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Are you reliable to meet your commitments and keep your promises? This is also about communicating when you know it’s not possible. In this case, reliability includes being counted on to stay in communication. Try to find a rehab facility that offers training on things like handling a job interview, rewriting your resume, and dressing for job search.
Too many recovering addicts think that they can walk back out into the world and resume regular life with no problems at all. It’s only natural to feel healthy, reinvigorated, and on top of the world once you get clean, but it’s important not to take on too much at once. When you’re recovering from addiction, you spend a lot of time learning about both yourself and the addiction that was robbing you of the experience of living your life. There are a few steps you should take when rebuilding your life after addiction if you want to be successful. At first, it can be difficult to adjust to new ways of finding comfort that don’t involve substance abuse. However, this will become easier over time as you become exposed to lifestyles where self-care and enjoyment are prioritized in a healthy way.
Dual Diagnosis Treatments
Addiction is a life-threatening illness, but recovery should be a time of thriving and gratitude in a commitment to a full and healthy life ahead. As difficult as it may be, the only way to completely change your life after long-term drug addiction is to cut ties with people who supported your addiction. Regardless of their relationship with you, it could pose negative influences on your journey and make it more difficult to continue treatment. Now that you’re in recovery, such people don’t belong in your life. Leave these relationships in the past, and focus on friends and family who fully support your recovery.
- Spending time doing productive and sober activities will help you give a fresh start to yourself.
- Addicts can be very good at persuading family members that an episode where they were under the influence was an isolated one and that it will never happen again.
- Forgiving yourself will give you the strength and peace you need in order to move forward.
- Our staff has rounded up their must-reads for those in treatment and recovery.
It is the stage in which they learn how to live – eat, sleep, work, socialize, learn – without the dark cloud of addiction over their heads. It’s essential to have a strong support system in place as you navigate your recovery. This can include family, friends, and 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous.
Cut all ties with your previous life
Get started by speaking with one of our compassionate treatment specialists. A comprehensive health change won’t happen overnight, but over time, your tastes will rebuilding your life after addiction change, and you’ll start craving healthy food. Next, you’ll begin to see extraordinary changes in appearance, immunity, energy level, and overall health.
If AA/NA meetings help you, go to a meeting the day you leave rehab. Additionally, start building connections and finding a sponsor. The more sober, positive people you have in your life, the more protected your sobriety will be. It is no secret that addicts are not particularly healthy people, mainly because substances of abuse are prioritized over health efforts. Most addicts are not concerned with a balanced meal or getting some active time in every day. If you think that you’re sober, and now everything (including your sobriety) should be given to you, you’re still thinking like an addict.
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Researchers say these hopeful findings are significant because they might inspire people to keep attempting recovery even after they endure multiple relapses. “They fought to only keep me in [rehab] for 14 days; they didn’t want to pay for 30, and I knew that wasn’t enough for me,” Rasco recalled. “They didn’t want to put me in a halfway house. I knew I needed a half-way house.” It typically takes eight years or longer to achieve long-term remission even with high quality treatment and medical care.
Not everyone in the family will agree with trying to help the addicted family member. Some may think that taking a tough stance is the way to handle the situation. The addict realizes that as long as the family is in turmoil, they’ll be able to feed their addiction relatively undisturbed.