Why You Need to Make Your Alcohol Recovery a Priority

Alcohol recovery is a lifelong process that will take you to your limits. What many patients make the mistake of is assuming the journey is over when they leave rehab. Drug rehab clinics are only there to start the journey. What they will not do is complete it for you. When you leave rehab, you have to take control of your life and make alcohol recovery a priority.

With the help of www.rehab-clinic.com we will demonstrate how to make alcohol recovery a priority.

What Does It Mean?

Making your recovery a priority means putting yourself before anything and everyone else. It means making it the central focus in your life. If there are other unrelated problems, they should be put to one side whilst you concentrate on beating your addiction. Make time for yourself and get those around you to respect this request.

Why is it Necessary?

In the beginning, you will notice that it is relatively easy to beat your cravings. You have recently left rehab and you are on the high of the treatment you’ve just received. Weeks later you will start to hit a wall. This is something everyone reaches. You will get to this point and you will realise that your cravings are starting to take hold. It is where you’ll need all your mental strength to overcome them.

You cannot do this if you’re not making your recovery a priority. If you are dividing yourself between different focuses, you’re going to find that you don’t have the strength to beat your cravings. By making alcohol recovery a priority, you are giving yourself the best possible chance of success.

How to Do It

Start by talking to those around you. Ask them to respect the fact you will be concentrating on your recovery. If they are respectful, they will keep their problems and stresses away from you during this difficult period. They will do everything they can to respect your wishes and enhance your chances of making a successful recovery.

What you also need to do is keep in touch with your counsellor. All rehab centres will come up with a comprehensive aftercare programme for patients who are leaving for the real world. You should make sure you have these connections ready in case you need them.

It is also good to take the initiative. Many people in rehab find it beneficial to keep in touch with people from their counselling sessions. Mutual support in this way offers an emotional sounding board for when things get tough.

Another way to make alcohol recovery a priority is to renew your commitment every day. It is not like taking an oath or constantly writing down your goals. It’s simply a matter of going out of your way to avoid your triggers. If it means taking a different route to work or declining to go out with your work colleagues, so be it. Everyone will have different needs.

Overall, making recovery a priority does not sound much, but it is one of the first steps on the road to accomplishing great things. Try it and see what you get in return!

What are the Main Benefits of Getting a Job after Alcohol Rehab?

Rehab centers can show you how to defeat your cravings and begin reclaiming your life again. What they cannot do is do the job for you. Speaking of which, you need to look into how you are going to spend your days during your recovery. One of the worst things you can do is sit around all day with nothing to do. When you have too much free time this is when your mind starts to wander towards relapsing.

Getting a job should become a priority for you. In this article, we are going to show you the main benefits of getting a job with the expert advice of www.rehab-clinic.com.

Time to Kill

Time is your worst enemy as a recovering alcoholic. Whenever you have an hour to spare, you are risking a confrontation with your cravings. This is a scientific fact. This is why you always find rehab clinics doing everything they can to fill up the time of their patients. You will rarely have a long stretch of time where you have nothing to do.

When you leave rehab, you are in the early stages of recovery. If you can keep busy, you’re increasing your chances of success because you’re taking yourself away from your cravings and withdrawal symptoms.

Confidence Issues

Many alcoholics struggle with confidence. They see themselves as failures because they have reached a point where they’ve hit rock bottom. It can take years to get that confidence back again. One way to help regain this confidence is to get a job. It puts you in contact with real people in a real world setting. You need to get used to dealing with the outside world again.

Successfully completing a job will do wonders for your confidence. It demonstrates that you are a human being that is useful to society.

A Sense of Pride

Together with a lack of confidence, many alcoholics desperately struggle to find something they are proud of. This is especially the case if they embarrassed and degraded themselves whilst drunk. Getting a job instils a sense of pride. There is nothing like earning your own pay packet and being able to say you did a good job in the process.

Taking Responsibility for Your Recovery

Your counsellor will always reinforce the importance of personal responsibility within the recovery process. You caused yourself to end up in this position and you have the power to dig yourself back out again. Deciding to work is about taking responsibility. You are earning your own money. You are not relying on anyone else to make a living.

Taking responsibility in this way is essential in your overall recovery. Responsible people are more receptive to treatment and far more likely to broaden their horizons away from alcohol.

In conclusion, whilst getting a job can do a lot for your state of mind, it cannot complete the process. There’s no such thing as a magic key. Use employment as a tool to beat your addictions, but remember that it all falls down to you and your actions in the end.

