiction recovery is very much about learning to come to terms with your past, and promise to yourself that you will do better – not just for others, or out of some misguided sense of punishment, but because that is the best thing for yourself and you want the best for yourself.

Many people ignore this crucial fact, covering up the self-love and gratitude aspects of addiction with distractions, pity or self-doubt. It doesn’t matter if you consider it spiritual or psychological – if you cannot come to terms with the things you have done and agree to give yourself another chance, then you won’t have the confidence in yourself to stick to recovery, and sobriety. This faith in your own abilities is tested even further after a relapse, and it is after these relapses that it is hardest to find hope for yourself.

That’s why we need the support and affirmation of others to help build us up to the point where we feel we are strong enough to turn our backs on addiction once and for all and help in preventing relapse. But you can prevent yourself from having to go through such a journey of relapse, through one straightforward way: Improving yourself.

By improving yourself and molding yourself in recovery to be someone you can be proud of, you can help in preventing relapse by by fighting both the psychology of addiction, and how it feeds on our negativity, and the neurological effects that addiction has on the brain, by relearning how to use your reward system effectively and working on the parts of your brain that may have been damaged from drug use. Here are a few example ways in which to improve your chances of preventing a relapse in the new year, and over years to come:

Preventing Relapse: Take Up Painting Or Music

The effects of art therapy on addiction have been noted, but you don’t need to seek approval from a therapist or enter a controlled environment to begin learning an art form, and then experimenting with it. Art, however, takes time and patience, and a lot of focus. This can be especially frustrating to someone in early recovery, who may be struggling with the neurological consequences of addiction, and their effects on both a person’s behavior and cognitive ability.

Thus, art can be an effective way to train these faculties, and learn the reward behind spending countless hours being bad at something, only to get better, and receive the recognition you deserve for it, while discovering a creative outlet that allows you to convey emotion in times when words just will not do – an issue that many have over the course of their recovery journey.

Get Into Hiking

Nature has a profound effect on people who struggle with addiction – in fact, being one with nature has a profound effect on people in general. It is good for your health, both physical and mental, and in turn can be an effective way to help rehabilitate someone, and help in preventing relapse, after an addiction by taking them outside of the repetitive stimuli of the city environment or indoor world, and out into a world of fresh smells, incredible sights, and real living things.

The exact reason for why we feel good when we’re out in forests and parks isn’t entirely understood, but it is well understood that it is important for us to be outside occasionally. Hiking not only provides you with an opportunity to take in a breath of fresh air and take in all of nature’s sights, but it also provides you with the opportunity to get some exercise, without having to necessarily to do in the sterile environment of a commercial gym, or at home, where the motivation to exercise can be difficult to come by.

Exercise is something every human being needs to live a healthy life and keep a healthy body, both of which can make a difference when going through early recovery. But that does not mean you have to suffer to stay fit. If other forms of exercise don’t sit well with you, then hiking may be an enjoyable way to burn calories, stay strong, and help in preventing relapse all at once.

Try Out A Sport

For some, the one thing lacking when it comes to exercise is proper incentive. While good health and physical fitness are rewards in and of themselves, they don’t necessarily inspire a direct sense of accomplishment. Rather, they take years to materialize and maintain, and the effects of exercise are rarely seen in the mirror at a drastic pace. Change is constant, and it’s difficult to track your own.

A sport, on the other hand, is numerical and tangible. There is a sense of competition, either with yourself or with others. The incentives are clear, and depend entirely on your own effort and skill. The rules are set, fair, and reliable. All a sport needs is your input.

It’s a fantastic way to improve yourself – and a wonderful way to help in preventing relapse, by focusing your attention on something entirely different and entirely motivating. You don’t have to go pro – even something as simple as timing and tracking your jogging to improve distance and speed can become competitive, and give you a more engaging way to train, rather than following a program you find boring.

Learn To Cook

While it is a basic life skill and many people can cook, most people cannot cook well. Many people simply throw ingredients together to create a passable meal and satiate their hunger, not out of love for food or appreciation for the harmony between different combinations. If you’ve ever felt like cooking is something you could get into but never had the push to really try to, now may be the perfect opportunity for you to get started.

It has never been as easy to learn how to be a great cook than today. However, it still isn’t glamourous. Get ready for spending many hours doing tedious kitchen tasks, prepping ingredients, practicing your chopping, and learning to use all the utensils and tools of the kitchen.

It may take time, there will be failures and frustrations, but there are few things people respect as much as good cooking. Everyone needs to eat, and if you happen to be extremely good at making delicious things, you’ll have no trouble making plenty of new friends. Speaking of which:

Make New Friends

Drug addiction recovery can be quite lonely at times. You may have had to leave some friends behind when making the change over to sobriety, and even if you did reconnect with others, relating to addiction together – or to similar hardships – can be hard. Tackling these issues on your own is even harder.

With some friends, that can all become much easier. Among the many other ways of preventing relapse in the new year, take it upon yourself to meet new people, and connect with them on things that truly matter to you.

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.

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.