How To Achieve Long-Term Sobriety From Substance Abuse

Suffering from substance abuse can be hard for everyone, especially those trying to recover from it. But with the right motivation and encouragement, you should be able to free yourself from using illegal substances and live a healthy and happy life. This way, you can stay sober and truly enjoy what life has to offer. While this might sound encouraging, staying sober is easier said than done.

After deciding you want to change your life and quit substance abuse, your next goal is to actually carry out your decision and maintain your sobriety for as long as possible. This way, you can easily resist temptations and eliminate the possibility of reverting to your previous habits. To assist you in taking the next steps, below are some tips you might want to consider to help you achieve long-term sobriety from substance abuse:

Visit A Recovery Center

A common and guaranteed way you can ensure that you get healed from substance abuse is by visiting a recovery center. While it might sound too harsh or intense for some, allowing professional help can aid you into sobriety quickly and effectively. This way, you won’t skip any steps in the recovery process but may devote more time to focusing on how you can liberate yourself from substance abuse and live a healthy life.

A recovery center like Jackson House Addiction Treatment & Recovery Centers or other similar treatment facilities focuses on putting people away from their own danger and bringing them back to their normal state. They care for a number of individuals who suffer from addiction and mental disorders that cause harm to both themselves and those around them. With professional help, you can get guaranteed results that will enable you to stay sober for as long as possible, or better yet, for the rest of your life.

Build Healthy Relationships

One of the main things that contribute to your descent into addiction is the individuals you surround yourself with. Because they have the power to either build or destroy your life, the people you select to form bonds with are important. With that, you should learn how to keep healthy relationships, ideally with the people that motivate you to become a better person and can influence you to stay sober. This may necessitate severing ties with some people, but keeping those who support your efforts will be beneficial to you.

Cutting off some people from your life may be hard, especially if they’ve been with you for a long time. But if they’ve only been a detrimental influence on you and have been consistently seducing you back into substance abuse, now is the perfect time to remove them from your life. While it might be ideal at first, taking this step will enable you to achieve your goals.

Make Peace With Yourself

An effective way to achieve long-term sobriety from substance abuse is by making peace with yourself. Although it’s not easy to accept what you’ve been through and what you’ve done while you’re still in that condition, there’s nothing you can do to change that. You cannot go back in time to escape a situation that has already occurred; what happened in the past should stay in the past. The only thing you can do is to make peace with it.

You’ll heal more quickly and be able to embrace the good and the bad from your history if you can make peace with yourself. This includes accepting your previous attitude, past decisions, and everything in between. If you don’t confront your past, you might only draw yourself back to your old habits since you never made an effort to assess what you can change. Therefore, you should give yourself permission to start over, and allow yourself to be complete again to avoid dragging yourself to your past.

Deal With The Consequences

You can anticipate making poor decisions as a result of substance abuse, which also causes embarrassing situations or illegal activities. However, there’s no other way to separate yourself from your past, no matter how hard you try, unless you are willing to face the consequences. Although dealing with the repercussions of your past behavior may not be easy, doing so as soon as possible can help you move forward.

For instance, if you have wounded people in your life because of your substance abuse, you can start over by making apologies to them. While accomplishing this might require a lot of courage, it will provide a chance for a new beginning. Additionally, if you’ve been a long-time user, you should also consider the effects on your health. If you suspect that you’re experiencing health issues as a result of your substance addiction, you may seek medical care as soon as possible.

Develop Positive Coping Mechanisms

Going through sobriety can be tough, especially if you feel inclined to revert to your old habits when faced with stressful circumstances. In spite of your belief that going back will solve your difficulties more easily, doing so will only leave you in the same position as before or worse. With that, you ought to resist temptation and seek out means of diversion to keep yourself focused on the healing process.

Learning positive coping mechanisms helps you to develop healthy habits and allows you to manage your urges. You could try meditating, practicing yoga, doing breathing exercises, and much more. However, don’t expect those practices to help to deliver instant results, as you need to look for one that works for you.

Practice Self-Love

Another way you can achieve long-term sobriety is by learning to love yourself. As mentioned, you may see several negative effects of substance usage on your body. Among other things, you’ll find various ailments gradually manifesting as well as unexpected weight loss. Having said that, you must be able to make the required decisions to get your health back as this contributes significantly to the healing process. You should begin learning to love yourself to better care for your body.

Everything you do should be centered on how your body will benefit from practicing self-love. In doing this, you should look after both your bodily and emotional well-being. Self-love can be demonstrated by learning to appreciate yourself. For instance, when you’ve done a good job, you can compliment yourself. A positive outlook on life will also significantly impact how you treat others and come to terms with who you are.

