The bitter work of liberating oneself from addiction can be daunting for even the most prepared individuals. For anyone taking the first or next step into a life after addiction: first, we applaud you. Courage may be invisible. But if you’re trying to take the next step into sobriety, you have enough to outshine the sun. Here are seven steps that you are more than capable of:
1) Admit that you have a problem
It’s a cliché, but not because it isn’t true. It’s a cliché, because it’s always true. Addictions, each and every one of them, spawn lies. The first lies are the ones that we tell ourselves: That we can’t change; That sobriety won’t stick; that you don’t deserve to get help. But the crown jewel of addiction lies is “I don’t *really* have a problem.” From the outside, it’s easy, comically easy, to spot the symptoms of someone else’s addiction as a problem. But from the inside, the world gets warped like you’re looking through the wrong end of a telescope: I can’t get to work on time because I’m hungover every morning becomes “my boss fired me because they hate me”; My partner left me because I spent their check feeding my addiction becomes “No one ever gives me break”; My addiction is ruining my health and shrinking my lifespan becomes “The next one won’t kill me. I could go on. Rationalizations, both big and small, can become the only language that those struggling with addiction can speak.
Admitting that you have a problem is hard. It can make you feel small, stupid and pathetic once you realize that you fell for all the lies that you told yourself. It shouldn’t. You should feel proud that you finally waded through your sea of lies and took a true accounting of your life.
2) Detox and Rehab
Identify a proper treatment plan and get yourself clean. Attempting to detox outside of a certified, supervised rehabilitation center can not only be ineffective, it can be flat out dangerous. Depending on the substance in question and the duration of the abuse, detoxing in an uncontrolled environment can be dangerous, and in rare cases, potentially lethal. Choosing the right rehabilitation center to detox is a crucial investment in your sober tomorrow.
Whether it’s your first or fiftieth time getting sober, at a treatment facility like the Neuro Psychiatric Treatment Center[1], you’ll receive world class personal care in our beautiful South Florida facility. With only 28 beds (to ensure highly personal, private spaces during your recovery), space in our facility limited, but your life is even more precious. Don’t wait. Don’t hesitate to reach out. Your life matters and we want to make it as special as it can be.
3) Accept that you still have a problem
You’ve returned home from rehab. You’re as sober as the day you were born. Which is more sober than you’ve been in a long, long time. And now it’s time to remake your life in a sober image. And just like getting sober, the first step to staying sober involves admitting that you have a problem. As everyone in recovery knows, sobriety is hard. There’s no getting around it. And you need to be ready for how you’re going stay sober on a bad day, in a moment of weakness or on a day that you want to celebrate, but you’re not quite sure how to celebrate in recovery. It’s going to take time to re-calibrate to the idea of a life in recovery, but don’t be intimidated.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. Your addiction won’t be beaten in a day. But all you ever have to do is stay sober today.
4) Review previous attempts
If this isn’t your first time in recovery, congratulations on making it back! You know how hard this can be and you should feel proud that you did it again. So try and take stock of what went wrong the last time(s). There is no shame in relapsing. But if you’ve relapsed before, you owe it to yourself to take a personal inventory of your previous missteps, identify how those mistakes were made, and how you can avoid making those same mistakes again. You’ve worked so hard to get to step 4. You owe your past self, and the struggle and sacrifice that brought you here, your best effort in making their hard work count.
If this is your first time in recovery, congratulations! You really made it and you should feel proud of the personal fortitude that has brought you here. Even though this is your first time, you still have a lot to learn from your past. Before you took the serious step of fully detoxing, you probably tried to cut back, or told yourself that you wouldn’t imbibe on certain days or at certain times. If you made deals with yourself that you later broke, it’s a great opportunity to try to take a personal inventory and figure out how things went wrong. Was there a stress trigger? Social pressure? Boredom? Every potential pitfall that you can avoid gives you that much better of a chance of making your recovery stick.
5) Build a support system
Whether it’s the community you can build in a 12 step program, or a new reliance on the friends and family that may already be in your life, it’s important to establish a community when you’re in recovery. Your pre-recovery ties can be an important source of accountability for you, especially if they were part of the reason you went into recovery in the first place. That being said, if your pre-recovery ties aren’t conducive to a sober lifestyle, you’ll need to make a potentially painful decision about which of your social ties best serves your commitment to recovery.
In 12 step programs, you can join communities built around recovery. The benefits of social ties to other people committed to sobriety and recovery is longstanding and profound. Not only can you find support in 12 step programs, you can alleviate a natural sense of aloneness that may come from being the only person in their social circle that is in recovery from substance abuse. No matter what it seems like, you’re not alone. And if you need help, get help.
6) Identify and address toxic environments
Your environment will shape your outlook on life. Once you return home from rehab, you’ll need to understand that the life you’re re-entering was a life that facilitated your addiction. Things *will* need to change. Obviously, you are strongly advised to be mindful of your time and exposure to any environment centered around substance consumption. Depending on your lifestyle, substantive changes may not even be possible. But even environments that triggered substance abuse should be cautiously returned to, if not avoided entirely. Environments that have routinely engendered, for example, stress should be heavily scrutinized for their potential of triggering a relapse, especially if drug or alcohol consumption was once a crutch for dealing with stress.
7) Enjoy sobriety
Congratulations, you did it! You’re living the first days of the rest of your life. You’ve made the necessary changes and you’re enjoying the hard earned rewards of recovery. Make sure you take stock of your path and give yourself credit for all the work that it took to make it this moment. You deserve it.
If you’d like to take the next step to making this a reality, please reach out to us at https://npaddictionclinic.com/admissions/ Or give us a call at 1- (888) 574-3506. We’re ready to help.
