There are a number of methods to recover from substance abuse, and finding the right drug rehab in Denver can be an individual process. While recovery is a personal process, nearly everybody goes through three stages of recovery while overcoming drug use. While there is no set timetable for recovery, the amount of time spent on these stages is unique to each individual, as well. Those stages are abstinence, repair, and growth – and we’ll take a closer look at each of them here. Abstinence This stage begins when the person abusing the substance quits taking that substance. Some of the most important aspects of navigating this phase come down to the individual changing their outlook toward themselves. Doing things like cutting off relationships from other users, developing a regimen of self-care, developing alternatives to the abused substances, and learning how to cope with the cravings. The most difficult aspect of this particular stage is coping with the heavy craving to return to using a particular substance. This presents a number of threats to the individual’s recovery. Depending on the substance being abused, these cravings can last for an extended period of time. This stage is focused on improving the individual’s self-care to set them up for success in the later stages. Repair This is the second stage of recovery, and it’s focused on repairing the damage from the addiction. This is a long-term step, because it deals with everything from repairing self-esteem to relationships to other aspects of the individual’s life. A major hurdle in this stage is dealing with the guilt as some of these relationships are repaired....
We have entered not only a new year but an entirely new decade. Naturally, when we enter January each year, we begin to reflect on the past year and how we want this next year to be different. For us in recovery, it usually is a good experience. Whether you are new in recovery and survived your first 'hurricane season' (Thanksgiving/Xmas/NYE) or have been sober for years, you can appreciate the fact that you are still sober. If you're finding yourself unhappy with your 2019, it's now the perfect time to start over. We are our own harshest critics in recovery. Before anyone criticizes us we are the first to criticize ourselves. So when we start dressing ourselves down we have two options, we can either do something about it or pity ourselves. Pity has never done anything redeeming for anybody. Since it's the new year, let's talk about resolutions that are beneficial for those in recovery, new or long time. Before we go over suggestions on what to change, here are some key principles to successfully fulfilling these resolutions: Make them realistic Talk about it with friends and family, let them hold you accountable Don't beat yourself up if you fall short, try harder the next day Work on one thing at a time Just do your best Volunteer Work If you're anything like me, you think about yourself a lot. I spend a lot of my day worrying about everything in my life, most of those things trivial and don't have enough concern for others. It's a trait of being afflicted with addiction, we are inherently self-centered. Volunteer work is...
What do you think is worse, being told you have an incurable disease that will slowly kill you, or being told that the only solution is a spiritual lifestyle? For pretty much everyone else on the planet, the answer is obvious, but for those of us who suffer from addiction and alcoholism, this is our truth, and it is a truth we really struggle with. Most of us have tried every imaginable way to regulate and enjoy our highs, to only drink or use when it is appropriate, but all of us have learned, through countless trial and error, that we are stuck. It is only when we realize that in our disease the medicine is practicing spirituality in recovery and that it is completely free, that we start to realize how lucky we actually are. So why do so many of us still struggle with the idea of spirituality in recovery? For me, I struggled with it so much in the beginning because no one had been able to break it down to me in a way I could understand. While I was attending inpatient treatment, I heard people say surrender, I heard people say turn over my will, but I had no idea what that meant or how to do it. So, if you find yourself in a similar predicament, where you truly WANT this spiritual, sober life, but don’t know how to actually DO it, keep reading. For starters, stop overthinking I had an utter inability to get over the fact that I could not describe my higher power to myself. I knew I didn’t want what...
Any way you slice it, the holidays are a weird time for everyone. There can be an immense feeling of pressure, and for many of us in recovery, quite a bit of anxiety. So through all the dinners and gifts and holiday parties, what can we do to stay sober during the holidays? First of all, Congratulations I want to start this blog out by first congratulating you on your sobriety. It is by no easy feat that you have made it here, and if you have doubted for any second your ability to do this, I want you to realize how far you have already come from something like inpatient treatment in Colorado. So when the chaos and the noise and the painful holiday memories start to come up, remember how far you have come here, and if for nothing else, try to find some gratitude in that. Why are these holidays so weird? Before my parents split up, I always remember absolutely loving this holiday season. Everything was perfect every year, we were all together, there was always a tree, and it was the one time of year my dad was actually around. After they split, and my sister and I had to decide which parent we wanted to spend the day with, things started to feel very transactional and forced. As I got older, I realized just how stressful this time of year can be for people. There is an immense pressure to “get it all perfect”. It can be a lot. Then there are the painful memories and awkward family situations that pop up for people...
People will often tell you while attending inpatient treatment not to take on too much too fast in your early recovery. I tend to disagree with that. What I will say, is in the beginning, take on and take in ALL of the areas of the program that you can. Take on those service commitments, take on your step work, take on the coffee dates and the hangouts. Say yes to things. Once you feel solid in your recovery and your life, take on the rest of the world. Here is why: There is nothing more dangerous to your program, other than just not working one, than becoming bored in recovery. In line with HALT Have you heard about the acronym “HALT”? It stands for: Hungry Angry Lonely Tired It is often thrown around in rehab and in the early days, but the idea behind it is that when you are feeling squirrelly or irritable, check those areas first. If you are like me, you will consider picking fights with police when you are hangry. Low blood sugar? Beats me, but you can bet your bottom dollar that my fiance carries around snacks with him to protect himself against my hanger fits. The other ones all make just as much sense, and can easily be resolved. But what about the silent assassin? The one that got most of us in trouble even before we started drinking and getting high? That assassin is boredom. The Different Types of Boredom When I speak of boredom in recovery, I want to make it very clear that there are multiple layers of boredom here....
