Recover from addiction at home with medication, community, and support—from the nonjudmental experts who really care. But if nothing else, don’t be afraid to ask for help, to show up. There are so many physical and psychological reasons why people aren’t able to tame this beast. So towards the end when I fear of being sober managed to put together two and three-month stretches of sobriety, I’d always screw up and drink again. I wasn’t in touch with my power or the Universe, or something. There’s something stubborn and self-destructive that lives inside our heads when we first start out on this journey.

Recovery Support

• Joining a support group can be a powerful tool in maintaining sobriety and staying on track in recovery.
• I didn’t want to sit in some dank church basement and say, “I’m an alcoholic.” I didn’t want anything to do with that community.
• So I got to deflect those feelings onto the word alcoholic.

Life after addictionmight also mean you have more professional success and new creative outlets that you discover when drugs and alcohol aren’t occupying all of your time. If you’re seeking help for yourself or a loved one, our expert team is here to guide you every step of the way. You don’t know how to handle your emotions in a healthy way. Reach out to someone for support on Pocket Rehab through the lifeline if you are really feeling like you may relapse.

Post-Acute Withdrawal Syndrome

However, sobriety doesn’t mean you won’t be able to cope with life’s challenges. In fact, sobriety can help you to learn new and healthier ways to deal with difficult situations. When people drink or use drugs, it frequently starts as a way to deal with hardships but becomes a primary coping mechanism. Things that happen in life may feel as if they’re too difficult to deal with without the effects of a substance. People may want to feel numb so they can overlook the bad things in their life.

Sobriety Fear #4: You’ll actually succeed.

Or maybe, on some level, you don’t believe you’re worthy of success. If you’ve done some major damage in your past, you might feel like you don’t deserve to be happy and healthy. Don’t let difficult decisions and conversations with loved ones be the excuse you use to keep drinking alcohol. Here are some common fears in sobriety and what you can do to manage them. On the one hand, you hate what your life has become due to drinking. On the other, you’re scared to death of what sobriety will do to your world.

Those who are overly pessimistic and say, “I’m going to be miserable forever,” will inevitably fail. You make it up to everyone you ever hurt by never being that person again. You’ll get significantly better at identifying the kind of people you genuinely enjoy being around, which is much harder to do when everyone is vibing off overpriced cocktails in dimly lit bars. Don’t expect to accomplish any big self-realizations in the beginning. More than likely, though, this meaningful journey of self-discovery will be a long, ongoing, and wonderful process.

It is very normal in the early days to feel like you’ve resigned yourself to a life of misery by quitting alcohol. Those early days of sobriety may leave you feeling hopeless. Even after being in recovery for a while, you may not be delighted with the changes you have made.4 In fact you may realize you don’t like being sober.

Relapse Prevention Techniques

When you’re in recovery, you don’t have to think about the effects of hangovers or blackouts. Thebenefits of being soberinclude real relationships and experiences that you might otherwise miss out on, along with many other goodreasons to be sober. For some, the thought of detoxing, working through rehab, and succeeding at recovery scares them. If you’re feeling like today is an okay day to let the past several months or days or years go down the drain so that you can use drugs or alcohol, just think long and hard about your why. If these emotions become excessive, they can hold you back from recovery. If you are trying to maintain a sober lifestyle, those feelings can become toxic and contribute to relapse if you don't deal with them properly.

If you’re worried about what other people will think if you become sober, then it’s likely that you’re scared of becoming sober. However, it’s important to remember that you don’t have to please everyone. Sobriety is a personal decision, and you should do what’s best for you, not what other people think is best for you. You can remember everything and not feel that sense of terror of waking up and not remembering what you said or did the previous night. You don’t have to try and wrack your brain to remember who you were with or what happened. You’re no longer waking up with that sinking feeling that something terrible might have happened the night before, but you can’t quite remember what.

I would much rather fail and keep trying than stay stuck on a one-way path to destruction. And worrying about what others may think if you return to use is outside of your control. You focus on you and the people who are supposed to be in your life will support you along the way. People you love will die, you will move, you may experience the end of a relationship, and you may even lose your job. Drinking or using drugs doesn’t make the pain of any of this go away — at best you may numb your feelings, but they’re still there when you sober up. Grief and loss are painful, but using doesn’t help it just prolongs the agony.

How Quickly Does The Liver Heal After You Quit Drinking?

• It's important to develop a structured daily and weekly schedule and stick to it.
• Strengthening your coping strategies and possibly adjusting your recovery plan can help prevent future setbacks.
• The fear of getting sober is more common than we may think.
• The personal repercussions of addiction can include financial hardship, damaged relationships, and physical and mental health concerns.
• Sometimes our fears are logical, but mostly they are not.
• Feeling guilty or ashamed of past behavior or actions during active addiction is natural and healthy.

If left unchecked, anger can have a negative impact on your health and your lasting sobriety. A mental health professional can help you cope with some of the challenges you'll face on your path to sobriety. Research shows that if you maintain these types of toxic relationships, your chances of relapsing are greater. To avoid relapse and remain sober, it's important to develop healthy relationships. You may also need to change your route to work or home in order to avoid any triggers, or people, places, or things that make you want to use drugs or drink again. Some of the immediate changes you will need to make will be obvious—like not hanging around the people that you used with or obtained drugs from.