Do you have the urge to drink again? Sobriety is not easy but it’s worth it. Here are a few things to tell yourself to prevent relapse and keep you on the track of sobriety.
“It’s not worth it.”
“This is only temporary.”
“There’s a reason you stopped drinking.”
“If you don’t drink, you’ll thank yourself tomorrow.”
You might remember that when you needed to get sober, there was an action that was required. You needed to do something like call a friend or contact a therapist or dial the number for an addiction treatment center. If you hadn’t taken that one step you might not be where you are now – sober. Back then, you needed …
One common characteristic of addiction is that the addict wants to satisfy their desires now. They want their cravings satisfied immediately. They want their needs met instantly. There is little patience, endurance, and serenity. Instead, an addict’s focus is on life’s demands (cravings, pains, triggers) and meeting those demands as soon as possible with drugs and alcohol that can self-soothe.
There are a few contributing factors that create this pattern in someone. The first is the way that drinking or drug use might have started. It’s common for men and women to turn to drugs and alcohol if they are feeling pain. When there is depression, anxiety, shame, anger, or any psychological state that is uncomfortable, it’s easy to want to turn to substances to soothe themselves. As the addiction develops and gets worse, the need to self-soothe might get stronger and stronger. The need to satiate your emotional, physical, and psychological pains becomes more intense, weakening the ability to delay gratification.
Another reason why someone might not be able to delay their gratifications is because they may be impulsive. Impulsivity is also a common trait among addicts, and it might be the very pattern that contributes to an addiction in the first place. Being impulsive makes it difficult to take a step back from cravings and wait until it passes. Instead, those who are impulsive tend to jump on what their feeling in the moment.
At first, a recovering addict is to going to focus on getting sober. Sobriety is going to take center stage at the beginning few years of recovery. However, later in recovery, there are other areas of life to tend to and heal. It’s not only the physical, emotional, and psychological; recovery can also mean healing the financial, relational, and vocational …
