How Do I Adjust to Life After Recovery?
There is a lyric from the beloved Beatle’s song, Blackbird. It goes, “All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise.” This symbolizes the opportunities that arise after we get sober and enter recovery. Our whole life, no matter how disturbed it may have been due to addiction, has led to a beautiful life after recovery. Now it’s time to seize the moment and enjoy all the benefits that arise with it.
What Are the Benefits of Recovering at the Cellular Level?
Healing at the cellular level is all about healing all the parts of the “Self” rather than focusing on just one aspect. For example, many recovery centers just focus on the psychological components of addiction. While this is critical, it is not the best approach. We cannot fully heal mentally if we do not also heal physically, emotionally, and spiritually as well.
This is a multi-angled approach to cellular-level healing, and it focuses on the holistic concept of treatment, holistic meaning “whole” – treating the whole “Self.” Now, the benefits of healing at the cellular level are vast and varied. The following are just a few of the benefits of healing at the cellular level:
- Repaired relationships
- Physical wellness
- The potential for spiritual awakenings
- Emotional stability
- Mental clarity
- Better sleep hygiene
- A healthy relationship with nutrition
- Less potential for co-occurring disorders
- Repaired work and school life
- Less potential for relapse
This last benefit is critical because many of us don’t realize, or don’t want to admit, how prevalent relapse is in the U.S. According to the peer-reviewed thesis, Addiction Relapse Prevention, by Doctors Guenzel and McChargue, “One primary concern in addiction treatment is the high rate of relapses within a short period after even the most intensive treatment. Many studies have shown relapse rates of approximately 50% within the first 12 weeks after completion of intensive inpatient programs that often last 4 to 12 weeks or more and can cost tens of thousands of dollars.” Taking a multi-angled approach to recovery greatly reduces this potential for relapse.
Why Is a Multi-Angled Approach to Treatment Best for Long-Term Recovery?
A multi-angled approach is essential because it utilizes many means, methods, and modalities across all categories of recovery. This includes the psychotherapeutic, experiential, psychedelic, dietary, and holistic.
Also, the multi-angled approach is not just vital for recovering at the moment (while at the treatment center), but also for recovering in the long term. This is because many of the principles and tools of the treatments carry on long after treatment has finished. Many of the treatments also carry over into long-term recovery.
For example, many people discover yoga and meditation while in recovery, and finding it extremely beneficial, choose to continue their practice after treatment. This is just one example of how the multi-angled approach to treatment while in recovery helps lead to a healthy life after recovery (after treatment).
How Do I Adjust to Life After Recovery?
The question “How do I adjust to life in recovery?” is one of the most common questions that come up in addiction treatment centers. This is because a lot of anxiety arises when thinking about integrating back into day-to-day life. While in the treatment center, many protections and barriers were in place to ensure that life in recovery ran smoothly. However, many people are concerned about what happens when those safeguards go away.
This is why being fully prepared to adjust to life in recovery is crucial. As previously mentioned, this happens by healing at the cellular level via the multi-angled approach. This means fully engaging in effective evidence-based modalities and setting ourselves up with recovery methods that can travel with us (such as surfing, gardening, yoga, and meditation). We also need to prepare for life after recovery in all areas of our lives. This includes our social, home, and career lives.
Life After Recovery: Your Career
After sleep, we spend most of our lives engaging in our careers (for some more high-functioning individuals, these numbers can be very close). This means that being comfortable in our careers is essential for overall well-being.
Life after recovery in our career must be assessed via a balance of priorities. We must remember that recovery should always come first. This includes in front of our careers. One way to look at it is like this – “Anything I put in front of my recovery, I could lose. After all, would I even have what I have if I didn’t choose to recover?” The answer in most regards is going to be no.
So, how do we embrace life after recovery with respect to our career? We must be open and honest about what we want in our careers. For most, it is going to be continued success and growth. The best way to accomplish this is to continue to grow in our recovery lives.
