It’s crucial to surround oneself with people who understand the challenges of alcohol addiction and who offer encouragement, empathy, and accountability. This community might include family, friends, medical professionals, or support groups, each playing a unique role in the journey toward sobriety. Recovery is possible, and with determination, support, and a focus on personal growth, individuals can achieve and maintain a fulfilling, sober life.

What is cognitive behavioral therapy?

If you have addiction and you’d like to change your behavior, consider all the costs and benefits of the choices you could make. Don’t think only about the negative aspects of your object of addiction; think, too, about the benefits it offers. One important step to recovery involves understanding what you get from your substance or activity of choice, and how you might achieve the same benefit through Tips to Get Started on the Road to Recovery from Alcohol Addiction other, less harmful means. Experts recommend doing an impromptu cost-benefit analysis by filling out a table such as Table 1. If certain people, places, or activities trigger a craving for alcohol, try to avoid them. This may mean making major changes to your social life, such as finding new things to do with your old drinking buddies—or even giving up those friends and finding new ones.

Middle Recovery

Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Substance Abuse Prevention and Control (SAPC) – Provides a wide range of prevention, treatment, and recovery services for individuals with substance use disorders. Science has proven that positive social relationships play a role in better health and life expectancy. LGBTQ readers struggling with the triple-threat of meth, sex and identity problems will find candid perspective and support from David Fawcett’s “Lust, Men, and Meth” (Hazelden).

Evaluating the costs and benefits of drinking

Although many people are tempted to make other major life changes during this stage of recovery, such as changing jobs, experts recommend focusing energy on stopping drinking for at least the first year. People in recovery from a substance use disorder frequently have problems meeting work-related responsibilities, maintaining employment, and managing money. If you were active in your addiction for a period of time, you may have developed financial problems.

Whether you are new to recovery, or recently struggling with your sobriety, the most important thing you can do in this moment is take a look at the environment around you. Are you living in a place that supports your recovery and success? A good, supportive environment means that it is free of alcohol, drugs, and reminders of these substances. It means that the people you live with (if any) are encouraging of your sobriety. Most of all, this environment should be a safe space where you feel comfortable and secure, and therefore a place where you can focus on your healing.

In combination with your own efforts to stay healthy, you should also continue seeking professional help from a counselor or clinician. If you have already completed a treatment program and are in a continuing care program, or continuing to receive therapy, make sure that you keep going. Continuing care is vital to a lasting and successful recovery from addiction. Substance addiction is a chronic illness that, much like hypertension or diabetes, requires ongoing maintenance and therapy. It can be managed, and it can be treated, but you need to constantly work at it. In addition, self-care is a vital foundation for a healthy new identity.

• People new to recovery can find themselves approaching their new diet, exercise program, job, and even participation in support groups with a compulsion that echoes addiction.
• This discussion isn’t only for your sake, but for the sake of your loved ones too.
• It is crucial to quickly and efficiently find ways to repair any damage you previously caused and make sure you make things right.
• As a writer, she focuses on mental health disparities and uses critical race theory as her preferred theoretical framework.

• You might be wondering what qualifies as impairment and discomfort.
• It is essential to surround oneself with people who uplift and encourage sobriety while distancing oneself from those who may enable or trigger relapse.
• And one measure of a comprehensive substance abuse treatment program is the help it offers to enrollees to identify their interests and find and build a meaningful career path.
• Individuals may experience a range of emotions, including denial, shame, guilt, and fear.
• Another is to carefully plan days so that they are filled with healthy, absorbing activities that give little time for rumination to run wild.

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 change, and you’ll start craving healthy food. Next, you’ll begin to see extraordinary changes in appearance, immunity, energy level, and overall health.

• It’s also helpful to change your environment—for instance, avoid going to bars.
• Write your drinking goal down and keep it where you will frequently see it, such as on your phone or taped to your refrigerator.
• Your body has acclimated to quitting drinking over the past couple of years.
• Return to use is most common during the first 90 days of recovery.
• An exciting part of this period is that it can lead you to a happier life full of welcomed change and constant improvement.

Step 10: Set and Accomplish Goals