5 Reasons Recovery Is a Lifelong Process
There’s a wildly dangerous myth circulating that recovery is only a 30-day treatment process. Get in and get out. Do the detox, do the counselling. You’re set for life. Aren’t you? Unfortunately, this is not the case for most individuals.
Achieving life-long sobriety is, you guessed it, a life-long journey. Your path to recovery will include troughs and peaks, with sharp turns and bends. You may even get lost on occasion. This is normal, and why we call it a life-long process. Think of it as your yellow brick road.
It’s also important to consider your recovery journey as a marathon, not a sprint or a competition. Life-long recovery is more achievable with a slow and steady pace. No two recovery journeys are the same, as everyone is different. There’s no need to keep up with others or try to beat anyone. This lifelong journey requires dedication, patience, and persistence to reach your goal but is worth it in the end.
Recovering from drug and alcohol abuse is a process that you’ll probably find yourself thinking about throughout your life. What will likely start as a treatment plan at a rehab centre will continue through the years, with many different layers and stages to your recovery. The points below shed further light on why recovery is a life-long journey.
1. Treatment Is Only the Beginning
Recovery doesn’t end when the treatment plan does. Treatment programmes and rehabilitation centres are essential in providing support, therapies, and medications to exorcise the harmful substances from your body and start the sobriety journey. Therefore, a treatment programme will arm you with the tools you need to start your journey, but it’s just the start.
Your recovery journey is not just thirty or ninety days long; it’s a lifetime long. A recovery plan will get you started but learning all you need to know about recovery will take patience and time. However, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the longer you spend in treatment, the more successful you will be in recovery. Indeed, that makes the wait worth it. [1]
2. Your Recovery Should Always Be Your Priority
No matter how busy life gets, no matter how many hours you work or how many chores pile up around the house, your recovery should always be your priority. Your recovery may start with deciding to enter a treatment plan, but you’ll have to constantly make other decisions to make your recovery top of your list throughout your life.
This is because your recovery will be a continuous process that will regularly change, requiring new effort and thought. Unfortunately, there’s no magic cure for alcohol and drug abuse. Instead, for successful lifelong recovery, you’ll have to make your health your priority and make the time to do things that aid your recovery. That may be meditation, going to Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous groups and meetings, prayer, reading self-help literature, or all the above.
In addition, be prepared to make a renewed commitment now and again as life tests you. Just like any other chronic illness, recovery is possible when you learn to manage your condition for life.
3. Recovery is a Layered Process
Unfortunately, many will have begun a treatment programme but not made it far enough to reach long term recovery. Problems often arise when the treatment programme focuses on aftercare, relapse prevention and long-term sober living. The best and most successful treatment plan for recovery involves a layered process, as per the below.
Stage One: The recovery process usually begins with drug or medical detox, dependant on the individual, type and extent of substance abuse. Although a challenging process, it is essential for ridding your body of the damaging substances and starting the abstinence process.
Stage Two: Patients will then enter a treatment programme. Again, this can vary depending on the individual but will often include rehab care, a full-time residential program or plans with less intensive levels of care. These include partial outpatient treatments, intensive outpatient treatments or hospitalisation. Rehab contains several aspects that many may be familiar with, including medical intervention, talking therapies and group counselling.
Stage Three: Unfortunately, many treatment plans fall down because they don’t focus enough on aftercare. In contrast, a sturdy aftercare programme is essential in building a robust recovery course.
Aftercare can be found in several ways, but many individuals find this in a halfway house or sober living facility. The staff at your recovery centre can help you find the correct aftercare, which may include teachings about mental health support, accountability, and life coaching. Staff can also find those on a recovery journey find local clinicians, physicians, and recovery groups.
Stage Four: This may be the last piece of the puzzle, but it’s no less important than the first. Ongoing support is another reason recovery is a lifelong process; the chances of success reducing without it. Recovery requires all layers for success and ongoing support for sobriety via support groups, meetings, and individual counselling, such as CBT and talking therapies.
Many in addiction recovery find support groups essential in allowing them to reintegrate into work and home lives, allowing for a safe and reassuring environment for long-term sobriety. In addition, research has found that his long term, continued care is vital in ensuring the long-term recovery of those trying to recover from addiction.[2]
4. Challenges to Your Recovery
Recovery brings a whole new way of living, a better way of living, but it doesn’t take away all the problems that life brings. Our lives will always be full of hardships and grief, from work, money problems, relationship issues to losing loved ones.
No matter how hard you work to prepare for when a crisis shocks, the negative emotions and feelings that come from life stressful events will find a way to creep in. Finding other coping mechanisms that don’t revolve around drinking alcohol or using drugs is an integral part of the process, so your sobriety isn’t at risk. This is where a relapse prevention plan is beneficial in making new lifelong patterns to replace old ones. Set yourself up for long term success.
5. Mind Over Matter
As mentioned earlier, the myth that recovery ends when people leave rehabilitation is dangerous, giving the impression that those in recovery heal when they finish the program. However, because becoming addicted to substances changes your brain, most especially the reward circuits in your brain, you no longer appreciate standard rewards in the same way as before. Usually, pleasant occurrences such as eating and socialising just won’t cut it anymore. [3]
Because of this, you must try to change your mindset and create thought patterns apt for long-term sobriety. As your recovery changes over time, so will your perspective. It’s essential to accept from the beginning that reaching sobriety isn’t something that can be just done and dusted, never to be thought of again.
You’ll need to make time for yourself daily to work on your mindset and to allow yourself to be dedicated yourself to your recovery. Essential practices for working on your mindset can include meditating, mindfulness, attending therapy sessions and sober group meetings, or any combination of these.
Throughout your life, remember that this may be a lifelong process, but it shouldn’t and doesn’t need to be done alone. With the right among of support and treatment, you can live a whole life of sobriety. Of course, other days will be more challenging than others, so on those days, make sure to rely on the healthy support system and relapse prevention plans that you’ve put in place.
Recovery is a gradual process that will always require patience, positivity, growing and learning, but will become much easier in time.
