Recovery from addiction can sometimes be a difficult process, requiring you to unlearn deeply ingrained habits, replacing them with better habits. It is among the most important and radical lifestyle changes you can make, and can only be taken one day at a time. Yet, there are things you can do to help make it a successful transition into sobriety.
Here are five pointers that you can put into practice to have a more successful recovery.
1) Replace Enabling Relationships With a Network Of Support In Your Recovery
While an addict, you probably had plenty of people around you supporting your habit, either by engaging in substance abuse along with you, or by enabling, protecting you from the negative consequences of your actions. One of the first steps to recovery is to remove yourself from social settings where your addiction was normalized and encouraged. However, you should not isolate yourself, simply avoiding all parties or people out of fear.
Recovery is too big of a commitment to go through on your own. Through support groups, a sponsor, a trained therapist, and friends willing to truly support your decision to become sober, you can get the encouragement and wisdom of others. Through their support, you can better learn how to better live a sober life.
2)Create an Action Plan to Handle Transition Time
With the help of these supportive friends, learn how to recognize some of the difficulties that will come about when you try to transition from addiction to sobriety. Remember, recovery is about replacing the bad habits of addiction with better habits, and thus requires that you recognize your own warning signs and work out a way to deal with them.
Know what to say when you are offered a drink or drug, and work out alternatives for dealing with stress or bad feelings that don’t involve numbing the pain with substance abuse. Having a plan or a routine to set yourself up for success is a big deal in early recovery so have a go to activity.
3) Have Fun, and Create Habits To Bring Balance To Your Environment
Addiction is an all-encompassing obsession that often obliterates your ability to attend to areas of life necessary for thriving or enjoying life. Amid all the stresses of being sober, be sure to take time to enjoy the moments, do things that bring happiness and make you thrive as a person.
Rather then spending all of your time trying not to relapse, focus on good things and ways to have a fun life without drugs. Many people also report that volunteering and taking time to help others gives fulfillment and makes life worth living. Taking time to bring organization and beauty to a cluttered environment is also a good way to busy yourself and make your life feel more productive.
4) Take Care Of Yourself
Regular diet, exercise, and sleep are very important ways to make sure you stay in good health, and feel better about yourself, so you are less likely to consider drug use. Remember to avoid HALT – being hungry, angry, lonely, or tired can bring tensions you may not be aware of, and make a relapse likelier.
As an addict, you were harming your health considerably, so it is important to take time to really care for yourself. Setting a regular schedule for these things, sleeping, waking, and eating around the same time, will bring stability to these new habits and make them more likely to stick, and will help your body set new rhythms.
5) Take Time For Activities To Be Thankful and Self-Aware
Not only take yourself physically, but pay attention to your emotional and spiritual self. Regular prayer or meditation is a very useful way of re-ordering your life around something bigger then yourself. Journaling can be a useful way to process your thought. Whatever you choose, take time to reflect on the significance and freedom from every moment in sobriety.