Are You Fighting Hard Enough for Your Recovery?
After drug rehab, most patients go home on a “pink cloud.” They’re excited about their future in sobriety and are full of ideas of how to make it happen. As the days and weeks pass, though, that feeling can wear off – as feelings will – and be replaced with depression, boredom or cravings, all of which are precursors for relapse. How do you stave off these negative feelings? Working harder on your recovery. Here’s how:
1. Attend regular meetings. Twelve-step meetings are scheduled every day and multiple times a day in some areas. If you have a home meeting, then add a few meetings to your schedule to meet new people, hear something you may not have heard before, and find the inspiration you need to stay on track.
2. Enroll in an outpatient treatment program. A stint in an outpatient program or an outpatient support service can help you stay focused on recovery.
3. Build a support network. Friends and family members as well as others in recovery can provide you with verbal support when you feel tempted to use.
4. Find new healthy sober activities. Distracting yourself by doing something new or rededicating yourself to an old hobby can help take your mind off cravings.
5. Develop goals. Long-term plans can remind you of the big picture and put in perspective what you have to lose if you relapse.
6. Follow through. Long-term plans are best accomplished when broken up into short-term, attainable goals. Create a plan and do the first thing on it that you need to accomplish in order to make your goals into a reality.
7. Track your progress. Seeing how far you’ve come can be an encouragement to continue. It’s why we mark sobriety by months and by years. It’s a big deal. And when you see how far you’ve come, you are less likely to go back to square one by relapsing.
8. Check in. If you still don’t feel that you can handle the pressures of day-to-day life and remain sober, check in with a therapist or drug addiction treatment counselor. Some people have co-occurring mental health issues that make remaining sober that much more difficult. Getting treatment for these issues can help you to do better in your recovery as well as increase your quality of life.
Contact us today if you would like to learn more about how you can fight drug addiction and move toward a life of sobriety that you can be proud of.