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The Best Support Systems To Encourage Your Sobriety

Posted on March 27, 2018March 27, 2018 by JohnAdmin

They say it takes a village to raise a child – but once we are adults, we do not magically go our own way and live our lives out alone. We all need mentors, friends, pupils, and partners as our support systems. Life is filled with relationships and people we care about, and not only do these interactions make our lives that much richer, but they can give us meaning and purpose.

When healing from addiction, it is important to realize how much addiction pulls a person’s needs and priorities into themselves. The need to be selfish kicks in as a natural consequence of how addiction rewires your brain – but as that fades away, our ability to exist for others and be dependable matters more than ever.

In come support systems. To understand why it’s important to be surrounded by the right people when fighting addiction, it’s important to understand what a support system is, and why addiction is not something fought on your own.

What Is A Support System?

A support system is a collection of people providing emotional or otherwise tangible support. Support systems sometimes exist for a specific purpose – to help an athlete stay at the top of his game – or exist in general to help you in life.

Support systems do not necessarily have to be formed – many people naturally surround themselves with supportive individuals and build their own support system with the help of their friends and family. A support system is defined not by unmitigated support or lack of healthy criticism, but by having a healthy relationship with those closest to you, one built on trust and reliance.

Your Support Systems In Sobriety

A support system is, if you care to define it that way, the complete network of everyone you interact with for emotional support during your journey through sobriety. But you can also consider yourself as being a part of several support systems. Most commonly, a person’s support system will be composed of:

Family: First and foremost, our family is central to recovery and sobriety. Some of us are on bad terms with our family due to misunderstandings or seemingly irreconcilable differences. Often enough, it’s due to addiction. It is up to you and your judgment as a sober person to decide whether making up with your family is worth it, and conducive to your emotional wellbeing and theirs. If yes, then family can be an incredible source of support.

Friends: For some, friends are their second family. For others, their friends are their family. Everyone needs friends, and luckily, we can choose them. One of the harder things to do in early recovery is cut out friendships that harm us and recognize toxic relationships where they can limit recovery or actively hinder it. By sticking only with the friends who truly matter to you – even if you end up with only one or two pals – you’re potentially saving yourself decades of grief and unnecessary drama, while gaining the benefits of having close friends to relate to, be open with, and share life with.

Sober Mentors: Sober mentors can be individuals you look up to as beacons of successful sobriety and personal mastership, or professionals with whom you have developed a personal bond as mentor and mentee. It is important to have people to look up to in recovery, both as an inspiration and as a guidance for when times are tough.

Sober Groups: Group therapy is about more than listening to other people’s experiences– it’s about making lasting connections with a few people, connections that can turn into friendships. It’s also about sharing your own struggles and triumphs, confirming the successes in your journey rather than dwelling on the mistakes, and helping others feel inspired or better able to take on their own difficulties with renewed confidence. This can be a tremendous source of emotional support as well.

Supplementing Your Support Systems

A support system can help you deal with the challenges of addiction and sobriety – but there’s more to a support system than the people you interact with. Actions, places, and hobbies can be part of your personal emotional support system. Each and every person needs to supplement their system according to their needs, passions, and interests.

Some find that the best way to help them cope with early recovery and find people to communicate with is through sports, or games, or art. Find a community that matches your personality and interests and turn to your hobbies when you feel stressed or bored.

Sobriety is not just about living life drug-free, but about having fun being alive. Find ways to support your sobriety by having fun and being yourself.

It Goes Both Ways

It’s best to think of support systems as a part of a larger organic social structure. It is not healthy to think of the individuals in a support system as functions to your recovery, or aids to your problems. Rather, they’re individuals. People, who love you or care for you, and are helping you from time to time. But it is never a one-sided relationship.

A support system exists as one definition of a collection of relationships from a certain point of view – your parents support you, but as their child, you provide them with a lot of emotional comfort as well. They care about other people, as well, and each lead their own lives, with their own thoughts, opinions, dreams, and experiences. Your friends are there for you when the going gets tough, but you’d do anything for them, too, respecting them and their time and not putting yourself over their own needs.