Learn How To Deal With Triggers

A great way to achieve long-term sobriety is by identifying and learning how to deal with triggers. This way, you can address your issues and prevent them from coming your way. You can choose to fight it or avoid it, depending on what’s easier and more effective for you. While this process might be a bit more burdensome, it’ll help you become stronger, fight your urges, and keep you sober for as long as possible.

You can begin by identifying what your triggers are. This can be being around a group of drug users or visiting a location you used to frequent before you were sober. Even if this means moving out of your apartment, establishing new acquaintances, or getting a new career, you should try to avoid the things that make you revert to your old habits. All of these will contribute to long-term sobriety.

Remind Yourself About Your Past

When you are tempted to go back to substance abuse, try reminding yourself of your past experiences. Although it might not be a pleasing memory, it could sometimes be the only way to keep yourself from falling back into your black hole. This will help you to better understand who you were prior to making the decision to get sober and will remind you why you don’t want to return to your old behaviors.

When you go back on your history, you should consider how you acted, how your actions have harmed you and the people that matter most to you, and how your entire world was turned upside down. This way, you can have a quick reminder of who you were in the past and motivate yourself to keep away from your old habits. Hopefully, this will help you stay on track and be sober for life.

Create A Healthy Lifestyle Change

Keeping yourself sober may entail a lot of disappointments, especially during your first few weeks. To keep you distracted but still allow your body to be healthy, you should establish a healthy lifestyle that you’ll commit to for the rest of your life. While it might sound too much the first time you hear it, it will help you achieve good health.

As you involve yourself with substance abuse, expect a dramatic change in your health. But in order to be physically fit again, you should establish a lifestyle change, such as eating the right food and exercising regularly. For guaranteed results, you can even consult with a professional about the things that you can do to ensure that you keep yourself healthy inside and out. With a lifestyle change, you can be motivated to stay healthy and avoid returning to your old habits. It might also open you to more opportunities and hobbies, which can help you to stay sober.

Join A Community

Surrounding yourself with people going through the same phase as you can help motivate you to become a better person. By seeing their progress, you’ll be able to encourage yourself to do the same. You can be motivated by their advancement to change and improve yourself so that your body and the people around you will both benefit.

There are plenty of support groups and communities that help people in maintaining their sobriety. There are also organizations that unite those who are already abstinent and encourage them to maintain their sobriety for the rest of their lives. By surrounding yourself with those who share your goals, you can be motivated to stay with the group.

Set New Goals

A great way to motivate yourself and stay sober for as long as possible is by setting new goals. This way, you can keep your eyes on the target and avoid any distractions that might cause you to return to your old habits. Ideally, you should set yourself new goals, such as:

Career Goals: A career goal can help you advance professionally or achieve financial success. Being a manager or a business owner are two possibilities. Being financially independent will benefit you significantly because you can accomplish more this way.

Health Goals: One of the best goals you can set is to focus on giving yourself a healthy body. You can start making dietary changes that will help your body get stronger. Your health can greatly benefit from meal preparations and food selections.

Relationship Goals: Relationships are frequently destroyed as a result of substance abuse. If your relationships with people were severely affected by your past behaviors, this will be a great time to start fixing them. Moreover, you can set new relationship goals such as starting a new family and ensuring that they would be surrounded by a healthy environment.

Look For A New Hobby

Keeping yourself distracted would always be a great way to stay sober all the time. You can engage in leisure therapy activities that can reenergize your body and mind. It may be a chance for you to unearth your untapped skills. Furthermore, a hobby also allows you to experience new things, keep yourself occupied, and meet new friends who have similar interests.

When looking for a new hobby, there are plenty of options that you could choose from. You could try arts and crafts, photography, traveling, cooking, baking, woodwork, and more. The more you try, the more you can discover yourself and see which hobbies interest you and make you happy. While the process of finding the perfect hobby can be challenging, finally doing something that you truly enjoy and is safe can provide plenty of benefits for you and the people around you.

Takeaway

Achieving long-term sobriety from substance abuse can be crucial, especially if you’ve been in the same cycle for years. While it might really be tempting to go back to your old habits, motivating yourself to become a better person can provide your life with plenty of advantages. As you try to join support groups, set new goals, learn your triggers, practice a healthy lifestyle, and more, you can live a much healthier life that you and the people around you will be happy about.

While the entire process might be hard, try to look back, see your true purpose, and help yourself to become better and better every day.