This growth will mean continuing the actions that were so effective while in the treatment center. It could mean continuing to see a therapist, going to recovery meetings, creating a physical exercise routine, and meditation in the morning and night. These actions will not only help with our life after recovery in our careers but also in our life after recovery in our homelives.
Life After Recovery: Your Home
The treatment center represents a safe space. So, when leaving the treatment center, many feel as if they are losing that safe space. This need not be the case. The key is to create a safe space at home, and the best way to do this is to involve the family in the recovery process from the very beginning.
Active addiction acts like a tornado that damages everything in its path. This is especially true for the people closest to them, who tend to be family and close friends. This is why addiction is not just a “disease,” but it is also a “family disease.”
Family therapy right from the beginning of the treatment process can greatly aid in a healthy life after recovery. According to the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, “Family therapy is a structured form of psychotherapy that seeks to reduce distress and conflict by improving the systems of interactions between family members. It is an ideal counseling method for helping family members adjust to an immediate family member struggling with an addiction, medical issue, or mental health diagnosis. Specifically, family therapists are relational therapists: They are generally more interested in what goes on between the individuals rather than within one or more individuals.”
Modalities like continued family therapy and counseling are exceptional ways to ensure a safe space in the home. It is also important to set boundaries in the home after treatment. While this may feel slightly harsh, boundaries after treatment simply exist to ensure accountability. This accountability can also be cemented via the social interactions we choose to have in life after recovery.
Life After Recovery: Social Interactions
There are three things that often lead to a relapse after treatment. These three things are “people, places, and things.” The first aspect is why ensuring we choose healthy social interactions in life after recovery is so important.
One of the best ways to ensure healthy social interactions is to fill those interactions with other people in recovery (often referred to as “recovery peers”). This ensures that we have plenty of people around us who have shared experiences and understand the dynamics that we are also dealing with.
Recovery peers may be people that we met while in treatment, but many times, they are people we meet in recovery communities after treatment. This often happens at recovery meetings in our own area (such as 12-Step meetings).
Keeping healthy connections with sober people in recovery is also one of the best ways to keep from a potential relapse. This is because helping others actually helps us more. The primary text of 12-Step recovery (commonly referred to as the Big Book) talks about this in its chapter aptly entitled, “Working With Others.” It states, “Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking [and using] as intensive work with other [people in recovery]. It works when other activities fail…You can help when no one else can.” Of course, connecting with others is just one of the tools to have a healthy life after recovery.
Utilizing Treatment Tools in Life After Recovery
As previously mentioned, the multi-angled approach while in treatment is one of the best options for a healthy, well-balanced recovery. Well, this multi-angled approach should also expand into life after recovery.
Now, this means using as means using as many modalities and methods post-treatment center as possible. This includes nutrition, physical activity, meditation, and psychotherapy.
Life After Recovery: Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a highly effective tool to help us recover from addiction. This is because it works to get to the root/core causes of our problems. It is important to remember that alcohol and drugs are often not the primary problem; rather, it is but a “symptom” of the problem.
Psychotherapy addresses the underlying issues that lead to negative addictive behaviors. One of the most effective types of psychotherapy that does this is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).
Continued engagement with CBT is a great way to ensure a healthy life after recovery. According to the peer-reviewed journal BioPsychoSocial Medicine, “CBT is a type of psychotherapeutic treatment that helps people to identify and change destructive or disturbing thought patterns that have a negative influence on their behavior and emotions. Under stressful conditions, some individuals tend to feel pessimistic and unable to solve problems. CBT promotes more balanced thinking to improve the ability to cope with stress.”
Keeping stressors at bay is essential in maintaining a positive life after recovery. Another way to accomplish this is via a healthy diet and focus on nutrition.
Life After Recovery: Nutrition
Here at Exclusive Hawaii Rehab, we believe in the maxim, “Food is medicine.” This is why we are big proponents of nutrition therapy.