The Art of Taking Alcohol Recovery One Day at a Time

People always speak about alcohol recovery in the context that it is going to take a lifetime. This is the truth, but patients who have only recently left alcohol rehab clinics do not find this sort of talk helpful. And why would they? It presents them a massive challenge that they can only overcome with years of hard work. It is overwhelming and it only encourages people to drink again.

This is why we are going to show you the art of taking alcohol recovery one day at a time.

See Recovery in a New Light

To start with, you have to begin looking at alcohol recovery in a different manner. Start seeing it in a new light. Currently, you probably see it as a destination. When you can proclaim yourself as completely sober, you will say that you have recovered. Let us turn this on its head. Recovery is not the destination. Sobriety is the destination. Recovery is the process you go through to get there.

By seeing recovery as a process, you will start to see every successful day as a step towards your ultimate goal. Suddenly, the act of recovery does not feel so intimidating.

Set Smaller Goals

Recovery is extremely grand. What you will learn in drug rehab clinics is every success is celebrated. You need regular reassurance to get through the darkest parts of the process. Rehab centres will teach you to set yourself small yet manageable goals.

It does not have to involve anything major. You do not have to abstain from alcohol for a year to reach your first milestone. Decrease the size of the job by establishing goals like: staying sober for a week, walking past the bar without bowing to temptation, or getting through the day without any negative thoughts.

The chances are you are going to achieve these small goals, but they help to reinforce that you are a strong human being. You do not have to climb a mountain in order to prove your worth.

Write Down Your Daily Schedule

When we say take each day as it comes, we mean it. Ignore what is going to happen or what’s going to happen a week from now. It does not matter because it has not happened. Treat each day as your final day. Write down your daily schedule and focus on that and that alone. It does not matter what you have planned further down the line.

If you are going to take alcohol recovery one day at a time, literally take it one day at a time. Emphasise each day so you can put your best foot forward each and every time.

Learn Something New

Set yourself the goal of learning something new every day. Chart how you improve each day and you will look back on your recovery as something to be proud of. Nobody expects you to saunter through rehab without any problems. Your only priority should be to improve yourself day by day. When you wake up the next day, you want to honestly say that you are a better person than yesterday. That is all you want from this.

Returning to Work After Alcohol Treatment – What Should You Do?

Contrary to what the media thinks, not every alcoholic is an unemployed bum who sits in his or her house all day. The truth is most alcoholics have jobs just like everyone else. This presents a new challenge, though. If you have already gone to drug rehab, the chances are you are due to be back at work soon. How do you react? What will your co-workers say? How are you going to broach the difficult subject of why you were away?

What is the Common Reaction?

Our biggest fear is that we will leave rehab clinics only to return to a workplace filled with negativity and toxic thoughts. This is not the case. Even if you are not particularly fond of your co-workers, the fact is the majority of people are well aware of the damage alcoholism can cause. It is highly unlikely that you will encounter any hostility upon your return.

This is a common fear borne out of our own insecurities. For some people, it is so bad that they delay their return to work for days until they pluck up the courage to go back.

Do You Say Anything?

You do not have to make a big song and dance about why you were away. Nobody is going to expect you to get up in front of the group and admit that you are an alcoholic. In fact, many former alcoholics are shocked to find that when they return everyone is getting on with work as if you were never way.

What many people don’t realise is your average person on the street does not care about why you were away. All that matters to them is that you’re back now.

When you go back to work, walk in as normal, sit down, and do your job. You may have a brief discussion with your boss or manager, but this is unlikely to be invasive and you are not obliged to talk about anything you do not want to talk about. Your place of work is there to support you not bring you down.

What if Someone Asks?

So, let’s say that you have a work friend and they’re wondering why you’re away. Before you answer, think back to alcohol rehab clinics and what they preach. One of the first counselling sessions you participated in involved you admitting to yourself and the group that you are an alcoholic. Apply the same principles here.

There is no need to feel embarrassed about it. If someone asks where you were, tell them the truth. If people know you’re comfortable about where you’ve been, they will not ask again. Moreover, if you are working with people who understand what you are going through the chances are they will help you.

An Irrational Fear

Overall, the fear of returning to work because you had to take a leave of absence for rehab is an unfounded one. The majority of people are well aware of alcoholism. It no longer carries the stigma it once did. Be honest about your situation if someone asks, but do not feel like you have to defend yourself to anyone in the workplace.

