Like many parts of life, anything worth doing is often challenging. In other words, don’t expect worthwhile activities in life to be a cake walk. You have to put forth some effort to really make things work. The same is true for drug or alcohol addiction recovery. To get the true benefits of change, you need to sweat a little bit first.

Personal Responsibility Means Doing The Hard Work

As human beings we can get pretty lazy sometimes. We get stuck in a funk, we manage to avoid responsibility, and then we don’t want to face it anymore. This is totally normal and something even the most ambitious person faces from time to time. Unfortunately, a person going through drug or alcohol addiction recovery may feel a bigger sting from this reality.

They have spent a good deal of time using drugs and alcohol to avoid reality and create a self-protective viewpoint of the world. They believe that they have everything under control, but reality would say otherwise. To be fair, many if not most alcoholics and drug addicts have had some pretty rough things going on in their life. Divorced parents, addicted parents, abuse and neglect, trauma – any of these things can feel emotionally overwhelming and oppressive to face truthfully. Whether they meant it or not at first, they ended up using drugs and alcohol to take the sting out of their daily lives. Eventually, the addiction stuck and they ended up creating more problems instead of making things better.

Personal Responsibility Is A Choice

It comes down to a choice – giving in to the normal feelings of not wanting to do hard work, or facing the challenge and taking a step forward. Like I said, this struggle is a normal human process. Anyone who faces a job they don’t like (but really need) faces this. Anyone with a baby getting up in the night (when the parent really wants to stay in bed) faces this. Anyone who wants a better life for themselves but isn’t sure how (and is a little scared to make change) faces this. A drug addict or alcoholic cannot escape this reality. The progress they make in their recovery comes down to personal responsibility.

Accepting Your Personal Responsibility With Addiction Recovery

Drug treatment is a great thing. Drug rehab programs can teach people in recovery so many coping skills, so many ways to challenge their addiction thinking, so many ways to deal with cravings. But what drug rehab cannot do is make a person take personal responsibility. Only the person in recovery can do that. Challenging? Yes. Difficult and sometimes looking hopeless? Absolutely. But then again, most things that very worthwhile, like a sober lifestyle, are worth a little sweat and personal responsibility.

photo credit: Donald Macleod

So many of us work so hard to change things are out of our control. Yet when given options where we can make all the choices, we sometimes walk away. How strange, and how frustrating. A person rejected by their parent may do everything possible to earn their love, only to be rejected again and again. Someone else may do everything they can to forget that their father died, hoping in some way that takes away the pain. Somehow, denying the truth gives us the illusion that we have solved the problem. In reality, we’ve just created more pain.

Drug Addiction – It’s All About Control

Many drug addicts and alcoholics had little control during difficult times in their life. They may have endured child abuse, sexual trauma, and general family chaos. In an attempt to gain control over something, they often choose to manipulate their feelings. Rather than accepting the truth as it is and living with it, they create a different reality for themselves. They create a world where they feel what they want to feel, not the natural emotions that come from living in the present moment.

Accepting The Truth Does Not Give Up Control

In the world of a drug addict, accepting an unacceptable truth can feel like giving in and giving up control all over again. That’s the last thing they want to do. Having no control meant they got hurt in their past. That’s also why many drug addicts and alcoholics claim to have everything completely under control, even when they don’t hear it. They need to have the illusion of control to keep them from feeling so powerless over their troubles. If they admit that they really don’t have control over their drinking or drug use, then they still haven’t conquered their biggest problem.

Accepting Reality Means Regaining Control Of Choice

Ironically, accepting things that cannot be changed can be very liberating. It frees up a person’s energy to focus on things that can be controlled and managed. Instead of beating one’s head against the wall, they can make small steps of progress and reap the rewards. Drug treatment helps a person to refocus on what they can and cannot change. No one can change their past, but they can control how they act and think about their past.

A recovering drug addict can decide that they will not let their past continue to imprison them. They can decide to look at the present moment and the future, dictating their own course through life. In many cases, it takes some time in drug treatment to come to this conclusion. It’s not easy to give up something you done for years. Learning to accept reality instead of fighting it can take some time support. Other recovering addicts at drug treatment are very helpful with this process. When recovering addicts support each other, they can how to accept the things they cannot change.

