Why Recovery is About More Than Just Attaining Sobriety
Why Recovery is About More Than Just Attaining Sobriety
Addiction recovery is about more than just simply attaining sobriety. This perhaps is or of the greatest misconceptions of rehabilitation and what exactly that entails. Triumphing over drug and alcohol addiction at an inpatient rehab center is far more involved than merely beating an addiction problem. It’s more in depth than that.
To understand this, let’s take a look at addiction itself. Drug and alcohol addiction is a plague like no other that seemingly would ruin a person’s life if he or she did nothing about it. Contrary to most people’s understanding, addition actually goes a lot deeper than just the physical cravings and the chemical dependence to drugs and alcohol themselves.
Attaining Sobriety is Only Part of the Recovery Process
Furthermore, an individual started using and abusing drugs and alcohol for mental and personal reasons. A person will continue this behavior in spite of very prevalent risks of using such substances. Finally, addicted individuals will relapse for mental and psychological reasons, not any physical ones.
We can see then that addiction treatment must be about a lot more than just achieving initial sobriety. If one hopes to beat addiction and stay clean for life, there is much more that needs to be addressed in rehab.
A lot of addicts struggle with figuring out how to make rehab a beneficial and meaningful experience. Obviously, this is the case as so many newly recovered addicts relapse after completing treatment. This is why the focus needs to be on more than just attaining sobriety.
What to Do to Make Recovery a Lifelong Commitment
- Be sure to select the right addiction treatment program in the first place. Choose a program that you like. Find one that has multiple approaches to addiction treatment, and that you feel will result in a good experience. Be selective in your choice. Don’t settle for second best when it comes to attaining sobriety.
- Set goals for yourself while in treatment. What do you want to accomplish? How do you want your addiction treatment program to affect you for the rest of your life? What type of life long standards do you want rehab to help you create?
- Think about the bigger picture. Think into the future. When going through rehab, allow yourself to ponder on why you are there, what you are working on, and how to create a new life for yourself. Really make a point of learning how to apply everything you learn in treatment to your life outside of treatment.
- Use rehab to create a completely new life for yourself. Don’t buy into an idea that rehab is only supposed to help you a little bit and for a little while. Rehab is supposed to completely change your life. Let it. Utilize rehab to fully help every aspect of your life and allow it to be life-changing.
