Addiction Recovery Tools

Choosing Your Recovery Toolbox to Support Staying Clean

Addiction is a lonely and isolating illness that does a good job of convincing you that everything is okay. Nobody believes that they have a problem while they’re experiencing an addiction, including me. It was a battle for my mind that I was losing – until I finally decided to get help.

When I first started on my journey to sobriety, everyone told me that the hardest part was asking for help. And I believed them until it came time to live the rest of my life without using drugs.

Fortunately, with the right help and addiction recovery tools, you can get and stay sober so that your new normal is something you’re proud of. Without them, you risk going back to the lifestyle that was slowly killing you and harming everyone who loves you too.

Each day can still be a battle at times. It would be way easier to relapse and go back to my old lifestyle, but I know better, and now I have the tools I need too. I know what I am capable of when I’m in control of my own fate – and I learned how to take control during my time with Icarus.

Thanks to Icarus Behavioral Health, I was able to undergo a medical detox to get my mind right and begin working on addressing the issues that led to my addiction. They also gave me the addiction recovery tools that I rely on to this day to help me maintain sobriety throughout the recovery process.

If you want to overcome addiction, keep reading to learn how you can build a lifestyle that leads to a successful recovery.

The Importance Of Learning How To Live Without Drugs After Rehab

Recovery is a lifelong battle between the old you and the new you. You might think that once you go to rehab, your addiction will just go away. But, sadly, that’s not how it works.

Every day becomes a new challenge that you need to overcome. There will be high points, low points, temptations, stressful situations, and peer pressure that test your resolve toward sobriety.

You need to face the challenges head-on and use your coping skills to overcome the adversity that addiction has put in front of you – and with the help of Icarus, you can.

How Icarus Behavioral Health Helps Prepare You For Sobriety

When you go into a drug and alcohol treatment center like Icarus Behavioral Health, you’ll undergo a comprehensive evaluation that helps them figure out how to best help you. Each treatment program is personalized for every client, so you can be confident that you’ll receive all the care you need before, during, and after rehab.

If you’re actively using drugs like I was, you’ll start with a medical detox. Here, you’re supervised and treated to minimize withdrawal symptoms while your body gets used to sobriety. Then, you’ll transition to the inpatient facility, where your treatment plan will begin with a selection of the various programs Icarus offers.

Getting Help for Mental Health in My Recovery Journey

Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was fortunate to have found effective treatment for co-occurring disorders during my stay at Icarus.

As a dual-diagnosis treatment center, they’re qualified to treat both addiction and the mental health problems that contribute to it, like anxiety, depression, and PTSD.

At their facility, the goal is to position you for success by addressing every factor of your addiction, not just the addiction itself, so that once you leave the facility, you have a better chance at maintaining sobriety.

Additionally, through activities like group therapy and counseling, they’ll equip you with coping skills that help you overcome the mental hurdles that accompany recovery.

You’ll also learn addiction recovery tools that you can use to make sober living easier. They’re your secret to long-term success and are the most important companions in my journey through life after addiction, so I know they’ll help you with your own recovery.

Addiction Recovery Tools To Help You Stay Sober After Rehab

Everyone has their own path to and through recovery. Nobody can do it for you, and it’s not easy, but it’s possible. Mine had its ups and downs but I continued my journey each time because I knew the importance of living a happier and healthier sober life. You can, too.

With the right recovery tools, you’ll be able to do more than just live sober – you can thrive. These strategies, given to me by Icarus, helped me, and they’ll help you, too.

Building a Strong Sober Support System Around Yourself

Struggling with addiction can take a major toll on your relationships. As your habits become destructive and you begin to lose friends and other people who care about you, it’s easy to spiral back into loneliness. The same can be true during your recovery.

If you’re lucky, those whom you have hurt because of your substance use disorder will forgive you and be there to support you. Friends, family, partners, and other people you trust will be essential for the times when you struggle with your sobriety.

There will be low times, and having people who know about your struggles can provide you with emotional support.

You might also want to reach out to others going through recovery by way of peer support groups, and if you choose to go with a 12-step program, like AA or NA, find a reliable sponsor. It can be helpful to have someone who is going through the same things as you or who has already overcome them to talk about the things that people without addictions don’t understand.

