It was a significant moment when you realized that you needed to turn your life around. It might have been incredibly life changing when you said to yourself that you no longer want to use drugs and alcohol as an escape or as a way to self-medicate.
If you’re in drug withdrawal treatment, then you’re on the start to a journey. If you’re in drug treatment, then you’ve said yes to yourself. And you should know that drug treatment is never truly effective unless you’re ready.
This applies to everyone, regardless of age, race, gender, or socioeconomic status. There must be willingness and a readiness to change old patterns, old behaviors, and old choices.
In order to meet the demands of your life, you’re going to need a kind of inner strength that didn’t exist before. Let’s face it, if you had the strength to meet the emotional, psychological, and daily responsibilities of your life, you probably wouldn’t have reached for the drugs or alcohol.
So, it’s not just a matter of getting off the drugs or stopping the drinking; recovery is also finding a new you. Recovery is putting the pieces together again so that you are stronger than you were before. Recovery is finding the inner resources that were buried while you were in the cycle of addiction, and it is uncovering the wounds that the addiction was trying to mask.