There are many different things that play a role in whether or not you succeed in recovering from a drug addiction – or any type of addiction for that matter. But one of the factors that plays a very important role in your drug addiction recovery is your attitude.

Let’s face it: the path to drug addiction recovery is certainly not all roses and sunshine. It can be a long, arduous one for most addicts. Not many approach it with the same excitement they might have for an upcoming trip to Hawaii. So, if your attitude is not one of “Hey, this will be a really fun adventure,” that’s okay – and expected.

What You May Have to Give Up to Recover from Drug Addiction

You may be focusing on everything you have to give up. Let’s see:

• All my friends who do drugs
• All my drugs – and the pleasure I get from using them
• All the places I used to go to use
• Time (spent in treatment) that I’d rather be using for something much more appealing

Yuck!

Yes. You will have to give up a lot. But you’ll also be gaining a lot. But more on that later.

It’s certainly understandable that starting a drug addiction recovery program is a huge step – and one that should never be taken lightly. It’s a very serious decision. That’s why going into it with the right attitude – the right mindset – can make a significant difference with regard to whether your drug treatment is successful – or whether it ends up being an expensive waste of time.

Personal Responsibility Needed to Recover from Addiction

One of the first questions you need to ask yourself before getting into treatment is, “Am I willing to take responsibility for my life?” (This, of course, includes taking responsibility for your drug addiction as well.)

It’s easy (and very common) for addicts to blame others for their problem – their parents, their friends, their ex, their abusive stepfather, their critical mother, and so on. Unfortunately, as long as you blame anyone but yourself you’re probably not going to be very successful in your drug addiction recovery.

You see, when you blame others, you always give yourself an easy “out” for failure. Blaming others keeps you mired in a victim mentality. Victims, unfortunately, stay stuck. Survivors (or winners), on the other hand, take action and change their situation for the better.

Maybe it’s not a person that you’re blaming. Maybe you’re blaming your unique genetic makeup, your “addictive” personality, your melancholy temperament, God, the cosmos, the really crummy hand you were dealt, or a physical or mental ailment. If you continue to blame some external factor rather than take responsibility, you’re setting yourself up to fail. After all, it’s really hard to put forth the effort to change if you believe you have some fatal flaw or impossible obstacle to overcome.

Necessary Changes You Need to Make to Recover

Another attitude shift that’s necessary for your drug addiction recovery is a willingness to make the necessary changes to ensure success. The road to recovery doesn’t end the day your treatment program does. It’s an ongoing process.

You didn’t become an addict overnight – nor did you become one in a vacuum. Even though blaming external factors isn’t the right approach, it is still important that you acknowledge the role they play in your addiction. Perhaps you had friends or a significant other who enabled you or who encouraged you to use. Or, perhaps you lived in a neighborhood where drugs were readily available and it seemed everyone was using.

For successful drug addiction recovery, those things need to change. Yes, you do have to give up your drug-using friends and you may need to move far away from your old neighborhood. This is the time for a fresh start – one that’s conducive to a clean lifestyle rather than going right back to your old environment, and your old ways.

Conquer Your Drug Addiction for YOU

Many people end up in drug rehab because someone else manipulated, forced, tricked, cajoled, or guilt-tripped them into it. And, while some of them may ultimately succeed, many will end up relapsing – either out of resentment or because they weren’t ready (or willing) to get clean.

Going through drug treatment really needs to be something you want for YOU, not for someone else. It’s kind of like losing weight: if you lose weight to please your spouse, your boyfriend or girlfriend or your nagging mother, you probably won’t keep the weight off – if you lose any at all. But, if you do it because you want to do it for yourself – because you’ll feel better and look better – then you’re much more likely to succeed. The same goes for drug addiction recovery.

Focus on the Gains of Being Drug-Free

We started out by discussing how easy it is to focus on everything you have to give up if you want to get clean and stay clean. But one of the most important shifts in your attitude – and one that may take the most time – is to begin to focus on everything you’ll gain in your drug addiction recovery.

Let’s look at just a few:

• Improved health
• Better relationships
• Ability to think more clearly
• Increased self-esteem
• Stability
• Improved performance and functioning in all areas of your life

Granted, these aren’t going to happen all at once. Some may gradually occur over a lengthy period of time. But if you can keep your focus on the long-term gains, it’ll make the treatment process much more tolerable – and worthwhile.

You can have a very successful – and lasting – drug addiction recovery. Strive to make these shifts in your attitude to ensure that success!

The winter season brings many opportunities for laughter, for sharing goodwill and for spreading cheer. However, if you have recently finished a drug detox program, the season can also be a minefield of potential relapse triggers. Shorter days and longer nights, holiday parties where alcohol is served, awkward or difficult family gatherings, and money shortages in a time of gift-giving can all lead to stress and anxiety which, in turn, could tempt you to find escape from pressure in the wrong way. These situations could prove stressful for anyone, but if you are still recovering from drug or alcohol addiction, the tension could feel even more so.

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If you’ve taken the very powerful step to go through a drug or alcohol rehab program (or rehab for any type of addiction for that matter), it can be a bit overwhelming to think about what happens next. What will your life after rehab be like? What should you do? How important is aftercare?

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Much of mental health treatment focuses on the root causes underneath the fruit of poor behaviors. After all, actions don’t originate from thin air. What if part of the root problem is too much self-focus? What if people struggling with addictions were encouraged to focus more attention on the needs of others? What if helping my neighbor ended up being a way to help myself?

