From addiction to sobriety it is a challenging journey with various milestones along the way. It involves maintaining a state of no intoxication and needs your focus and investment of all your energy to succeed. It is easy to give in to temptation and therefore, you need to find a way to replace the bad habit.
You will also need support, assistance, encouragement, and preparation to stay on course. The below are survival tool kits to help you stay sober:
1. Basic Change
Start with some basic changes around you and in your life when on the sobriety journey. Get away from environments that let you succumb to temptations. Get away from people who stress you a lot, friends who pressure you to drink alcohol or intake substances, and other people’s addictions. Replace habits and activities that trigger you to give in to your cravings. Stop spending time alone or going to bars with friends and instead find and engage in activities that intrigue you. Another change you can make is to modify where you live. Give your home a make-over! even if it’s just cleaning it. Make it a place that appeases you and helps you clear your mind and get rid of any stress inducers.
2. Plan Ahead
Planning ahead of time is a very effective way to prevent stress and addiction triggers. Create schedules with healthy constructive plans and activities that prevent you from being idle. Make plans that will help you in the future, such as saving the contact number of a friend who will help you in case of a relapse, as an emergency number.
3. Relationships
Unhealthy relationships and traumatic experiences are factors that cause addiction. Such situations include involvement in toxic friendships and family relationships, any type of abuse, and negative influence by your peers. You need to cut off and limit contact with toxic friends, parents, or siblings to avoid traumatic situations and the acquisition of stress. Try rebuilding relationships or forming new and healthy relationships with people who make you feel loved and would not trigger you back to the addiction.
4. Health prioritization
Taking care of your physical, emotional, and mental health allows you to heal. Alcohol and/or substance abuse causes loss of appetite which later leads to deprivation of nutrients due to the dependency on substances instead of food. To improve your physical health, you need to drink lots of water, take supplements, eat healthily, and exercise frequently. For your mental health,
you can consult a therapist, practice Cognitive Behavioral Therapy approaches, and take the medication prescribed to you. Reaching out to your family or close friends, creating a new bond with new people and, developing new hobbies and interests will positively target your emotional health.
5. Support team
It is hard to stay on the course of sobriety, and one needs support, advice, and encouragement to move forward. It is necessary to select a few people; they can be your family or friends that will be with you along the way.
6. A step at a time
There usually comes a time when one overthinks a lot about future outcomes and negatively anticipates what will happen. This normally triggers negative emotions and induces stress which leads to an increase in alcohol or substance cravings. Make daily plans that will help you focus and train your mind to stay in the present rather than the future.
A lot of patience, tolerance, and hard work is needed to succeed in the sobriety journey. The journey becomes a bit smoother with support from your loved ones. Through these tips, sobriety becomes easier to achieve.