How to Deal with the Pressure to Drink

There is no denying we live in a world where alcohol is easier to access than ever before. For social drinkers, this is great news, but it’s hell for anyone trying to deal with an addiction to alcohol. Alcohol rehab can teach you how to avoid your triggers, but they cannot prepare you for when you come under pressure to drink from both direct and indirect forces.

We look at how you can best deal with the pressure to drink.

Direct and Indirect Pressure

To begin with, it is important to know the difference between direct pressure to drink and indirect pressure to drink. Here are the primary differences between the two that we have established:

1. Direct pressure. This is simply someone asking if you want to drink. It can range from a simple request to outright aggression.

2. Indirect pressure to drink is appearing at a social function where everyone is drinking apart from you. It is about being surrounded by alcohol and feeling tempted to drink.

Undue Amounts of Indirect Pressure

Indirect pressure is the first type of pressure you need to address. Whenever you leave drug rehab, you are going to find yourself in a situation where indirect pressure will become your biggest enemy. You are less likely to experience direct pressure because people are being extra careful not to tempt you.

During this time, anything from a drinks logo to the sight of the local bar will convince you that you have to drink. Since you are so vulnerable, the best option is to avoid these triggers until you feel you have better control over your urges.

What about Direct Pressure?

Avoidance strategies will not work with direct pressure in most cases. Whenever you come under direct pressure, you have to say no. It may sound difficult, but there are ways to make it easier. In the beginning, you can use avoidance strategies to stay away from people and events where alcohol may be thrust upon you.

The best way to say no is to say it straight away without hesitation. By hesitating,you are prompting the other person to ask again, and that second question could just tip you over the edge.

If you feel like you are about to crumble under the strain of direct pressure use an escape strategy. An escape strategy can be anything from simply staying close to the door or pretending as if you have to make a phone call. It is literally a way of getting you out of a scenario where you may be tempted to drink.

It Gets Easier

Pressure is just the reality of dealing with an alcohol addiction. Rehab clinics will tell you this early on in your stay. It does get easier, however. With every refusal, you gain confidence and you get stronger. Over time, you will gradually start to recover and your willpower will increase in strength. The first six months are always the hardest when it comes to pressure.

This does not mean you should put yourself in harm’s way to test yourself. Just have your escape strategies ready in advance, for when the time comes.

What are the Benefits of Starting an Online Alcohol Recovery Blog?

If there is one thing we know, it is that beating an alcohol addiction is tough. The real challenge begins not when you enter the safe walls of alcohol rehab clinics. It begins when you go back into the real world again. The real world is a world of temptation and debauchery. It does not take much to swing someone in recovery into relapse.

This is where starting an online alcohol recovery blog where you talk about your experiences can do a lot of good in your life and the lives of others. Let uslook at some of the benefits of starting an alcohol recovery blog.

Filling the Void

Before you started looking for drug rehab clinics, you focused most of your energy into drinking alcohol and thinking about alcohol. With all that over and done with, you have a lot of spare time. You have to take this spare time and invest it in something useful to both defeat your cravings and begin the rebuilding process.

You can spend hours working on a blog. Many former alcoholics have described it as a labour of love that has taken them through the darkest of times.

Discipline and the Teaching Of

Maintaining a blog does require a certain amount of discipline from you. Moreover,that is what many people describe an addiction as. It is a lack of discipline on your part. By teaching yourself discipline again, you can take these lessons and apply them to your recovery. Discipline in blogging is simply about writing quality post after quality post and doing it on a semi-consistent basis. It is about making a commitment.

Release Your Feelings

Alcoholics have a lot more feelings to deal with than your average person walking the streets. They have a lot of trauma to deal with and a lot of conflicting thoughts about where they are in life. Letting these feelings fester is a toxic practice that can drive a recovering patient back into relapse and back into rehab clinics.

A blog is a positive and healthy outlet for your feelings. Going online to talk about what you are going through is a fantastic way of taking these thoughts from your mind and putting them elsewhere for later.

Helping Others

Believe it or not, blogs like this do help others. If you post about your blog in a chat room or on a prominent forum, the chances are you will begin to gather a small following. The goal is not to become a hit blog that goes viral. It is a place to get support from other people.

Even if you never meet or speak to your readers directly, you will know that your experiences have contributed to their recovery. For someone who does not have high levels of self-worth as a result of years of abuse, the knowledge that you have done good is extremely powerful.

Overall, writing a blog does not have to take much. You have all the tools at your disposal. Use your thoughts to both help others and aid in your recovery!