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A recent study shows that young adults who have undergone addiction treatment and arrive willing to make personal changes make great strides in recovery with guidance to build and sustain them. Butler Center colleagues explain that they believe a strong motivator for change comes from the camaraderie among young adults who have had severe addictions in treatment together.

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When a partner or spouse gets violent, the physical damage is often visible and obvious. More difficult to detect, however, are the emotional wounds inflicted on the victim, with mental health disorders often resulting from trauma suffered in the home from a spouse.

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“It’s the moment you think you can’t that you realize you can.” – Celine Dion, Canadian recording artist and entrepreneur (born 1968)

We’ve all had the thought that we simply can’t go on, that our troubles or circumstance – of our own making due to our addiction – are just too much for us to bear. We may look for the easy way out, but at the very least, we come face-to-face with the reality of our own actions. We tell ourselves we can’t do what’s expected of us, what we’re told is the way out of the darkness and into recovery.

That’s precisely the time when we realize – if we’re open to it – that we can, indeed, do exactly that. We can make it through whatever has happened or is happening now. What is at stake is our very life, our way of being, and our humanity. We can stare at the abyss and step back from it. In fact, we already have, since we’ve come through the serpentine labyrinth of addiction and made it out on the other side. Okay, it may be a tremulous and halting recovery to this point, but at least we’ve come this far. That’s really an achievement and one that we need to acknowledge. This is important because it gives us the strength and helps foster the determination to go on, to tackle the next obstacle or embrace the next opportunity that comes our way.

And we all face challenges and opportunities each and every day. Sometimes we don’t recognize them for what they are. We lump certain situations into the category of a roadblock when in reality, they’re really opportunities in disguise. We’ve heard the expression, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” The same could be said here. When we encounter a problem or a difficulty of major or minor proportions, we can choose to look at it one of two ways. First, we can tell ourselves that it’s too much for us to handle and give up on it altogether. Second, and the more constructive way to deal with it, is that we can look closely at the situation, learn what we can from it, and figure out a way that we can deal with it and move on. In other words, we turn a bad situation into something that works for us. We learn from our mistakes and keep moving forward in recovery.

The key to being able to do this is a belief that we can. For some of us, this belief in our capabilities and self-worth is sorely lacking. We may have endured an abusive childhood or been down on our luck for many months or years or our entire life. It will be tough to summon this belief that we have what it takes, and that’s where counseling or therapy can be very beneficial to us. We can overcome the nightmare of the past, but we can’t do it alone. Professional help may provide the means and the way forward. We will need to give therapy time to work, particularly if we’ve had a long history of trauma, abuse and addiction. But we can do it. Yes, we can.

Start today by working on something small on our list of things to do for our recovery. As we accomplish the first task, whatever it may be, add this to our success list of achievements. This will begin to boost our self-confidence, to reinforce that we can do what we set out to do for ourselves in recovery. Yes, we can, and yes, we will.

“No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm.” – Charles F. Kettering, American inventor, engineer, teacher, humanitarian, and holder of 140 patents, better known as “Boss Ket” (1876-1958)

When we think of a storm, images of roiling black clouds, thunder, rain, and miserable conditions come to mind. It’s not a stretch to extend this mind’s-eye view of a storm to our experience in recovery, especially early recovery. That’s because when we first begin our recovery journey, we’re likely not at our best. First of all, we’ve just gotten clean and sober for perhaps the first time in a long time, or perhaps another time in a series of relapse events. At any rate, we’re feeling a little rocky – okay, maybe a lot worse than just rocky – and not at all sure we’re prepared for what’s ahead, or even if we have it in us to deal with the challenges.

Indeed, our bodies and minds are screaming for it, is to drink or do drugs again. Maybe our drug of choice was a combination of alcohol and drugs and gambling, or compulsive sex, overwork, overspending, even overeating. Whatever it was, we each faced a tremendous number and variety of hurdles just to arrive at this point in our path toward sobriety. It was a long haul, and, quite frankly, more than likely very exhausting.

Now, just when we think we should be able to coast, or ease off a bit, we’re learning that the hard work is only beginning. Looking at what we’ve chosen for ourselves, sobriety, is starting to maybe look like an impossible task. Are we really going to find the courage or determination to be able to make it through whatever storm is on the horizon?

Perhaps the best bit of advice anyone can give the newcomer to recovery is to keep on moving forward. Looking backward isn’t productive, since there’s so much in our rearview mirror that we’ve now left behind. There’ll be plenty of time to deal with our recollection and inventory of our past behavior that caused harm to others and to work on making our amends. For now, however, we need to keep putting one foot in front of the other and get down to the business of healing in recovery.

We’re on this ship of recovery, even though the storm clouds may be gathering or a downpour has just occurred. We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to stick it out, hold true to our desire to remain clean and sober. We’ll go to the 12-step groups and be present in the rooms. We’ll get a sponsor, learn all we can about how to live a healthier lifestyle, work the steps and get more in tune with our inner self, the one who’s chosen this path of recovery.

We can weather the storm. We’ve got it within us. All we have to do is believe in our ability to do so. No, it isn’t going to be easy all the time. There will be days when it certainly seems as if we’re lugging a tank uphill by our teeth. We’ll be tempted to give up, give in, and numb out. When those kinds of thoughts nag at us, it’s important to keep in mind that the end-goal, recovery, is a journey. It isn’t a destination. We’re in this for the long haul, whatever storms may erupt along the way.