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Have you been draining the spirit out of your life with drugs and alcohol? Do you wonder if you have any real purpose anymore to your life? Many drug addicts and alcoholics feel this way after a while. They just do what they need to do to survive every day. At some point, it may feel like they can’t turn back from their addiction. They’ve lived that way too long to just stop. Without their addiction, they don’t know what they would do with their life. They would feel directionless, helpless, and powerless against their own demons.

Self Worth Low With Drug Addiction

A person’s self worth is usually pretty low when they are addicted to drugs. They live with an illusion of control, when really they are completely dependent on their drug of choice. This can feel demoralizing and shallow, even as they defend their drug use to their loved ones. They may sense that others see them as a washed up loser, not contributing anything to society. This is why many addicts and alcoholics feel suicidal at times. If this is their life, what’s the point of going on anymore? Wouldn’t it cause everyone less pain if they just ended it?

Drug Treatment Helps Self Worth Come Through

It can take some time for a recovering drug addict to see their self worth shine through the shadows of their addiction. When they can sense their genuine emotions and think more clearly, drug treatment can help them make sense of everything. Counselors will listen with patience and understanding, working with each addict to understand their personal voice.

Each person in drug treatment is given opportunities to support others and do things to help themselves. When a person sees how their actions have value, their own sense of self worth can start to grow. When they
recognize their courage and affirm others for being courageous, they can more clearly see purpose in their life.

Drug Treatment Just First Step Of Building Self Worth

Of course, self worth is something that needs nurturing each and every day. Everyone has days when they feel like they don’t matter, or that they do everything wrong, or that no one would miss them if they disappeared. But drug treatment can help the truly wounded souls of drug addicts and alcoholics. Drug treatment can help people put their shattered spirits back together so they can claim their place in the world again.

photo credit: Jenny Lee Silver

When a person has been used to covering up their emotions and being “in control” of them, getting sober can bring a lot of unknowns into the picture. Just letting emotions evolve and show themselves naturally? That thought can make someone feel a little anxious about becoming sober. They’ll have to learn how to use healthy coping skills and face reality instead of relying on drugs and alcohol to take care of things.

What Is There To Be Anxious About

A recovering drug or alcohol addict may have many things to feel worried about. This is just a sample of the kinds of worries someone in recovery may have:

• When they give up their addiction social network, what will they gain in return?
• Who will really be there for them?
• Who can they trust?
• How will they ever deal with the feelings they have smothered for so long?
• What will happen when they are tempted to drink or use?
• What will happen if they slip up and relapse?
• Will others think they are a failure?
• Will drug treatment have been worth it or will it have been a waste of time?
• Will they get their old job back or will they be able to find a decent job?
• Will they ever have a good life again?

With all those kinds of worries floating around in their head, it’s not surprising that a recovering addict may feel anxious. Just feeling emotions again can be somewhat alarming and uncomfortable. The recovering addict may be somewhat awkward at using their coping skills and might become frustrated if they don’t feel better right away. Sometimes living with anxiety during recovery can take its toll. It’s a real part of recovery and not something to hide from a sponsor or your family. It’s totally normal, something that will most likely get better over time.

One exception to this is if an addict has a fully diagnosed anxiety disorder. If it was properly treated during drug rehab, a minor flare-up of anxiety now and then may not be a big deal. But if the anxiety disorder hasn’t been treated or anxiety sypmtoms are severe, a mental health professional needs to get involved. Leaving a significant anxiety disorder untreated during addiction recovery is very risky. It can put a person’s entire sobriety in jeopardy. Dual diagnosis drug treatment is the best solution for significant anxiety problems and a drug addiction.

Drug Treatment Aftercare Can Help Anxiety in Recovery

Some anxiety after drug treatment would be expected. So much change to deal with and so much uncertainty. But if someone experiences a lot of anxiety and has trouble keeping up with their recovery plan, they should talk to a drug treatment professional for guidance. Anxiety is very manageable with counseling and support, and it doesn’t have to keep a person from staying sober.

photo credit: Linds K

When a person makes a radical change in their life, they often discover many things that need to be unlearned or relearned. They may have adjusted and coped with things as they needed to survive, forgetting some of the most basic things about themselves. Recovering from a drug or alcohol addiction is much like this. An addict is so used to covering or manipulating their emotions, they may the unsure what they feel once the chemicals are gone.