Also, nutrition therapy is as much about what stays out of the body as what goes in. According to the Journal for Nurse Practitioners (JPN), “Nutritional Therapy uses food to prevent and reverse diseases that plague most western societies: diabetes, obesity, heart disease, arthritis, and depression. In order for food to be therapeutic, it must be nutrient-dense, measured in part by the nutrients and anti-nutrients, contained in consumed foods. Nutrients are plant and animal sources providing macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fat), micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, antioxidants, probiotics), and fiber” and “Anti-Nutrients are food products that have no biological necessity.”
Keeping this focus on nutrition in life after recovery will ensure that our body, mind, and soul keep running at optimal levels. Engaging in physical activity also promotes this healthy holistic lifestyle.
Life After Recovery: Surfing and Other Physical Activities
There is little doubt that getting outside and getting physical can be beneficial. In fact, according to the National Park Service, “A 30-minute visit to a park can improve heart health, circulation and lower cholesterol, blood glucose, and blood pressure. Walking in nature reduces inflammation and boosts your immune system, which decreases the risk of certain diseases and cancers. Interacting with a green space increases social interactions which can prevent diseases like dementia.” Also, interacting with a “blue” space (such as surfing) can be highly beneficial.
Surf therapy is a great introduction to a great activity to participate in life after recovery because it offers so many benefits. According to the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, “The International Surf Therapy Organization summarizes the benefits of adequately indicated surf therapy as follows: improved physical health and mobility; improved mental health, including reduction of specific symptoms, such as posttraumatic stress and depression; improved well-being (strengthening of trust and confidence, encouragement of independence, resilience and protective coping strategies) and improved social skills.” Another activity that offers physical wellness as well as emotional wellness is yoga.
Life After Recovery: Yoga and Meditation
Yoga is a great practice to establish while in recovery because it can easily be utilized in life after recovery. It can virtually travel anywhere we do.
Yoga offers many benefits for life after recovery. According to the International Journal of Yoga (IJOY), “Therapeutic yoga is defined as the application of yoga postures and practice to the treatment of health conditions. Yoga therapy involves instruction in yogic practices and teachings to prevent reduce or alleviate structural, physiological, emotional and spiritual pain, suffering or limitations. Yogic practices enhance muscular strength and body flexibility, promote and improve respiratory and cardiovascular function, promote recovery from and treatment of addiction, reduce stress, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain, improve sleep patterns, and enhance overall well-being and quality of life.”
Meditation is also one of those vital practices that we learn in treatment and can carry us throughout our lives in recovery. It also offers many more benefits. According to the International Quarterly Journal of Research in Ayurveda (AYU), “During the process of meditation, accumulated stresses are removed, energy is increased, and health is positively affected overall. Research has confirmed a myriad of health benefits associated with the practice of meditation. These include stress reduction, decreased anxiety, decreased depression, reduction in pain (both physical and psychological), improved memory, and increased efficiency.”
Long-Term Recovery With Exclusive Hawaii Rehab
The Beatles also famously sang, “And in the end, the love you make is equal to the love you take.” This is emblematic of the life we have created for ourselves in recovery. We did the work; now it is time to reap the rewards.
Here at Exclusive Hawaii Rehab, we understand that recovery is about the journey, never the destination. Yes, to paraphrase the Beatles, it can be a “long and winding road,” but with the right help, it is sure to be one of the best roads we’ve ever traveled.
There are many challenges that people face after they leave recovery, such as feeling “triggered,” repairing relationships, and answering questions about sobriety. However, the benefits of life in recovery far outweigh these challenges. If you feel like you or a loved one are struggling with issues of addiction, mental illness, or co-occurring disorders, we can help get you on the positive path toward long-term recovery right away. You don’t have to do this alone. For more information on how we give our clients the tools and coping skills to successfully and confidently navigate the transition from treatment into everyday life, please reach out to Exclusive Hawaii Rehab today at (808) 775-0200.