 What to Expect in Early Recovery*
The following is meant as a guide to support you in your early weeks or recovery from alcohol or drug abuse. Our first few days and weeks without alcohol or drugs can be frightening and confusing, we have of course put down our security blanket, our crutch, our way of coping with the world. It can be very challenging initially to go about our daily lives without them.
The following are simple suggestions that when applied will greatly enhance your chances of a successful recovery; it’s the small things that can sometimes make the biggest difference.
- Be good to yourself. Making the decision to ask for help is an act of courage and self love. Don’t beat yourself up about the past; this will get sorted out in time. Instead, try and take each day one at a time, or just a few hours a time and acknowledge to yourself that things can be different now and the person who drank and used drugs wasn’t the real you. You only truly have to deal with this 24 hours.
- Stay away from the first drink or drug, if you don’t have the first one you won’t have the rest. Accept you have lost control and your best efforts have got you here, now’s the time to do something differently. If you have a craving think it through, what usually happens when you pick up, what are the consequences, how do you end up feeling, what happens the next morning? Makes a decision that ‘just for today’ you won’t pick up, plan your day around this thought with actions that will support and strengthen it.
- Only deal with what is right in front of you and what is absolutely necessary. It’s very easy to get side-tracked and start panicking about all the things or people that need your attention allow yourself the time and space you need to get well. Ask yourself ‘will the world end?’ if I don’t do this task, or see that person now? In most cases the world will keep turning just fine without you. Part of our problem is that we believe we need to be in control at all times, that things won’t be ok if we don’t have an input, this just isn’t the case. It’s what we believe that creates the unmanageability and chaos in our lives that leads to the stress and emotional difficulties that in turn leads to drinking and using drugs. It’s not just putting down alcohol or drugs that is essential to recovery but changing our behaviour that is necessary to ultimately change the way we feel.
- Try and rest as much as possible, you may have difficulty sleeping this is very common at first and with time people’s sleeping patterns generally return to normal. There are lots of things you can do to help this besides taking medication, investigate meditation, yoga, herbal remedies, relaxation CD’s, changing diet, exercising more etc. See your therapist for more help with this.
- Diet and exercise are key to our wellbeing. Up to now you may have neglected yourself and will no doubt be feeling the effects of this. What we put in our bodies is our lifeblood, if you have been feeding it takeaways and booze your body won’t be running as well as it can. Start by making small changes that you can cope with, don’t expect to turn into Mr or Mrs Fitness overnight! You may notice craving for sweet things; this is again very common due to the amount of sugar your body has been consuming in alcoholic drinks. Sugar also releases a chemical high that your body has been used to getting. At first it may be necessary to allow yourself sweet things when you have a craving as your body needs time to adjust, but where possible try and reach for fruit rather than chocolate. Look at your diet and try and include fruits and vegetables and have regular meals instead of picking at food or bingeing. Try moderate exercise every other day, walking for 15 minutes a day is a good place to start. If in the past you have exercised a lot and consider yourself to be quiet fit then don’t over do it, many people swap the addiction of alcohol or drugs for one of over-eating, over-exercising or over-working!
- Change your routines, our brains work as triggers. You may not think you are craving a drink or drug, but walking past your local or even just getting cash out of a machine can trigger automatic thoughts of drinking or using and we end up following through before we even realise it. Look at your routine and break these patterns where you can, replace negative and self-destructive behaviours with positive ones that support you.
- Dealing with your emotions that are all over the place to begin with can often seem like an overwhelming task. You may feel angry and resentful, frustrated or full of self-pity, guilt and loneliness. These are all to be expected you have been suffocating and hiding these feelings for a long time. They may be the reasons you drank or used in the first place or may have enabled you to continue and drinking as things got worse. Unfortunately these feelings can’t be avoided and do need to be felt and processed, but you don’t have to do this alone. First of all recognise what you’re feeling and develop different ways of dealing with them. It may help to write these feelings down and talk about them to a friend who’ll listen but not judge you. Often intense negative emotions are triggered by feeling:
- Hungry
- Angry
- Lonely
- Tired
- Stressed
Check out how you’re feeling and see what the underlying causes are, when we neglect to look after ourselves our feelings and emotions are often magnified. Talk to your counsellor or fiends in recovery for way to manage these feelings so that you control them not the other way round.
- Lastly, take it easy! You didn’t create your problems overnight and you won’t get rid of them overnight either. Accept you are at the starting point and change will happen slowly, but it will happen. Congratulate yourself that you have decided to take drastic action for your problem and things will get better from this point onwards.
*All these suggestions are made from individuals in recovery, who understand better than most the how difficult early recovery is.
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