Drugs Substitute For Human Chemistry

In a way, feelings are chemical. They certainly have many intangible qualities. But when it comes right down to it, they all start and stop with the humble neurotransmitter. These chemicals go racing back and forth between nerve endings all day long, relaying messages of emotion between our brains and the rest of our bodies.

Our brain translates these chemical messages into the varying degrees of emotion. Over years of self observation and feedback from others, human beings can understand a great variety of differences between emotions. They can use their present situation and other background information to help them sort things out.

Body Chemicals And Emotions With Addiction

Now consider a drug addict or alcoholic. On a very regular basis, they introduce addictive chemicals that interfere and alter the way neurotransmitters work in their body. In some cases, the neurotransmitters stop working completely because the drugs have taken over their function. Without the chemicals there to relay the messages, uncomfortable symptoms start to wreak havoc with their body. In the absence of medical detox, most drug addicts and alcoholics will go back to using their drug of choice just to feel normal again. Their emotions are imprisoned by the effects of addictive drugs. The drugs do all the feeling for them until the person becomes sober.

So now, you can probably see how challenging it is for aiding newly recovering drug addict to accurately understand feelings. They are not comfortable with feelings being caused by something other than their drugs. If they didn’t like what they felt, they could change it by taking a hit or a drink. Not so once recovery begins.

Trying To Control Emotions Fearing Sobriety

A person in recovery may feel like they have lost all control over their emotions. And if these emotions are about very painful situations in their life, they may wonder how they will survive. Feelings come and go, sometimes being stronger than the person would care for. However, drug treatment can be the beginning of a person’s new understanding of their emotions. They can learn healthier ways to cope with and live with strong emotions.

The ironic thing about emotions is that they are much easier to live with when they are faced with honesty. Hiding from them and covering them, like a drug and alcohol addict does, usually just makes them more potent. If you fear getting sober and facing difficult emotions, you are not alone. Caring drug rehab professionals will help you learn about and live with your emotions.

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When it comes to relationships, location matters. By that I mean the location of where your relationships starts. Where and how you need a person can be a sign of how likely the relationship is the last and how healthy it may be. If you find yourself searching for the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend in a bar, you may need to ask yourself some questions. What are you really looking for? what do you expect to find here? How already are you to be a mature person in a relationship? with relationships, you often get what you ask for.

Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places

Let’s imagine that you or someone who hangs out at the bars on a regular basis. Sometimes you go with friends, sometimes you may end up there alone. Now, imagine that you started thinking about finding a relationship. The one you just got out of ended badly. Too much fighting, not much in common, and way too much work. You now avoid the bar you found that person in because you know they still go there and you want to avoid drama. But now you find yourself surveying the field, seeing who you might like to approach next.

What Happens When You Meet A New Person In A Bar

Of course, many kinds of people go to bars for different reasons. Just because they are in a bar doesn’t mean they have an unhealthy life or are incapable of being a good relationship partner. However, you may want to reconsider this is your main source for potential relationships. Take a close look, a real close look at how your relationships start at the bar. Do you do most of your talking before anyone has much to drink, or do you hook up when you were both drunk and looking for sex or companionship for the night? If you find that you’re doing a hookup most of the time, you may be choosing the most unhealthy people in the bar.

If you can’t talk to someone unless you’ve had a lot to drink, you may not honestly be ready for a relationship. You in the other person may not be comfortable talking to healthier people. Two people with the risk for alcohol addiction won’t make good relationship partners for each other. Even if one drinks very little, the heavier drinker is likely to be less committed were bought in the relationship. This is a set up for disappointment and heartbreak.

Reconsider Meeting People Where They Drink Excessively

Does this sound like you? You may need to consider this as a sign that you may have a problem with alcohol. If you have never been to alcohol treatment, this might be the time to go. Before starting a new relationship at another bar, you need to consider what a sober lifestyle would be like and what a healthy lasting relationship would be like. Alcohol treatment might seem like the last thing you want to consider when you are lonely and uncertain about yourself, but you can avoid a lot of heartache and disappointment by getting yourself in the right direction. Call today to learn more about alcohol addiction and drug treatment near you.

photo credit: Horia Varlan

You may have heard other addicts saying they’re getting sober for their family, for their spouse, or for their kids. This is a tempting and sweet sounding promise, but it is ultimately a doomed purpose. Why would this be so? Read on to find out how this goal can set you up for failure.