Talking With a Psychiatrist and Therapist When Needed

Recovery is a mentally taxing experience that comes with a lot of emotions and involves a lot of thinking. As people who have struggled with addictions, sometimes our brain can be our worst enemy. Sometimes, I just feel like I need to talk to someone without judgment or worrying about it affecting my personal relationships.

Talking with mental health professionals, whether during your time at Icarus or as a part of your aftercare plan upon graduation, is an essential tool to use. Having an outlet to vent about frustrations and struggles to a therapist can help to calm some of those negative emotions and make recovery less stressful.

Working with a psychiatrist also helps to address any co-occurring mental health conditions that are contributing to your struggles with sobriety, including medication management.

Control Your Environment and Influences

During your addiction, you lived a very different life than you do after rehab. If you abuse alcohol or party drugs, you probably have an entire friend group based around your shared interest or a barroom crowd that recognizes you as soon as you enter the door.

These relationships and locations are connected to memories and feelings that you experienced before you were sober – ones that you don’t want to relive.

Going back to people or places with strong emotional connections to your addiction can be a trigger that tempts you to fall back into old habits. You can’t simply go back to the way things were, minus the substance abuse. You need to take control of the positions you put yourself in and the influences you let impact you so that your sobriety isn’t compromised.

Controlling doesn’t mean avoiding entirely, though. Over time, you will be able to cope with temptation better without a significant emotional impact. You can still go to bars with new friends or talk with your old friends, but it’s important to set clear boundaries with people to avoid peer pressure or relapsing.

Join Support Groups and 12-Step Programs

Loneliness is a common feeling among both those who suffer from addiction and those recovering from it. A lot of the time, your entire lifestyle will change from before you get help to after you get help because those relationships and habits were enabling your addiction. That dramatic change can make you feel isolated and lonely – and you’re not alone in that feeling.

One of the most effective addiction recovery tools for me was joining a support group. Addiction is a unique struggle that not everyone can understand physically, mentally, and emotionally. Being able to talk about the way I feel and hear that others feel the same way is comforting. Plus, those who are further along in recovery can share their wisdom and anecdotes to help you overcome any hurdles that arise.

12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) can also be helpful for those seeking more guidance and a more involved group therapy. Here, you’ll also be able to find a sponsor to help guide you through the recovery journey. This gives you a lifeline that you can use to get help outside of support group meetings, which is invaluable for early recovery.

Establish A Consistent Routine

Active addiction can be a chaotic and erratic lifestyle. We’ve all had late nights thinking about how to get our next fix or spending too much time out late at all hours of the night indulging. This lack of structure makes it hard to build healthy habits and reasonable routines that improve our health instead of hurting it, which can carry over after getting help.

A healthy, consistent routine that you can stick to helps give you the drive and motivation to do what you need to. As you get used to them, they’ll begin to boost your well-being as you accomplish them and become your new, healthier normal.

Take Care Of Your Health

A healthy body goes a long way towards helping improve your mental health. Addiction puts your body through some serious trauma, so healing it by taking care of yourself allows you to feel better and avoid physical triggers for drug abuse. This includes eating healthy and exercising.

Regular exercise increases your serotonin and dopamine, two neurotransmitters that are associated with satisfaction and pleasure, similar to the way many drugs impact your brain. By exercising, you can actually help fight off cravings and urges to use by giving your brain what it wants naturally instead of with drugs.

Get Your Set of Addiction Recovery Tools at Icarus

I struggled with addiction just like you. It was hard to admit that I had a problem, but once I did, I was able to get the help that I needed to begin my journey to recovery. I’m grateful that I chose Icarus Behavioral Health to equip me with the addiction recovery tools I’ve needed to stay sober each day since.

Overcoming an addiction is difficult. But, if you build your support system, make use of mental health services, avoid triggering situations, and take care of your physical and mental health, it’s much easier.

Icarus helped me – let them help you, too. Call today for a free and confidential consultation to see how they can help you change your life like I was able to change mine!