The people you met while going through treatment pitch in to help you stay sober, and tell tales of their struggles in addiction, their accomplishments, and regrets – just as you share your thoughts and experiences, helping others feel inspired, or gain much-needed insight into how addiction can unfold in other people’s lives. It’s never a one-to-one exchange, and it never has to be, but social support systems only function if everyone does their part in helping one another.

That’s a key difference between sobriety and addiction. In addiction, it’s about looking out for number one. But sobriety opens up the option of being part of a community.

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.

What Challenges Can I Expect To Face On The Path to Sobriety?

Posted on March 13, 2018 by JohnAdmin

When a person struggles with an addiction, their brain rewires what it means to be motivated and happy. Drugs can change our reward system, make us think and feel different, and ultimately make the path to sobriety extremely difficult.

But it’s not impossible. Now more than ever, modern medicine and psychiatry have combined to create multiple different effective treatment methods for addiction. There is no one-size-fits-all – instead, there are dozens of therapy and treatment types, applicable for different circumstances, and for different goals.

Yet the treatment can’t do all the work for us. Addiction treatment at the end of the day is still just a curriculum, and it’s up to each individual student to put in the work to graduate. The first step is accepting your problem and recognizing the need to fight against it. The second step is choosing to fight, against all odds. From there, each path changes – but every path is filled with challenges, temptations, fears, and anxieties.

To overcome addiction and maintain sobriety, you must overcome each challenge. And knowing what you’re likely to face can help you prepare.

The Fear Of Relapse

Relapse itself is a challenge, but it’s the fear of relapse that might present an even bigger problem for most people in early recovery. No one said the path to sobriety was going to be easy, but the fear of making even a single, simple mistake builds up this incredible tension that finally explodes in painful regret and shame.

While relapsing is by no means a picnic and signifies that something has gone wrong in the recovery process, it should not be something so devastating that it sets you back several months’ worth of progress. A relapse is a mistake, but the damage it does is often due to the fear we have of relapsing, rather than the relapse itself.

By instead treating it as a teaching moment, to learn from and understand its trigger, and thus better prepare yourself in the future so that it won’t happen again, you can be more calm and secure about taking the path to sobriety rather than feeling anxious of its perceived frailty.

The Temptation Of Drug Use

Drug cravings are common while you’re still addicted – but even after treatment, cravings can develop all throughout the early recovery period, tempting you especially in moments of great stress or overwhelming emotion. Additionally, returning to everyday life after treatment can bring back many memories associated with drug use, making the temptations grow stronger.

For the first few months on the path to sobriety, dealing with these temptations and cravings can be torturous.

The Fear Of Being Different

There is more to addiction than simply using too much of a certain drug. Sometimes, drugs like alcohol are part of everyday life or work culture. Resisting the urge to drink on a social occasion and refusing drinks when they are explicitly offered to you can be difficult. But part of the urge to drink comes from the sheer pressure to conform and be like everyone else at the party.

Be different. And embrace that uniqueness. Dare to be yourself, and uphold the sober you by drinking coffee, or ordering a virgin drink. Keep yourself from being asked awkward questions or offered drinks by always making sure you have something to sip on and assert your sobriety and ignore those who might ridicule it – because in the back of your mind, you know it’s good for you and those around you. Remind yourself of embarrassing and painful memories, rather than thoughts of how easy it would be to get yourself a drink.

Declining Social Events

Similar to the peer pressure at work or at parties when being offered something you don’t want, learn how to say no to social occasions when you don’t have the energy for them and feel the urge to drink arise as a way to cope with the stress of being around people. Sometimes, we use alcohol or other drugs to bring out our extroverted side and suppress the introvert.

Embrace the introvert instead. Go out when you want to go out and be adamant about spending your free time alone or in the comforts of your own home when you feel like you don’t have the motivation to be with others while sober. Don’t let others dictate who you should be, or what you should be like, and don’t let them rob you of your comforts as you work to maintain everything you’ve gained on the path to sobriety.

Quitting Old Friendships On The Path To Sobriety

One of the biggest challenges in early on the path to sobriety is fighting against the common temptations faced by most fresh out of a treatment program. Many of these can be spontaneous, but they are often triggered by memories, caused by sights, smells and sounds.

