Your browser is out of date. It has known security flaws and may not display all features of this and other websites. Learn how to update your browser.
What is recovery?
Recovery from addiction is a lifelong journey of growth and development. Detoxification and treatment are only the first steps. Recovery is an ongoing process: typically formal treatment followed by continued support from a sponsor, Twelve Step group members, family members, and clean and sober friends. To maintain lifelong abstinence, your loved one must develop new problem-solving skills for stressful situations, and must be prepared to work hard on personal growth and spirituality, dealing with any emotional or physiological triggers that could lead back to old ways of coping - by drinking and using.
How can you help your loved one in recovery?
Understanding what your loved one experienced in treatment
Now that your loved one is home from treatment, you may wonder what the treatment experience is like and how it helps transform a chemically dependent person's life. Often when addicted people enter treatment, they don't really know what to expect. Once a person is in treatment, the staff and setting there must install a sense of hope. Hope is foundational to recovery.
Incoming patients must be stabilised medically and emotionally. Some will go through physical withdrawal. A mental withdrawal is also needed. Once patients reach a calm state in which they can think clearly, without feelings of anger and fear, they are given the space and time to look critically at their lives. They are also given a respectful, supportive environment in which they can make life changes.
Continuing care is essential to your loved one's recovery
You may think that when someone finishes treatment, he or she shouldn't need further help to remain sober. The truth is that addiction is a chronic, progressive disease, and recovery is a lifelong process. That is why continuing care (care after a person leaves treatment) is so important. Research shows that people who continue to take steps to get help after treatment are far more likely to succeed than those who do nothing.
Important components of continuing care:
Web development by iPOP Digital