Early alcohol and drug addiction recovery is a wonderful time.
Our thinking clears up, our emotions come on line, the colors are brighter, the food tastes better and life starts to get good.
That is all wonderful. We seem to have regained our old abilities and so much more. To me, the danger in early addiction recovery involves not being aware of the limitations of early sobriety. Generally, people still have aof mindset of instant gratification and “I want what I want when I want it”. Things are going great and we think we can take on the world right now. Bring it on.
While this attitude can be exhilarating not knowing one’s limitations in the early phase of addiction recovery can be a setup for disaster. Often in the early recovery stage people take on far more than they are capable of handling. An addictive mindset is to impose an unrealistic timeframe on events happening. We want things done quickly. Early recovery is the time to develop stability and recovery skills. Once the foundation as set, we can start to build.
Traditional wisdom says that early recovery is not the time to engage in an intense new relationship, or make huge major life changes.
Continuing care plan of action:
1. Become familiar with H.A.L.T. hungry, angry, lonely, tired. A person in any of these conditions can be very susceptible to addiction relapse. Taking on too much, too quickly is an open invitation to become vulnerable. Constantly monitor your physical, mental, and spiritual condition. Remember very little in life has to be done ‘right now’.
2. Realize that the direction in which you are heading is much more important than the speed with which you are traveling. Slow but steady wins the race. Avoid unrealistic timeframes, self-imposed pressure, and stress.
3. Remember that you are each human being, and as such will make mistakes. That is how we learn and measure progress. On the one hand don’t beat up getting yourself, on the other hand, make sure you are learning the lessons of life.
We hope this was helpful in understanding yet another common drug and alcohol addiction relapse trigger.
Last 3 posts in Relapse Prevention
- Drug And Alcohol Relapse Prevention Tools - January 11th, 2009
- Relapse Prevention Tips: Relapse Tips Video, Easy To Understand - January 11th, 2009
- Beware of The After Holiday " Blues" - January 12th, 2009
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Related posts:
- Relapse Trigger Identification Exercise I have provided a large list of potential relapse triggers....
- Common Relapse Trigger: Not Following Your Continuing Care Plan Developing a continuing care plan is part of competent drug...
- Drug and Alcohol Relapse Prevention – Neglecting These Five Key Issues Can Lead to Relapse Maintaining sobriety from drug and alcohol use or addiction is...
- Drug Addiction And Alcoholism Treatment: The 4 Phases (Part 1 of 4) In this, the first article in a series of 4,...
- Drug Addiction And Alcoholism Treatment: The 4 Phases (Part 2 of 4) In this, second in a four-part series on the faces...
