Valentine’s Day can be challenging for some people, especially if you’re early in recovery. It’s a time for wine and champagne with your significant other, which means an avalanche of posts on social media by friends and family who want everyone to know how happy they are to be in such a wonderful relationship. That…
So much of recovery is about creating a healthy routine and surrounding yourself with healthy people. It’s nice to have a break from regular life when you travel, but if you are recovering from addiction, taking time away from your routine and your social support may be risky. However, overcoming addiction is about having more…
Recovery is not a one-time thing where we go to treatment and then are magically cured. It is a process that we undertake and commit to for the rest of our lives. When we decide to get clean, we are making the important decision that we want to be well, we want to be happy,…
Life skills training is an important part addiction treatment. Life skills include things such as how to find a place to live, how to pay the bills, how to make a budget, how to find a job, how to keep a job, how to find a car, and so on. These might sound like basic…
Keystone habits are essentially good habits that bring their friends along. Everything we do is related to something else. When we identify and cultivate keystone habits, we get several benefits for the price of one. For example, exercise is one of the most potent keystone habits. It’s hard for some people to get in the…
You may be at a point where you realize you have a problem and that something has to change, but you can’t quite decide to make a change. Or maybe you’ve taken the first steps toward recovery, but it’s just not going very well. It could be that although you have had enough of addiction,…
Sober living homes are transitional places where people live after inpatient treatment but before living on their own. The idea is to give people a little more autonomy than they would have in inpatient treatment but still provide some peer support during a tricky time. If you are just leaving inpatient treatment, a sober living…
Just because you are sober doesn’t mean you can’t have a social life. You can still go out and have fun, enjoy time with your friends, and make new ones. Being sober doesn’t mean you have to be a hermit with no life. In fact, going out and spending time with your friends and trying…
One of the biggest complaints from recovering addicts, in their new-found sobriety, is boredom. Before recovery when they were bored or had nothing to do, they would get high or drunk, they would go to a bar, concerts, raves, or any other gathering where they could use or find their substance of choice. In treatment…