Category: Alternative Treatment

Recovery can begin in a number of manners. Some may be forced into rehab through legal matters, some may go to rehab willingly, a few may decide to quit cold turkey, and even fewer still may have the help of family and friends to quit using without outside help. No matter how your journey begins, if it is still going than you are probably thinking about how much you want to change your life or even how much it needs to change. Taking the first step of admitting you have an issue and seeking help is definitely the first step to independence, but there is much more to come as you move forward in your journey. Read on to learn about some of the common obstacles to independence that are faced by addicts.

There are many obstacles that are common to a large number of addicts. The three biggest are lack of good employment, lack of safe housing, and usually lack of a license. When you are willing to start working toward independence it is often like having to grow up again. You must learn to be an adult with all the related responsibilities. Those with severe addictions have often forgotten or ignored these responsibilities for a length of time. Finding employment or better employment can be a strong first step to independence. This will mean taking time to clean yourself up, create a resume, and put in applications. It may take a week or even a month to find employment, but you should keep trying.

Do not be afraid to take something temporarily if completely unemployed. This will allow you to start making money toward independence and serve the dual purpose of keeping your mind and hands busy so the focus is no longer on what you have given up.

Often as part of employment you will need a form of transportation, for many this means earning back a license. You may need to save up to pay fines, study to renew an expired license, or deal with classes to remove points from a license. This may seem impossible but it is a huge step forward in independence. Another huge step is to find appropriate and safe housing. You may currently be without a home or living in a less than desirable situation, as you gain independence and time in recovery you can work toward safe and affordable housing. Search for a place away from those who will feed your addiction as long term recovery is the goal.

These are just a few big ways to find independence in recovery and each will take time and work. There are often community resources that can help short term if needed. The end game is to create an addiction free life for yourself that you can be proud of in life. This will be different for everyone and will require different steps. Don’t put it off any longer, write out what you need to be independent and start setting goals. The time to start is now.

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When You Are Addicted, You Are At War With Yourself

When you are struggling with an addiction – no matter what it is – you are constantly at war with yourself. You don’t want to be addicted to drugs, alcohol, sex, or gambling, yet you are addicted anyway.

An addicts will tell themselves that they are going to stop, but they can’t. They convince themselves that they will moderate, but they find themselves going on binges in spite of their best intentions. They promise themselves that they won’t devote any more time or money on their habit. Only to empty their bank account in pursuit of the next fix. When you are hooked, no matter what you say to yourself, you will always end up engaging in addictive behavior. This ultimately leads to remorse and regret afterwards.

It is important to recognize that addiction is a powerful force that drives people to do the things they don’t want to do. Addiction has a way of hijacking your brain and taking on a life of its own. Though you want to control it – and try to – it will always lead you down dark roads and leave you feeling completely powerless. 

Most people who are addicted to drugs, alcohol, or other behaviors stay in their addiction for a considerable amount of time before they come to terms with it. This is what denial is all about. Denial tells you that you don’t have a problem, that you can control it, or that next time will be different. As long as you continue to lie to yourself about your condition, you can not recover from it. And – the war will wage on. You will continually be stuck in the cycle of battling yourself.

Ready To Win The War? Surrender Is The Answer

The only way to win the war against yourself and your addiction is to surrender. Surrender is what happens when you stop fighting and give up completely. This may sound like a foreign concept. It’s certainly a difficult one to wrap your mind around. Most people resist the idea of surrender because they have been taught that giving up is a sign of weakness – but this is not the case.

It takes incredible courage to surrender. By relinquishing your illusion of control, you open yourself up to receive the help that you need to overcome your addiction. The truth is, you are NOT controlling your addiction – it is controlling you. You are running around trying to fix everything and hold on to everything because you are afraid that if you stop doing that. You will drown in the sea of your own consequences. The truth is, when you admit that you can’t manage your own life as a result of your addiction, you finally find the strength to recover from it. 

Surrender To Win

There is an old saying in recovery: “Surrender to win”. This is a paradox indeed, but one that offers you a way out of your addiction. When you surrender, you stop fighting yourself. You admit defeat. You accept the fact that your addiction is killing you and ruining your life. Although you wish you could overcome it with your own willpower, you can’t – and you know it. Only when you come to the end of yourself and surrender do you open yourself to victory.