Running an Alcohol Recovery Blog – How to Do It

An alcohol recovery blog is a way for you to list your thoughts and empower yourself and others to beat your demons and move on with your life. Starting a blog is often the hardest part. You have to take those first bold steps if you are going to start the recovery process. It is not difficult to do, and you do not need any prior technical knowledge.

So with that in mind, let uslook at how you can begin sharing your own dose of alcohol rehab in a safe and secure online environment.

1. Start a Blog

Use a prominent platform like Blogger or WordPress to start your blog. They both have many free templates available for you to get started. You do not need a great degree of technical knowledge to get started with it. All you need is the ability to read a few guides and you are already good to go.

2. Post Consistently

Running a blog is about having a certain amount of discipline. Establish a posting schedule and stick to it. It does not have to be every other day. You define how often you want to post about your experiences. It can be as sparingly as once every two weeks. You know best how long it is going to take you to write a high-quality blog.

3. Honest Not Fancy

You are not writing a novel that you are about to send away to an agent. The beauty of writing about drug rehab is the focus is entirely on rehabilitation itself. It is not about coming up with lots of metaphors and similes. You are there to call upon a certain degree of honesty. Speak about whatever is on your mind, even if you feel like it is silly.

Your audience wants to get to know the real you.

4. The Goal

The goal here is not to market yourself and make money from your blog. It’s a cathartic experience designed to help you through the recovery process. Do not fret over things like traffic numbers. It can take months to build a following. Never let yourself get disheartened because other blogs are more popular than yours are.

Before you start writing your first blog, write down your primary goal. An alcohol recovery blog should be there to help you ultimately overcome your addiction. You do not have to worry about how well your advertisements are doing.

5. Engage

If you do decide to allow people to comment on your experience of rehab clinics, make sure you are strong enough to put up with potentially negative feedback. If you believe that you are not capable of dealing with this, turn the comments off. Most blogging platforms have an option where you can choose to disable comments from other people.

Do not limit your engagement to your blog. Visit chat rooms and alcohol and drug addiction boards. Speak about your blog there and promote yourself casually. You may just make some brand new friends simply from speaking to others about your experiences and your desire to use the online arena as your personal diary.

How Online Addiction Help Supplements Rehab Clinic Inpatient Treatment

Someone who is dealing with an addiction to alcohol may believe their only treatment options involve sitting in a circle and discussing their issues with others suffering from the same issues as them. This is not true. Most drug rehab clinics will always encourage you to look for additional help elsewhere.

It does not matter how you do it. All that matters is you find something that helps you to beat your addiction. With the help of www.rehab-clinic.com, we go through some of the reasons why seeking help online offers you a great way out.

Instant Help

Reading an inspirational blog in the middle of the night can help to turn you away from your addiction. One of the main problems people face is that they do not get the instant help they need. Addiction help services in the UK are stretched. It is well known that sometimes you could wait for hours before someone is available to help.

Going online gives you an instant nugget of wisdom that can help you to beat your cravings.

It’s Free

Let’s say you have just finished a course of inpatient treatment, but you feel like you need some additional help now. You do have to pay for formal rehabilitation, but you do not have to pay to go online. Find a forum and start speaking to people who have also gone through alcohol rehab. This is the same as sitting in a counselling group and discussing your issues.

The best part is you can gain this sort of friendship entirely free of charge. You do not have to commit to any form of programme.

Passing the Time

An alcoholic’s greatest obstacle is time. When they have nothing to do, the cravings start to take hold. There is usually not a lot they can do about them other than to take a cold shower. This isn’t going to work all of the time, though.

Going online for addiction help will do wonders for passing the time and getting you through the difficult times. Can’t sleep? This is a danger zone because when you cannot sleep you have a lot of time until morning when the day starts again. Fight your addiction by going online and burning the midnight oil away.

All Help is the Right Help?

Understand that whilst reading a blog, visiting a chat room, or having a Skype call with someone you know and trust is a great help, it is not a substitute for proper treatment. Never trade it in for formal rehabilitation. Visiting an alcohol clinic will ultimately give you the tailor-made treatment you need to succeed.

Consider online help a supplement for your treatment and little else.

Speak to your counsellors and they will point you in the right direction of the websites that can help you. Make sure you stay safe online and that what you are doing really is helping, as opposed to enabling you. Do this and you will find it far easier to make it through your cravings and successfully become a clean and sober human being.

How Does Reading Alcohol Rehabilitation Blogs Help You?

