Starting Over After Addiction Treatment
By Jen Mullins
Addiction can completely dismantle your life one piece at a time. This is because it takes over many of your behaviors and changes the way that you look at everyday activities. You may have lied to people, stolen, committed crimes, and hurt your professional reputation. A lot of people don’t feel like they’ll ever come back from the damage that they’ve done.
In truth, if you’re willing to go through an addiction care treatment program, you can be successful in rebuilding your life. It takes a lot of dedication and the ability to humble yourself. You have to understand how you’ve let down other people’s expectations of you and accept the consequences for your actions.
While addiction is a disease of the brain, it leads to a lot of bad choices. Financial issues, job loss, and legal troubles are definitely daunting, but they rarely measure up to the relationships that get ruined.
Trying to approach someone that you negatively impacted can be one of the scariest things you can possibly do. It’s also one of the most courageous. This can only happen if you’re willing to feel the damage that you’ve done and truly experience what you put others through.
Making Amends
Most of us have heard the term “making amends” used in 12-step programs. This is a concept that’s genuinely helpful regardless of how you choose to go about recovery. Making amends involves apologizing and taking responsibility for the people that you hurt.
If you’ve stolen from someone, you might be asked to make legal amends. If you’ve broken the trust of your friends and family, then you’ll need to do whatever it takes to try and reestablish trust.
Part of why people relapse has to do with guilt and poor coping skills. The only way to get past this guilt is to offer to make things right in every way possible. You may not be able to fix everything but acknowledging that you’ve done wrong is a huge step. This is an act that allows you to forgive yourself, and to start to move past your life on drugs.
One of the worst expectations you can have for your recovery is that it will happen quickly. It takes time to put your life back together after you’ve broken it apart so completely.
There are some pieces that you may never get back, and you have to be okay with this. Things may always be different, but this doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
When going to the process of making amends, you’re going to deal with a lot of friction. This is especially true when dealing with people that are still angry or disappointed in your behavior.
The Hurdles You’ll Face
You’re going to have to get past a lot of hurdles before you can start to heal your life. The biggest thing you’ll have to overcome is yourself. You have to learn how to cope with stressful situations without turning to drugs or alcohol.
For many, this is where they get stuck in the recovery process. The minute something gets difficult they reach for their drug of choice—you have to find a way to replace that crutch with something that’s positive and legal.
Then, comes the stigma of being a known addict. This can get exponentially worse if you’ve had to spend time in jail or if you’ve broken up your family. People are quick to pass judgment, and this can send you into a downward spiral of depression. You have to make sure that you’re strong enough on the inside to face the pressures of the outside.
No one is going to take your apology seriously if they don’t think that they can believe a word that you say. You may have to deal with a lot of doors being closed in your face, a lot of hang-ups, a lot of people that stay angry for a long time. Choosing to continue with your sobriety is the best way to prove yourself to everyone that still has doubts.
Rebuilding Trust
There’s a very good chance that you’ve lied to the people that you care about the most. You may have done this to continue using, to stay out of trouble, or to try and remain in their good graces. Regardless of your reasoning, you will have destroyed people’s trust and faith in you.
At this point, you need to be committed to doing whatever it takes to rebuild this. If a family member wants to watch you 24/7 and drug test you on a daily basis, then be thankful that you’re getting an opportunity to try and rebuild that relationship. Understand that drug use is hard on everyone, and this may be a part of their healing process as well.
It’s important not to be offended and to understand the outrage or the lack of trust that people have toward you. Especially when you’ve chronically lied to maintain your addiction.
A lot of drug addicts who are clean will get offended when asked to jump through hoops. It’s important to remember where you’re coming from, and where you’d like to go with your life. The longer you do what you’re asked, the more likely people are to trust you again.
Learning to Love Yourself
As you go through this process, you’ll have to get to know yourself again. Chances are, you’ll be a very different person when you’re sober. This means exploring your likes and dislikes and choosing new ways to express yourself. This can be intimidating and exciting, which is why it helps to have the support of trained treatment professionals as you go through this transformative time.
Author Bio
Jenn is a freelance contributor. Whether it’s personal finance, economics, or social issues, Jenn enjoys digging into complex topics to spark new thoughts and conversations.
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