Friends can be a powerful trigger for drug cravings, especially if they refuse to accept or respect your sobriety or continue using around you. If so, it’s critical to cut them off and end those relationships for your own good. And most of the time, that can be a very hard thing to do.

Making Sober Friends

Just as it is important to cut off old friends who hurt your efforts of staying sober, it’s important to make new friends you can support you and keep you sane throughout your sobriety. Yet overcoming your fears and potential trust issues enough to open to others and let them in on your recovery can be difficult. Nevertheless, it’s a critical step towards long-term sobriety, both for you and for them.

Everyone’s perception and struggles with addiction are different, and there is guarantee that you’ll encounter any or most of these challenges. And there may be challenges that cannot be accurately described or summarized in a single article. Sometimes, life hits you with a curveball you can’t be prepared for – and it’s then when everything you learned in addiction treatment becomes extremely valuable.

Living is hard, not because the day-to-day breaks us, but because it’s the little accumulative stresses and giant gut-punches that wear down our defenses. By staying together, finding people you can support and be supported by, and by sticking to your own inner lessons on recovery and sobriety, you can keep your defenses strong even against the greatest challenges and tragedies.

Think of it as a dance. If you trip, then you tripped. And all you must do is get back up. And next time, it gets a little easier to see that tricky spot as it comes towards you, and you can prepare for it. If you don’t give up and trust in yourself and those around you, your path to sobriety is a sure one, no matter how long it might be.

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.

Personalized Care Makes Transitioning Into Sober Life Easier

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

As a disease, addiction has a certain pathology. It develops as a result of repetitive substance use or certain behavior. It is triggered and builds in the reward center of the brain, creating a craving that overpowers a person’s motivation for many other things in life, taking center stage. Addiction can make a person do things they would otherwise never have done. In a way, it changes people, especially at its peak. But there are differences, many of which are not necessarily very subtle. Some people develop a host of co-dependent illnesses as a result of their addiction or had tendencies towards certain behavior that is extremely exacerbated. Others suffer from conditions due to their drug use, including infections, sleep disorders, lesions, paralysis and more. The exact cause and effect of an addiction changes from person to person, based on their personal history of drug use, their family history and medical records, environmental factors, and more; which makes personalized care in addiction recovery so important.

In a way, addiction can be simplified into a loss of self-control, the development of a brain disease that urges its victims to constantly obsess over the object of their addiction, and the pursuit of it. But there is so much more to it on an individual level.

Just as the disease itself can be intricate and complicated, so must the treatment match in its individualized and unique goals. Addiction cannot be treated with a blanket one-size-fits-all program – just as any other complicated disease or mental illness requires a very specific set of tools and a program tailored to each individual. That is where personalized care comes into the picture.

What Is Personalized Care?

Personalized care, or individually-fitted, or tailor-made care, is any form of medicine that tackles a patient’s needs individually, understanding that individual differences between patients matter greatly.

A disease as varied as addiction cannot be tackled on the presumption that one case is just like another, and cookie-cutter treatments do not work as effectively as personalized treatments, nor are they as inclusive, as certain methods are sure to fail with some individuals despite producing excellent results elsewhere.

Personalized care also encourages a deeper understanding of addiction and the many factors that affect its development in an individual.

Why Addiction Treatment Is Individual And Group-Based

Personalized care caters to the individual – and in a way, addiction itself is a battle between you and the disease. But there is more to defeating addiction than being on your own – and many would argue that it’s next to impossible alone.

Personalized care is important in the context that it eliminates cookie-cutter practices and makes it an industry standard to treat patients individually, as per their own circumstances and needs. But that does not mean addiction treatment should only factor the individual.

As such, any treatment has to focus on the individual, while also giving room for people to interact with one another within the treatment, in order to get a perspective of how others live their lives while dealing with addiction, and in order to understand just how addiction can touch the lives of anyone, regardless of gender, race, age or status.

Group meetings, group outings, and encouraging individuals to make new friends in different environments – not just in circles of sobriety, but in relation to their old or newfound hobbies, as well – is important. It helps patients create a circle of friends to rely on when things get tough.

Some treatment facilities even help close friends and family become better “therapists” for after the end of a program, helping them understand addiction, and the do’s and don’ts of helping someone fighting against it.

