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Clean And Sober Living Is A Good Idea
- You can become healthy again – Who wouldn’t want to wake up feeling reinvigorated and ready to greet the day, instead of being continuously in a cloud, vulnerable to all kinds of physical infirmities and illnesses brought on by drug use? Commit to do what you can to recover your health.
You want to have meaningful relationships – If you have a family, they’re likely alienated or may even have rejected you by now, due to your drug use. No one wants to live a life bereft of the love and encouragement of those closest to us, even if we have our differences. Drug abuse and addiction has cost you greatly here, and you may be afraid or even reluctant to go through the challenge of patching relationships. It is possible to mend relationships over time. Once you’ve become clean and sober, cleaning up this wreckage can be a goal.
- You want to work again – Drug addicts understand full well that having a job doesn’t go well with the never-ending search for the next high. All you focus on and all your plans center around your drug use – calculating how to find, scrounge or pilfer to get your drugs. Probably your job was one of the original things to go once your drug use began affecting your functioning and attendance, as well as your appearance, communication with co-workers and boss, and your overall image. Getting back into productive work should be one of your objectives after you are clean, since you cannot support yourself or others or make any consequential progress in recovery if you are impoverished.
- You want to make something of yourself. – Somewhere along the line you stopped dreaming. In its place, you downgraded yourself to something less than, to living in the shadows, to only getting by. Why was that? Did you grow up in an addicted family, continually demoralized and derided, shamed so that you felt like you were worthless and no-good? Were you physically beaten, sexually battered, and mistreated to the point of having to take care of yourself? All this can and does put kids at serious risk of falling victim to the temptations of drug abuse. But, once again, you can come back from all this. You can make something of yourself. It will take a great deal of determination and the help of experts to build your self-esteem, but it can be done. It is not only a worthy goal, but it is indispensable to attaining all your other objectives in sobriety.
- You want to have financial well-being. – There’s likely a lot more that’s been bankrupt as a result of your drug use, and one of these is the state of your finances. If you’re like most habitual drug addicts, every cent you have has been used up in the ravenous pursuit of drugs. Not only your own bank accounts, but also many of your belongings were sold off, trafficked, or traded to pay for your drug use. Beyond that, it’s highly likely that you stole from your family and friends, neighbors, even strangers. If money was accessible, it found its way into your hands. Dishonesty and stealing became second nature to you. Anything you had to do to get money to support your drug use was par for the course. Now, however, you know you are going to have a challenge to get to the point where you have any financial reassurance. This trial will also require self-restraint and a plan of action, and you’ll need the help of someone who can help you.
- You want to feel valuable and human once more. – Drug addiction is destructive in so many ways. One of the most damaging consequences is what it does to your sense of worth. Years of engaging in misleading, selfish, even criminal behavior all in the pursuit of drugs, will do that to you. Surely, there can’t be anything good left at your core, right? Isn’t that what you tell yourself, often as a justification to keep on using? The truth is that at your center you are worthy. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done in your past, once you make the resolution to change your life and get clean and sober, you have an opportunity to start over again. You can restore your life. You can find something meaningful within you and build upon that. Yet this may be your ultimate challenge. It is also a goal that professionals can help you with, along with the support and encouragement of your sponsor and fellow group members in the rooms of recovery.
For more information about getting and staying clean and sober call Shadow Mountain Recovery 1-800-764-7250!
Blog Post By Andrew Sidoli, Clinical Director, Shadow Mountain Recovery
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