Do They Really Appreciate Your Efforts For Sobriety

When you share your accomplishments, how do you know if the people you tell will really get it? What may mean a lot to you may not sound like much to someone when you speak it out loud. It may not make sense, might seem misguided, or may simply sound trivial. If you are doing this process for others, you set yourself up to be dependent on their feedback to tell you whether sobriety is a worthy effort or not.

At first, they may be excited for you. But what will you do if they aren’t impressed or don’t give the reaction you expect? What if they aren’t available to share anything with when you want to? What about the people you most want to “impress”, especially if they are part of your addiction problem? These are all such sticky reasons to avoid doing drug rehab for other people.

They Are Not At Drug Rehab – You Are

When it comes right down to it, you are the one in drug treatment – going through the paces, facing the fears, working through the struggles. You are the one getting through the tough blows to your ego and also reaping the rewards of self honesty. These are experiences and gifts that are truly personal. Even when someone has a similar experience, you don’t give that feeling of accomplishment or growth to someone else. You can’t give that sense of self worth you gained to someone else. Ultimately, those are things each person earns themselves.

Yes, your loved ones and other important people in your life can admire and deeply respect your journey and can appreciate the changes they see. But they cannot do that inner process with you, even if they are right next to you as you do it. It is simply too personal and internal to ever be completely shared by another person. So how could you really be doing it for anyone else but yourself?

Do Drug Rehab For Yourself

Wherever you go, there you are. It’s way to hard to have the appreciative audience around you at all times during your recovery. When you do drug rehab and even do your recovery after you get home, you are the one that knows what’s going on at all times. You get the feedback, you can appreciate what you go through and gain. But if you do it just for them, you and your loved ones will likely face short-lived excitement and little chance for sustained progress. If you go through drug rehab and get a solid recovery plan going, your loved ones will absolutely benefit from your sobriety.

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If you befriended the bottle or the drugs, you may have felt could trust whatever happened when you were drunk or high. You could count on fuzzing out from the world, energizing yourself out of your deep pit of despair, or keeping yourself distracted from reality. But what else do drugs and alcohol told you? Do you dare go to drug rehab or alcohol treatment and find out who is telling the truth?

The Truth About Drugs And Alcohol You Don’t Want To Hear

That’s the truth you don’t want to hear – drugs and alcohol are lying to you. You turned to them for comfort and solace when you are in your darkest hours. You chose drugs and alcohol over friends and family. He devoted hours each day and years of your life to everything these chemicals offered. So why is everyone on your case about your drinking or drug use?

Drugs and alcohol were supposed to make things better, tolerable, and livable. If you just had one more drink or shot up one more time, you finally get that feeling you didn’t chasing after. You would finally forget your pain for that moment, maybe forever if you just kept using. Somehow, these promises haven’t held true.

Who Do You Believe About Your Addiction

You seem to have more conflicts with your family, more relationship problems, and more emotional pain than you started with. He tried drug treatment for a few days and quit because it all seemed too hard. They wanted to help you stop drinking and using so you could repair the problems in your life. But that’s what the drugs and alcohol were for! They were supposed to fix your problems. How did they dupe you into believing them when this is what was going to happen anyway?

So now who do you believe? The drug treatment professionals, your friends, and your family who desperately want to stop should mark or, do you still believe the promises of escape and indulgence from drugs and alcohol? If you admit that you fell for the lies, you’d be ashamed beyond belief. But if you stick with drugs and alcohol, you risk lose thing everything and everyone else that matters to you.

Ignore The Lies And Seek Drug Treatment

If you find yourself questioning the truth about your addiction, you are not alone. Your addiction mind wants you to believe the lies and stay isolated. The healthy people in your life want you to throw all that away and change directions. If you already know that drugs and alcohol has steered you in the wrong direction, have courage to take the risk on drug treatment. Have the courage to hear the truth about drugs and alcohol and how they will lie to you all day long. If you take that first step to start drug treatment, you’ll hear the truth and you will have support of people who understand. Contact a drug treatment center near you for more information today.

