Feeling Good is an Inside Job

So, you’re clean and sober and your body begins the process by detoxing. Our bodies are ultra-efficient machines when they are working at their optimum potential. However, when we’re getting high and drinking, our bodies have been working overtime to filter out all the chemicals we’ve been abusing. Our liver is tired! Our lungs, exhausted! And our brains… worn out. Our bodies have been overworked and it, too, needs to recover.

Nutrition

You finally have your appetite back. This is a miracle in of itself! Our bodies are ready to heal, too. Over the years of our addiction, our bodies have been unable to correctly absorb the required amount of vitamins and nutrients. We have compromised our immune system. Proper nutrition is essential part healing of our bodies, mind and spirit for continued recovery.

It is important to consider nutrition in treating the over-all health of the recovering addict.

Taking Medication and Staying Clean

To just about any addict, the phrase, “Take as prescribed” is considered as a suggestion. Instead of one every four hours, they take 4, every hour. To recovering addicts, this is a joke. To others that think they don’t have a problem, this may be a warning sign.

Talk to Your Doctor, Sponsor and Friends

An addict’s body doesn’t know the difference between prescribed drugs and street drugs. A drug, is a drug, is a drug. So, when we go to the doctor for anything we explain that we are recovering addicts and ultra-sensitive to any mood or mind-altering drugs. We take a sponsor or another recovering addict with us to our appointment. We talk to our doctor about any alternative treatments that may be available. We find out if we can take a smaller dose.

Striving for Perfection

In our minds, we all have an idea of what life is supposed to be like. These ideals can extend into various aspects of our lives – from our relationships to our families, to our children, our work and more. Striving for perfection is a noble endeavor, but only if we are also able to understand and accept our limitations, which we all have; otherwise, we set ourselves up for constant disappointment. Life rarely goes according to plan, and those who expect things to be perfect are going to be regularly disappointed.

The same is true for substance abusers who enter recovery with high expectations of themselves; they develop an all-or-nothing approach to sobriety that sets them up for disappointment and threatens their chances for an enduring recovery.

How Perfectionism Fuels Addiction

It’s not unusual for people who give up an addiction to alcohol or drugs to become perfectionists.

No doubt, if you have a loved one who is are abusing drugs or alcohol you’ve probably heard all the excuses in the book. And if you are abusing, you’ve probably used them all too. Here are some common myths addicts convince themselves are true, but are not.

I can stop anytime I want

For an addict, using alcohol or drugs make them feel in control of their lives. Many addicts convince themselves that they only use by choice — that they can stop anytime they want. But in reality, it is just the opposite. Drug and alcohol addiction controls the lives of the addict so much, they harm themselves and the ones that they love. Addicts cannot stop themselves, they need help from a treatment facility or program.

If everyone would just get off my back, everything would be fine

Addicts convince themselves that it is not them with the problem — its everyone else.