The Internet has brought us many great things over the years. We have come from a place where we have to visit a local counsellor for treatment to a place where we can supplement our recovery through going online and speaking to people who have been through the same experiences. What you will find is many online alcohol rehab clinics.

No, they are not certified and they do not have any form of schedule. They are blogs filled with useful advice and real life experiences from people who have dealt with their demons and made it out alive. We recommend learning from the experiences of others and regularly keeping updated on their progress in order to inspire and educate.

So how does reading through blogs online help your treatment outside of drug rehab clinics?

Experience and Knowledge

Look at most rehab centres and you will see they place a great amount of emphasis on making sure you are learning from others. They regularly bring in previous patients to give inspirational talks and to speak about what they went through. Obviously, this sort of knowledge is not always possible to get access to outside of rehab.

A blog where someone speaks of addiction can give you this same level of experience-based knowledge. If you are wondering about how others have dealt with a specific problem, the chances are you can find someone online.

Inspiration

If you are wondering what you’re doing all this for, look to what other people have focused on. The average blog is not designed to act as a substitute for genuine medical advice. It is there to inspire people to recover and defeat their cravings. If you are ever feeling down in the dumps, a great way to inspire yourself again is to read about someone else’s journey.

This is the one area that often cannot be fulfilled by speaking to a counsellor. You need to connect with someone who has gone or is going through what you’re going through.

A Distraction

One of the arts you will learn in rehab will be the art of distraction. For most alcoholics, they will always hit a wall where they are tempted to drink again. This does not make anyone a failure. It is a natural part of the process. The body is rebelling against change and you need to have an immense amount of willpower to put it down and continue your road to recovery.

A distraction is always useful for ignoring cravings. Reading about alcohol recovery online and getting lost in someone else’s story is a distraction that can move you past the darkest of times.

What Should You Read?

There are no limits on what you can and should read. Most people need to find a blog that really speaks to them. This is why we recommend reading as much as possible. Bookmark any blogs that show promise. It does not have to be an active blog. There are plenty of useful blogs from years previously where the author has documented their journey.

In short, find a sweet spot and keep coming back when you feel like you need an inspirational booster shot. You will not regret it!

Do All Alcohol Rehab Clinics Have to Involve Religion?

One of the common stereotypes of alcohol rehab clinics is the position of religion within. If you believe half the things you see on TV shows and in films, you would believe religion-based spirituality plays a key role in the rehabilitation of alcoholics. This is not the case and you should not turn away from rehab because of it.

Let uslook at some drug rehab clinics and the real position of religion inside.

It’s an American Thing

For a start, this stereotype comes all the way from America. The fact of the matter is the majority of UK rehab clinics do not have any sort of faith-based programme. This is because the UK does not have the same level of religious fervour that America does. In America, it is not uncommon to see whole states with an almost complete evangelical population. This is what gives rise to the likes of the so-called ‘Bible Belt’ region.

In the UK, it doesn’t work like this.

So What about Spirituality?

Religion and spirituality are two different things. It is true that spirituality will find a place within counselling sessions. This does not necessarily mean they have anything to do with any form of God or higher power. Counsellors seek to kindle the human spirit towards a state of recovery. For most people, this is a matter of getting in touch with their inner selves.

We cannot really talk about exactly how they do this. It differs from clinic to clinic and from age group to age group. Everyone will have an individual programme tailored towards his or her specific needs.

What about Patients Who have Faith?

It would be easy to read this article and assume all clinics are separate from religion and that it cannot play a part. This could not be further from the truth. Recovering patients are encouraged to bring their personal faith into the clinic if it helps them recover. Counsellors and addiction experts have no intention of suppressing faith for the purposes of creating a secular society within.

In some cases, there are addiction clinics dedicated to people who believe in the role of faith in their recovery.

Ask Your Clinic!

Of course, you need to choose the right addiction help clinic to help you with this. It starts with proper research. Do your research and see if you can found out a bit more about the spiritual and personal advancement aspects of the programme they are running.

In most cases, it is best to get in touch with them directly to ask questions about how religious faith can play a part in your recovery. Most clinics will be happy to speak to you about this. In many cases, they will group people of the same faith together, during both inpatient treatment and outpatient treatment, in order to create a sense of camaraderie.

Overall, whilst religion is welcome within the recovery process, it is in no way forced upon anybody. You have a choice in the matter and you do not have to conform to anyone else’s beliefs in order to get the most out of your treatment.