The Difference Between Treatment And Living

Residential treatments, sober living facilities and outpatient programs – these are possible treatment templates, existing to cater to people throughout various stages of addiction, in various stages of their life. When they end, you are going to be in the “real world”, facing everyday issues from a perspective of stone cold sobriety, with the task to survive, function, and learn to enjoy it all again.

It can take time, and you should never be alone. Whether you’re with family, friends or professionals, the transition from treatment to living life again may be the most crucial aspect of sobriety. While fighting against withdrawal and addiction in a sober living environment is hard, it is an altogether different experience from living your everyday life, knowing where to get what you need to be right back where you started.

Some people make it easier on themselves by moving and cutting off contact to old acquaintances – but the memories are still there, and the stress of living is accumulatively stronger than the stress of treatment.

It is important to be prepare. And there is no better preparation than personalized care. These personalized treatments are your best shot at developing the skills and abilities to stick to your sober routine – and they will help you transition from treatment into a sober life.

Dealing With Addiction In The Long-Term

The treatment is just the beginning. The goal of addiction treatment is not necessarily to beat the addiction within the given time limit of the program, regardless of whether it is three months, or half a year. The goal of addiction treatment is to help each patient build an assortment of tools and skills with which to troubleshoot life’s problems, particularly helping individuals tackle stress and loss and everyday life without succumbing to the urge to use again.

As the months and years go by, each day after day of sobriety well-spent, it may get easier to stay sober and not think about the old days. Sometimes, relapses still happen. But if you survive, it’s certainly not the end of the fight. You simply pick yourself up, go back for treatment, and figure out where things went wrong – where you felt the urge to use so strongly, and how you can go about it the next time.

Each mistake we make throughout our lives is but an opportunity to learn, improve, and prepare. And as long as you’re still living, the fight against your addiction has not failed.

Some days are worse than others. That is what friends and family are for. Stay close to the people who mean the most to you and accept their help when you know you need it. And before you know it, you’ll be out of early recovery, and in for a long life of cherished sober living.

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.

How Does Someone Become Addicted?

Posted on January 31, 2018 by JohnAdmin

Addiction is multifaceted in both its appearance and ill effects. Some people become addicted quickly, while others go through months of drug use and quit at the drop of a hat. Some people exhibit terrifying and destructive behavior, while others can successfully go through great lengths to hide their addiction, suffering underneath the surface.

There is a misconception that only certain “types of people” become addicted. It is true that addiction is more likely in times of distress, or as a result of escalating self-medication – but it is also true that anyone can fall prey to addiction. Society’s poorest addicts are every bit as human and personable as upper and middle-class families struggling with alcoholism, across all ages.

Drugs affect the human brain in the same way every time, but what that effect has on individual people is an entirely different matter. Understanding how addiction works, how individuals deal with it, and how drugs affect the human body can go a long way towards learning the how’s and why’s of addicted behavior, and making progress in your own recovery.

Drugs And The Human Body

Have you ever had a craving for a certain food? A certain activity? Or even a certain person? A lot of our needs and wants are driven by a predisposed code most humans have – we’re pleasure seekers in one form or another, and the things that give us pleasure (sex, chocolate, fatty food) have become human favorites due to thousands of years spent selectively surviving the Earth’s harsh environments.

We’re more complex than just our base instincts – but they’re there nonetheless, and to satisfy them can feel really good. This is all due to a part of the brain known as the pleasure center. When we do certain things or ingest certain substances, our pleasure center releases dopamine, the feel-good neurotransmitter. Drugs overstimulate the pleasure center by manipulating our neurons and changing the way dopamine is released, either by releasing more of it than usual or by preventing our cells from properly disposing of it, thus keeping it in our synapses for longer.

As this happens, our body and brain begin to form an addiction to whatever is releasing this unnatural amount of euphoria. Too much of a good thing is no good –and in the case of substance abuse, addictive substances cause a physical reaction as a result of consistent and continuous usage.

