In your recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, there will be times you find it easier to abstain from use, and there will be days when you struggle. Independence Day, like many holidays, may present a challenge. To have a sober 4th of July, it’s essential that you do things differently than you’ve done in…
Gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) is a controlled substance. Although it has medical uses, GHB side effects can lead to severe substance abuse problems. For some, it’s also a drug to get high. Others misuse it as a date rape drug. Who Abuses GHB? Interestingly, some athletes misuse the drug to build muscle mass and decrease fat. Mind…
One of the biggest misconceptions about alcohol abuse is that getting sober is the toughest part of the process. It isn’t. Once rehab is complete, a lifelong journey of staying sober begins. A quality treatment program will not only provide assistance with getting sober, but it also teaches techniques on how to stay sober as…
Achieving sobriety is an essential and significant step, but it is just as important to learn how to maintain that newfound sobriety for a lifetime. Relapse is common among those who struggle with addiction, so any recovery program needs to include a focus on relapse prevention. The following relapse prevention tips can help you stay…
An unhealthy ego is at the root of many of our emotional challenges, including our addictions and mental health issues. When our ego, or sense of self, is wounded from trauma, we often struggle to understand our feelings or manage them in healthy ways. We create a poor self-image for ourselves, and our self-perception is…
Valentine’s Day is a holiday where you celebrate love with the people that you love. You may have thought that you loved drugs and alcohol but it ended up being a poisonous relationship that left you sick. It is important that you find sober ways to enjoy yourself on Valentine’s Day that do not involve…
When working through the reintegration process, we’ll want to treat ourselves with as much patience, compassion and understanding as we possibly can. We’re dealing with new forms of stress that we’ve never experienced before. We’re approaching our old lives with huge changes in our consciousness and our awareness. We’re thinking and feeling things we never…
Upon leaving treatment, we’ll be entering a particularly challenging time that will test our strength and our resilience. We’ll be leaving the safety of a sober living environment where drugs and alcohol are prohibited, making it impossible to pick up our drug of choice and giving us the extra security of knowing that we can’t…
Many of us struggling with addiction continue our patterns for years before we realize we simply can’t live like that anymore. We’ve been perpetuating toxic and dangerous cycles full of self-hatred and self-destruction. When we’re mid-cycle, we tend to think we’ll be able to manage. We find ways to get away with all the self-harm.…
One of the biggest challenges in our recovery begins when we’ve completed treatment, when we’re no longer being supervised in an environment with no access to our addictive substance or behavior of choice. When we return home and are starting to reintegrate back into our regular lives, a potential threat to our sobriety is the…