Are you taking a well-rounded approach in your drug and alcohol addiction recovery?
One way of looking at long-term recovery is to view it as growing and gaining knowledge and experience in three major areas. This is an overview it is a macro view of the overall perspective. Within each of these global areas there are many skills to be mastered.
I thought it would be interesting to look at the forest, rather than trees. Here are the three global areas necessary for long-term recovery:
1) Learning self-care - one of the most difficult things to our own health and safety as a number one priority. It is important to focus on ourselves and let the rest of the world take care of itself for a while. Self-care includes achieving emotional stability, maintaining physical health and exercise, proper nutrition, building self-esteem, working on spirituality, etc.
2) Developing a support system – maintaining long-term growth in recovery is extremely difficult if not impossible to do on your own. Therefore, it is necessary to develop sports system consisting of peers, friends, professional help, family and social activities. 12 step programs are highly recommended. Also, helping others develops a win — win situation.
3) Holistic personal growth – after the fundamentals of learning how to stay abstinent from drugs and alcohol are mastered, the next phase is to develop yourself as a person. This is the critical difference between growing in recovery and simply remaining abstinent. Becoming complacent in one’s recovery and not maintaining an active stance is arguably the single biggest factor in relapse.
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In my opinion, drug addiction should not be handled with more drugs. A drug free rehabilitation program is always going to be healthier than one that uses substitute drugs. But that is, as I said my opinion.