Battling a substance abuse disorder can be overwhelming. If you suffer from an addiction to drugs or alcohol, staying sober can seem impossible. The challenges of early sobriety can be especially difficult. You may wonder if your sober journey will ever get easier.
While life may present challenges to your sobriety many years down the road, recovery does get easier over time. There are some suggestions to help you overcome sobriety’s subtle struggles. Let’s look at how sobriety does get easier over time.
The Physical Release
It is not logical to place the physical struggles of early sobriety in the same category as the psychological urges you may face over time. The level of physical cravings for different drugs, including alcohol, varies. The physical withdrawal symptoms from drugs, even alcohol, can be excruciating.
The physical effects of drug and alcohol withdrawal can also be life-threatening. No one should ever attempt to detox from drugs or alcohol alone. You may not require medically supervised detox, but an addiction specialist should make this critical determination.
During the first few days of sobriety, you may feel like things are getting worse. However, once you begin to feel a physical release from the drugs or alcohol, this early stage in your sobriety will get easier. Once you experience the physical release from your addiction, you begin the process of recovering from the symptoms.
The Psychological Release
Your release from the myriad of psychological triggers and trauma that compelled you to abuse drugs or alcohol takes time. The early stages of addiction treatment are dedicated to establishing a foundation to deal with these important issues.
Remember, addiction, both to drugs and alcohol, is but a symptom of underlying conditions. Uncovering these often debilitating symptoms can provide an enormous release. However, those with years of sobriety never forget one emphatic principle.
While the disease can be arrested, the work must never cease. Addiction is a cunning and baffling foe. Those with long-term sobriety stress how dangerous it can be to become complacent in your recovery.
The emotional and mental problems that might have befallen you, before you found recovery, can return without warning. As you add 24-hour blocks of sobriety to your life, accepting and handling these emotional triggers will become easier.
The Emotional Release
As you grow in your recovery journey, you will begin to experience a number of emotional releases. Guilt and shame bludgeon addicts and alcoholics, often for many years. These are understandable emotions, but they are as well unnecessary.
As your recovery journey moves forward, you will learn how to accept the past, but not feel a need to hide it. You can share your past experiences with others. You will find an unexplainable emotional release when you realize how different, but yet how equally alike you are with others in recovery.
This sense of emotional release from your addiction will continue for much of your life. There will be situations stemming from your addiction that may occur. However, recovery provides you with ways to handle whatever life throw your way, without resorting to drugs or alcohol.
Just the gradually improving sense that you do not need drugs or alcohol to handle your life can feel like a burden has been lifted. There are few guarantees in sobriety. However, one proven suggestion contends that if you do tomorrow what you’re doing today, there is a good chance you will not pick up a drink or a drug.
Every day that you stay clean and sober helps prove this to be true. As your life improves, and you begin to experience things you never imagined possible, you will experience a continuously growing sense of emotional release. Life may not always be easy, but sobriety will get easier.
There are going to be stages in every recovery journey that seem difficult. This is life. Life is full of periodic challenges. Dealing with the everyday challenges of life is dramatically harder when you’re also battling addiction.
Once the effects of the drugs or alcohol wear off, the problem is still there. All too often, the problems in your life are either created by your addiction, or your addiction makes them worse. Addiction can seem like a spiraling merry-go-round from one relapse to the next.
It doesn’t need to continue. There is hope. You can find this hope through recovery. To begin your own wonderful journey into a new way of living, all you need to do is ask for help. Asking for help may feel overwhelming.
You may feel guilty or weak because you cannot control your substance abuse. You are not alone. There are millions of people just like you have found recovery. All they did was seek help. Reach out today for help. Tomorrow might be too late. Help is there, and it’s just waiting for you to ask. Call us at 732-392-7311.
