Life after recovery requires time and patience. You’re also likely to experience a lot of emotions. Some moments in life might make you feel angry, sad, impatient, worried, or disappointed…but don’t let that stop you.
When you leave a residential treatment program, what happens? How can you be sure your recovery will go the way you want it to?
For the sake of your future, it’s important to make sure you do everything possible to avoid relapse and possibly going back to an existence you were desperately trying to get away from.
5 Tips for Life After Recovery From Addiction
Remember that your recovery isn’t over when you leave rehab. What you learn, you’ll need for the rest of your life. These tips (and others like them) can help ensure that your recovery remains successful over the long term.
1. Patience
It will take some time to adjust, accept the situation and see improvements. Patience is important because you won’t improve completely overnight. You should take your recovery day by day; go outside, see a movie, hang out with your friends (as long as they’re supportive of you!), travel, and find hobbies. Having patience and finding activities you enjoy will help the process go by much faster.
2. Exercise
Part of life after recovery is working on your health and wellbeing. It’s important to exercise your brain and body by either working out, practicing yoga, or meditating. It will improve your mood, self-esteem, and make you feel better about yourself. If you work out 3-5 days a week, you’ll start to see physical and emotional improvements on your body and feel great doing it.
3. Eat Right
Going off of the exercise tip, it’s also important to eat healthily. Eating healthy will make your body feel better and help your appetite. Your snack cravings will become less and you’ll begin to feel better about yourself. You’ll have more energy, you’ll combat more diseases, you’ll have more controlled weight and your mood will be better. What’s not to love about eating healthy!?!
4. Celebrate Accomplishments
Are you 1 week or maybe 1 month sober? Even if you’re 1 year sober, it’s time to celebrate! Celebrating your accomplishments raises your self-esteem and makes you feel better about your recovery. By setting short-term goals, you’ll be aware of what steps you need to get there. When you’ve accomplished that goal, it’s time to set a new one! When you set short term goals, you can be aware of long term goals you want as well.
5. Find New Hobbies/Activities
Last but not least, have fun! Find friends that support you. Sign up for a sport, join a bowling league, take up wood crafting or learn to play the guitar. Sitting around will not do you any good, so might as well make the best of the situation and see what the world has to offer.
Life After Recovery Depends on Effective Addiction Treatment
Want to know how your recovery will go? That depends on how good your addiction treatment has been.
Effective addiction treatment is treatment that meets you where you are. That doesn’t label you or shame you. And certainly doesn’t make ultimatums like “quit or else."
The kind of addiction treatment that sees you as a person with strengths and weaknesses, not just an “addict." In other words, you need the kind of addiction treatment that starts with the assumption that you can indeed recover.
If you’re ready for this kind of treatment, look for a program that offers it. The good news is that New Start Recovery is where you’ll find it. For more information, visit our website or call us at *DM_DirectNumber format=period linked=true* for a no-cost, confidential assessment.