If you are the parent or spouse of someone in recovery help your loved one to discover his tools and support his aim in the right direction. Addiction is a disease and someone struggling can’t often grab all the tools himself, he needs help from people to hand them over to him so he can start to practice.
Continue Reading Relapse prevention is a critical component to maintain the long-term success of recovery. In order to understand relapse prevention, you need to understand its stages. It is a process, not an event.
Continue Reading Addiction or mental health problems are not contagious. There is no need to be fearful. But stigma it is one of the meanest aspects people have to deal with in addiction. It is a primary, chronic disease of the brain reward system, not a moral failure or a behavioral shortcoming.
Continue Reading Those triggers can be real, painful, and tempting, but the good part is, that they usually don’t last long. This too shall pass. Hang in there if it hits you and get help for the time it lasts. If I want to get over these triggers for longer periods of time, I have to build new pleasure pathways. For example meditation can calm me down or exercise can give me a good feeling of joy. It works, if we work for it, just as six-pack abs isn’t reached by just watching a fitness video. Those changes are slow, recovery is a process, not an event.
Continue Reading Being in recovery can open new doors to ideas and job opportunities. Don’t stay where you are. I’m not a tree, I can move today. I can move towards my goals. If you feel like it, go back to school, do special training for certain certificates and send applications to your dream position, even if you still lack some experience. If you have a goal or dream, you can be anything you like. There is often some work and sweat involved to get there, but with the right dedication anything is possible.
Continue Reading For me the 12 steps and the fellowship showed me how to live, helped me through bad days, gave my days the bright light of hope and ultimately kept me clean and sober. I don’t think that I would have been able to do it without fellowship. Even if you don’t see any advantage at first in the 12 steps, please at least enjoy the fellowship and the company of one addict in recovery with another.
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