Drug Rehab Is The Beginning of the Journey
There is a misconception out there that drug rehab is at the end of a person’s journey with addiction. In fact, it is often much closer to the beginning. The addiction itself remains regardless of whether you go to drug rehab. Drug rehab can change the scenery and the path you take.
Experience Better Physical Health
You can have a different relationship with your body when you have gone through drug rehab. Granted, many people go through drug rehab more than once. Addiction to hard drugs can be particularly difficult to endure. Drugs like meth, cocaine, heroin, and other opioids are powerfully addictive. They can have real staying power, and can beckon the recovering drug addict with suprising influence.
Healthy habits can be formed in the same manner as destructive habits. They can make your body feel physically different in a pleasing way. They can also become psychologically comfortable after some time. A person who has not exercised much can like how their body feels through the day after they have been physically active. If this feels invigorating, relaxing, or something else positive, they will like repeating it. It also becomes part of the mental expectations of their day.
A recovering addict can use exercise as alone time, social time, an escape from stress, or for fun. Exercise alone might not be powerful enough to replace drug cravings. However, good physical health feels quite different from being strung out, charged up, or fuzzed out on drugs. This can become something to strive for.
Experience A New Relationship With Emotion
New things can be difficult, even if they are positive. The main reason women use drugs and alcohol in risky ways is because they are coping with emotions. They use drugs to cover them, blur them, or change them dramatically. They begin to expect that emotions are to be changed by outside forces if they are unpleasant or not good enough. Ironically, it’s the very use of drugs that gets emotions all out of whack.
Drug rehab doesn’t make pain go away. And many women in drug rehab have plenty of emotional (sometimes physical) pain to deal with. In fact, drug rehab can make some pain more obvious. However, drug treatment counselors and other women at the rehab facility help teach addicts how to manage and live with their pain. Making something less painful is not a bad thing, and it’s a very understandable human desire. Honoring your emotions with honesty and compassion is the healthy way to do it.
Drug Rehab Starts New Journey With Self
As you can see, getting started in drug rehab is really just the beginning. It is the start of a new path, a new branch into different territory. Drug rehab can be somewhat unsettling – uncovering year’s worth of stifled emotions is not easy. But you may find you have strength you never knew. Step one of the journey has begun.