Once addiction kicks in and the cravings start, your mind begins to interpret them as needs, more than just wants. Addictive behavior – even the destructive and risky kind – stems from a combination of a corrupted pleasure center, and a decline in cognition and reasoning. Essentially, it becomes harder to keep a cool head and be reasonable about your behavior, and continuous use often leads to impulsive behavior, and worsening decision making as you become addicted.

Tolerance is another aspect of addiction that makes quitting all the more difficult. As addiction continues, the body begins to form a resistance to the effectiveness of a drug, reducing its effects. For example, it may take more alcohol to get drunk, or it may take more cocaine to achieve the same high. This is the body’s cells defending itself from a barrage of unnatural brain functions – but the result simply spurs an addict on to use more drugs in order to achieve the same effect. While the body can protect itself against a high, it cannot protect itself against the lethal side effects of an overdose.

When trying to quit after tolerance kicks in, it is not unusual for a person to go into withdrawal. Withdrawal symptoms can range from discomfort and irritability to violent sickness, and even death if approached too drastically, depending on the drug. These occur because the body has gotten used to the drug intake, and depends on it for certain brain functions. Cutting off your own supply requires readjustment, the kind that is best done under medical supervision.

When Does Someone Become Addicted?

Addiction begins in the brain, but it is difficult to feasibly track someone’s addiction through constant brain scans – so the most reliable source for when someone can become addicted is the person themselves. For someone to be an addict, they have to admit to themselves that they are one, or exhibit enough symptoms so that denying it would be completely illogical.

A total inability to stop oneself from using – that is what makes someone become addicted. If a person can’t stop themselves despite promises or plans to do so, and despite negative consequences that would typically discourage behavior, then they’re addicted. If a person loses their job, destroys a relationship, or even commits a crime to satisfy their addiction, then it is clear that they have a serious problem.

Addiction And Mental Health

Addiction and mental health are intertwined for several reasons, the most glaring one being the fact that addiction is a disease of the brain above all else. While different kinds of addiction can lead to organ failure and cancer, the brain is what is first affected and causes the addiction to begin with. The combination of addiction and the destructive behavior it can help cause often triggers mental health issues that may have been under control in the past, or were lingering underneath a stable surface.

On the other hand, existing mental health conditions can be made worse when you become addicted, while often playing a part in causing addiction (trauma, anxiety and depression are all wrought with stigma, and are conditions that are prone to self-medication gone awry).

The link between addiction and mental health issues must never be forgotten, especially because both are affected by a public perception of healthy vs. unhealthy.

Addiction, just like other conditions, does not reduce a person to the stereotype of their affliction, and it is important to treat every individual as an individual, and not “another junkie” or “another kook”. These generalizations often drive people to hide their problems, deny dangerous symptoms or lie in order to avoid unjust criticism and emotional harm.

Putting Addiction Behind You

It happens over time, and it takes time to heal and recover from. When you become addicted it can cause serious damage over the course of just a few months, but regardless of how long the disease has been ongoing, it can be put behind you with the right treatment and support.

Drug addiction treatment has gotten better than ever, with programs designed to accommodate any individual’s unique therapeutic needs and considerations. Treatment facilities have long recognized that there is no proper one-size-fits-all solution for addiction, and the result is a comprehensive, custom process.

As such, there’s also no telling how long it’ll take you to get over this period in your life – but as long as you think you can, you will.

Why 2018 Is The Year For Addiction Recovery

Posted on January 9, 2018 by JohnAdmin

A new year has arrived, and with it, a hope for better times to come. With the cutoff of an old year and the celebration of a new one, it’s only natural to hope for terrible things to end and for good things to come. But one has to do more than hope if they want to decide what their future will look like. This year can be your year, if you want it to be. It’s a common tradition around the world to pick the new year as a time to make new commitments, and sign up for major changes. However, for many, these resolutions to be a new, better person lead to disappointment and procrastination. Too often, we set the bar too high and fail, causing more hurt than personal progress. That said, make 2018 the year for addiction recovery.

There is a right way and a wrong way to go about using the new year as the mark of something new and good. And if you go about it the right way, then 2018 can be your year for addiction recovery – and the start of a new chapter in your life.

Celebrating A New Year

Cultures as far back as early civilization have celebrated the end of an annual cycle, and saw it as the birth of something new and exciting. Not only was life for many civilizations rooted in seasonal changes and their effects on agriculture and commerce, but the astrological (and thus religious) importance of a full year ending made the new year special in nearly every culture.