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Isolation can sneak up on you, much like a frog in a pot of slowly boiling water. Because the temperature is changed gradually, the frog doesn’t realize it is in peril until the water starts to bubble. Isolation can start with just a gradual lessening of social contact. You may not understand how this could make a difference with your sobriety until you are already in relapse. Read here to be sure you don’t fall into that trap.

Out Of Touch With Other Perspectives

One of the best parts about social interaction is that you can consider and incorporate other people’s point of view into your own. Or you can outright reject it. But all of this is done because you have the richness of other people’s minds at your disposal. Any time you get even somewhat involved with another person, you see the physical evidence and hear the words of their beliefs.

Because you interact with others, your ideas and beliefs are constantly in motion. You keep them fresh and relevant because you allow them to mingle with new ideas. Staying isolated robs you of this experience. You are out of touch with other perspectives and don’t have the same flexibility or resilience. Anything that becomes black-and-white with addiction puts you at greater risk for relapse.

Your Inner Addiction Voice Gets No Challenge

An addition to the earlier thought – when you isolate, your inner addiction voice gets stronger because it has no challenge. There is nothing new in your mind to help keep it in check. Anything you might have learned in drug rehab or alcohol treatment may seem like a million miles away. It’s in there, but somehow your inner addiction voice drowns it out.

You don’t have the reinforcement of other people who believe in recovery ideals. These voices strengthen your inner recovery voice. Without this social interaction, you are left vulnerable and without a healthy voice in your mind.

Lack Of Social Connection Affects Self Worth

If you are one of a small percentage of people who enjoy isolation, being alone may not be a problem. However, most people need at least some social interaction to survive in the world. After some period of time in isolation, even if it is self imposed, a sense of social rejection can set in. You may start to justify staying alone because others may reject you or possibly already have. That can start the wheels of negativity really spinning in your mind.

Your self worth can tank because you don’t see that your presence matters to anyone. When that happens, the dark cloud of worthlessness may be too tough to fight off anymore. The drugs and alcohol beckon – relapse looms.

Isolation and Drug Addiction Relapse

Social isolation is an enemy of sobriety. It’s good to keep away from those who would derail your sobriety by steering you back towards addiction. But those connections must be replaced by people who are healthy and on-track. For more help staying socially connected during sobriety, contact a drug rehab or alcohol treatment center near you.

photo credit: Carsten Lorentzen

Going to drug rehab can seem like going to prison. You may have agreed to go under less than ideal circumstances. Maybe you feel pressure from your family, or you have pending legal consequences. You may be tempted to flake off drug rehab altogether – who needs it? So how can you possibly make the most of your treatment opportunity?

Sometimes More Than One Time At Drug Rehab

Sometimes you have to fall more than once to realize you don’t have to keep falling in the first place. So maybe your sister went to drug rehab and bailed after two weeks. Perhaps your dad said he’d go to drug rehab and got himself kicked out after a short stay. Not the best history with rehab? Doesn’t mean it can’t still work.

Yep, most of us learn the most about ourselves through our mistakes. When you squander an opportunity, sometimes you feel it bite you in the rear end pretty soon. That time in drug rehab was part of a bargain to avoid jail. Or maybe you had a living arrangement with family that would only happen after a full 90 day treatment. When you end up jailed or homeless after that, you might find yourself more ready for drug rehab than you were the first time.

Fear May Have You In Its Grip

If you have a lot of insecurities or frequently use self defense mechanisms, you might allow fear to really control your life. Drug rehab is something very different from daily life as a drug addict. And whatever is very different can seem very threatening. You may be willing to argue and push any angle that will keep you from having to give up the life you know.

Fear doesn’t go away easily – it’s an emotion everyone goes through. When you put fear in charge, life can be so complicated and boxed-in. Even good change isn’t allowed to happen. If you can put your foot forward and take one step, you can remain full of fear and full of courage at the same time. Just overcoming that first barrier can allow you to receive so many benefits from being in the drug rehab environment. Knowing you can face fear and do something anyway can go a long way towards healing what drives your addiction in the first place.

Making The Most Of Drug Rehab

Drug addicts tend to burn a lot of bridges behind them. If you know you’ve done this and have resisted drug rehab for a long time, it’s not to late. There is always another chance at making the most of drug rehab. Call today to find out how to get your next chance at a sober life.