choice house blog
Planning Ahead While Being Told to Live One Day At a Time
While in active treatment at a rehab facility or during ongoing self-treatment in their daily independent life, patients will quickly find that the addiction recovery world is brimming over with a plentitude of acronyms and slogans. From HALT (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired ) and SLIP (Sobriety Lost Its Priority) to even more common phrases…
Working Around Alcohol at Bars and Restaurants
The service industry is full of individuals employed at either bars or restaurants and rife with employees either in full substance misuse or at the very least on the brink of it. The job duties alone tend to feed into the unhealthy behavioral patterns that can ultimately lead to unmanageable substance misuse with the long…
How Can I Manage My Pain in Recovery?
Achieving long-term sobriety can be immensely fulfilling, and many addiction recovery patients may be tempted to put their recovery efforts on the back burner after being in remission for extended periods. However, all the accomplishments of long-term sobriety can quickly dissipate when seeking treatment for severe and chronic pain while in recovery. As with many…
How Do I Handle Debt in Early Recovery?
The fallout from addictive disorders and years of continuous substance misuse can involve more than emotional damage. Many addiction recovery patients will find themselves situated with significant financial debt once completing treatment. This can be in part to expensive addiction recovery treatment but mainly due to years of neglect and spending beyond their means due…
Virtual Addiction Recovery Meetings
With its increasing availability in today’s modern world, the internet has greatly expanded how individuals in recovery receive ongoing treatment for their addictive disorders. As a means of communication, the internet has granted individuals of disparate backgrounds the chance to connect and converse over shared topics of interest. However, connecting and sharing about more pertinent…
Why Should I Avoid Depictions of Drug or Alcohol Use on Television and Movies?
Identifying and taking the necessary preventative measures to avoid potential triggers will make up a large part of the recovery efforts for patients with addictive disorders. This will involve increasing self-awareness about the shifting moods and emotional responses to activities, locations, people, and even television programs and movies. Once transitioned into their independent sober living…
Coping After Relapse During Recovery
Reflecting on the positive outcomes of sobriety maintenance is important for individuals in addiction recovery. The preventative measures and repetition of healthy habits all support the best-case scenario of promoting long-term sobriety. The unfortunate reality is that these methods will not always succeed in helping addiction recovery patients abstain from illicit substances, and relapses will…
Can I Move When I Am in Early Addiction Recovery?
For many patients in addiction recovery, their pre-treatment lives might have been about substance misuse and unhealthy behaviors that fed their addictive disorder. Even simple daily experiences like going to work might have been disrupted by urges to misuse substances as an addictive disorder began to monopolize their time. This type of constant disruption is…
Pink Clouds: The Ups and Downs of Initial Sobriety
When addiction recovery patients initially achieve and maintain a period of short-term sobriety, they often experience intense highs and extreme lows. The addictive mindsets that lean toward the extreme perceive their feelings unrealistically and dramatically — the lows will feel that much more depressing and the highs too euphoric. Experiencing these fluctuations in mood and…