Today, we celebrate the new year every 1^st of January across the world, and we look back on the previous year, either to salute or mourn its passing. Sometimes, despite time only moving forward a single day, the shift from one year to the next can be emotionally invigorating, and signifies a time for letting go of the past and focusing on the new opportunities of the future.

For someone fighting addiction, you can make 2018 the year for addiction recovery and reclaim your life. But it won’t be quite as easy as jotting down a quick and short resolution, and then spending the next few months struggling to stay clean without a plan for relapse or other issues. 2018 can be your year for addiction recovery, because the year has just started and now is the perfect time to make full use of that fact.

But you have to approach your new resolution just right.

Make It Your Year For Addiction Recovery

The key to making 2018 a successful year for addiction recovery is by taking the right approach. The basic tenets for tackling recovery are:

Create a list you have easy access to and see every day.
Don’t tell everyone about your plans and aspirations.
Find a hobby or passion you are/could be deeply invested in.
Set short-term attainable goals to improve in your hobby.
Create a time-frame for the first quarter of the year.
Improve yourself – pick something to work on, and focus on it.
Make new friends and surround yourself with trusted old ones – use the support in times of hardship and loneliness to drive out the cravings.

A few things you absolutely want to avoid include being vague, focusing on your sobriety without having a concrete focal point in your life, and biting off more than you can chew when planning your resolutions for the year.

If you want to focus on recovery, then find healthy ways to cope with trauma and strong emotions, and improve your lifestyle to help reduce the impact of drug use and further learn what it means to be happy without drugs. Here are a few things you could do:

Getting Things Done In Recovery This Year

Addiction is more than just the presence of a set of destructive, maladaptive coping mechanisms. Addiction is also loneliness and negativity – so surrounding yourself by positive, strong people is the best way to ward off issues like a potential relapse.

Start by enrolling in a treatment program and a support group. Sober living homes are an excellent example for an environment that is conducive for both personal growth and long-term sobriety, as well as the tools needed to survive the world outside treatment.

After finding new people who likewise want to make it a year for addiction recovery and stay sober, it’s time to find healthy ways of coping. Some people prefer art, others prefer to exercise, and some have other unique ways of letting go of excess stress or anger. The ability to cope healthily with issues without the use of drugs is vital for snuffing out addiction.

From there, it’s time to focus on improving your skills, and working on all the things you wanted to work on. From starting a DIY project like room renovation to learning a new language, there are countless things you can learn and do throughout 2018 to mold yourself into someone you’re happy about and make it the year for addiction recovery for yourself.

Look Past The Present

2018 is one year – and in time, 2019 will come and 2018 will end. However, that doesn’t mean that your commitments should end. Drug addiction recovery isn’t a temporary thing tied to one year for addiction recovery. It’s a goal to spend the rest of your days not tied to your old addiction, and not driven towards bad decision-making by substance abuse.

Thus, see this 2018 as the year you begin your journey, and fight your way through the hardest parts of addiction recovery. From withdrawals to relapses and the emotional struggles of relearning what it means to feel good about yourself, and feel good in general without substance use, the first few months of 2018 will likely be rough. But if you continue to set new goals, and always leave room for growth and improvement, it’s only a matter of time before you make your addiction take the backseat.

Some people argue that when you go through something as substantial and potentially traumatic as an addiction, it’ll always be with you. And while that’s true, that doesn’t mean it gets to decide how you live. You should never forget your past – but you should be able to live with it, and move on past it, to a future where you make choices and decisions that positively reflect on what you learned while fighting your addiction. This 2018, take your first steps towards a life you can be proud of.

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.

How to Talk About Addiction To Your Loved Ones

Posted on December 19, 2017 by JohnAdmin

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

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

If You’re Struggling With Addiction

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

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

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

If You Think They Have A Problem

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

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

Offering Help & Talk About Addiction

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

How To Support Your Loved One

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

“It’s not a problem.”

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

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

“You’re not trying hard enough.”

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

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

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

“Aren’t we important to you?”

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

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

The Most Important Bit

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

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