Have you experienced those moments in your recovery where it feels like everything is going wrong? On the other hand, have you experienced moments where it feels like you are exactly where you are supposed to be? In all of these moments of recovery, the ups, and the downs, there should be one constant carried throughout, gratitude. At the beginning for me, gratitude felt like just another word that reminded me of weird family holidays, akin to faith, trust, and God. I understood what other people meant when they said it, but I couldn’t remember the last time I had actually felt or experienced a deep sense of gratitude myself. So how does one go about practicing gratitude in recovery? What does it mean to you, how do you bring it into your daily life? First of All, What is Gratitude? I’m going to do it, I’m going to bring up Brene Brown. She is, at the very least, a behavioral analysis who has been studying guilt, shame, trauma, and joy in human lives. She has done a lot of research into people who have experienced severe traumatic events ranging from being in a war, losing a child or loved one, victims of genocide, to addicts and alcoholics. A common thread that she discovered was present throughout all of her study participants, was that they all remained grateful for what they had, what they lost, and what they have now. The dictionary definition for gratitude is, “the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.” In the early days of our recovery, it can be...
When we finally put the plug in the jug, or the cap on the rig, or the… bill back in the wallet (?) we never believe that working the 12 steps will free us. We only know the pain and torture that we have felt for so long. We look around at all of the happy faces in the rooms and hope that it will happen for us too. Until we start working the steps and getting solid, we can often feel crazier than before. Let me make you a guarantee, it won’t stay like that forever. When Depression Strikes A majority of the people in the rooms of 12 step fellowships have struggled with depression, both in and out of sobriety. It just tends to be that way with us, we feel deeply, and we tend to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders, even if we are the ones who put it there. So what happens when we are trying to stay sober, but still struggling with depression? It happens all the time, to thousands of clean and sober members, yet it can still feel really isolating. Coming from someone who has struggled on and off with varying levels of depression in sobriety, here are tools that I have gathered both through experience, and the experience of others. I would like to mention that all of these tools are meant to be used in conjunction with working the steps, talking to a sponsor, and going to meetings. Keep Talking As terrible and impossible as it can sometimes feel, what we often need most is to just...
When I first tried getting sober, I knew I liked to drink, but more often than not, powders won out. Drinking had become more of a side option that I used to control, slow down, or use it as a time-waster until I was able to get my drugs of choice. Because of this, I always thought I belonged in NA, rather than AA. At the time, I identified more with the folks in the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous. We spoke the same language, did drugs the same way, and seemed to be after the same things. After relapsing several times in a year on alcohol, since I hadn’t been convinced that it was a problem for me, I landed up in a treatment center once again followed by AA - a place I never thought I belonged. I ended up staying here because I found the solution I personally needed, and I just recently spoke on a panel at a young people's conference about being an addict in AA and it got me to thinking, what are the differences between Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous? The Short Answer There aren’t any. Not at their core at least. The same fundamental ideas are present in both throughout. They are: Work the 12 steps with a sponsor Find a community and become a part of the fellowship Stay clean and sober from all mood and mind-altering drugs At the fundamental level, both NA and AA are rooted in the same belief structure that by abandoning the self, the ego, and of course, addiction, we are placed in a position to be...
When people asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up, chances are “a member of alcoholics anonymous” was never any child’s response. Personally, I wanted to be a doctor… and a circus clown. During our addictions, the last thing we ever want is to become a part of Alcoholics Anonymous, yet, here we are. Except now, it is less of a punishment and more of a second chance at life. So now that we are here, and our only option is through, how do we actually become members of something that we wanted nothing to do with, but is the only thing that can save us? These are the guidelines you will hear at every AA, NA, CA, or any other fellowship meeting. Go to meetings, get a sponsor, work the steps, stay in the middle. Simple, but not easy. Here is how to do it. Go to Meetings In the beginning, meetings can go one of three ways, depending on where you are in your stages of detox. You feel completely relieved to have found “your people” and you immediately know you are home. You are still in a state of mental fog and remember literally nothing apart from people saying words, clapping, and then standing and holding hands at the end. You feel completely uncomfortable in your skin, everyone within a ten-foot radius makes you want to throw punches, and you probably leave before the meeting is over. Regardless of how you feel in the first meeting, it is important that you actually make it to a second one, and then a third, and then...
Back in the early days of this whole recovery world we now find ourselves in, drunks and addicts pretty much had one option, sober up in the clink, and then go back home. If they were unsuccessful in their first few attempts, they would be locked up in an asylum and labeled insane. Today, we have a much more diverse variety of sober living and inpatient treatment to choose from on our journey of recovery. For many of us, some sort of halfway house or sober living is to be expected. So why exactly is attending sober living so important for us, what role does it play in our recovery, and do we really need it? What is Sober Living? In what has pretty much become the norm of people in recovery these days, the usual “getting sober” timeline looks something like this: Detox Inpatient treatment Sober Living (often with outpatient treatment) Life! In that wonderful and chaotic period of becoming newly sober, sober living is usually the stepping stone that separates those who want it and those who don’t. In that period of time, people are leaving treatment and entering the real world. Rather than just jumping into their own apartment or going back to live with their parents, sober living provides a nice gentle cushion to help them get back onto their feet without going too deep too fast. Also, let’s be honest, moving back in with parents or family is not always the healthiest emotional place for many newly recovering addicts, as the same old triggers will always be there. Comparatively, moving into a year-long lease by...
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