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Moving beyond initial treatment is both a blessing and time of anxiety. As we move on from the first steps toward living free of addiction. We can feel the weight of addiction off of us. Most people are tremendously relieved to think of a life that will not involve the endless machinations required to obtain drugs, to have enough money, and to just survive. On the other hand, this new life is frightening. How will we deal with the triggers and temptations which lie before us?

All treatment programs will offer training on relapse prevention. There are as many programs for preventing a relapse as there are treatment programs. One of the emerging ideas in relapse prevention which is gaining serious traction in mindfulness.

Mindfulness involves a program of meditation and general awareness which seeks to free people form the negative judgments and reactions which are programed into us. All of us have a lifetime of personal and social expectations as to how we are supposed to respond to things in life. Even as we experience our own internal thoughts and feelings, we assign judgments to those thoughts and feelings. Mindfulness seeks to re-direct those judgments.

In the early days of sobriety we are likely to encounter situations which offer triggers. These are situations which make us want to use, and as addicted people, we generally use without any reflection at all. As we apply mindfulness to these moments, we are asked to take time to go ahead and experience the mix of feelings and thoughts. Rather than attempting to control those thoughts, mindfulness asks that we simply allow them to flow through our minds.

It seems that by relaxing our judgments in these situations. We are able to experience negative feelings and thoughts which are the substance of triggers in such a way that the power of these triggers is taken away. If we can work with techniques of meditation and quiet thought, the triggers do not overwhelm us.

What practitioners of mindfulness offer is a program of relaxation and meditation. This requires some training and practice. But over time, we can internalize these practices such that they become our immediate response to stressful or negative situations.

The idea here is that we cannot change our behavior until we change our minds. Changing our minds requires a program of exercise just like working our muscles. The types of reactions we have to stressful and negative situations are learned behaviors. We were not born to treat anxiety with alcohol, for example. Given this, we can learn new ways of thinking about situations in life and this will inevitably lead to new behaviors. Behaviors which do not involve drugs and alcohol.

As we move beyond treatment and rehab we can take the methods and practices of mindfulness with us. These practices do not require counselors or support groups, although there are groups who support and practice mindfulness. We need only learn the meditation techniques and develop the habit of applying these the moment we encounter triggers and difficult situations.

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Values are something you hear about often but not something that many people truly think about in life. If someone asked you right now what you valued in life you could probably think of a few quick answered but they would probably be superficial. However, if someone asked you what your values were in life it may take longer to form an answer. We all have values in life. Values are universal, though what they are is very specific to each person. There are some values that the majority of people have, those of self-respect, identity, health, love, and integrity. This means that most people expect and offer these things to others.

Your personal values are intended to help you lay a solid foundation for permanent change. In fact, your values are the principles in life that you use to find meaning and fulfillment.  They form the foundation for your identity and if consistent, your identity will reflect this consistency. This means you need to construct a foundation of practical values from which you will manage the most important aspects of your life.  In a healthy person, values provide the motivation that drives behavior, the impetus for decision making and the foundation for feelings and emotions. In active addiction we tend to forget our values as everything revolves around and is focused on the addiction. Values are put on the back burner and the addiction is the only concern and focus. For recovery to take place and to make the transition to health, you have to evolve practical values.

So now you have to determine what values you will choose to embrace in your life. These may change and vary over time, but most should be things you stick with throughout recovery and in life. Choose to be honest at all times, even when it is tough. Choose to have enough self-respect to make your life worth living in spite of the ups and downs. Also, choose to create an identity you can be proud of for the rest of your life. The great thing about values is that we choose them and we can set boundaries so others respect them.

Like of values like this: .Values are like the engine in your car, you can survive without them, but it is easier to have it available. Would you like to have a car that didn’t have an engine? Probably not. So why live a life without a system that can make that life more useful? The choice is yours, whether you are in recovery, thinking about it, or just want to improve your personal value system. You can change your life and choose the values you want when you are ready. It really is all about you and what you want for your life. So what is your decision? Will you create a value system to bolster your life or will you choose to live aimlessly? Only you can decide. Be willing to change your life.

CLICK HERE to get a Free Confidential Addiction Rehabilitation Assessment.