A recovery agreement is a positive document, encouraging long-term recovery, and outline a path to family reunification. Prior to treatment boundaries were crossed and ultimatums yelled. The recovery agreement reestablishes boundaries and encourages more treatment and helps to rebuild trust.
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It took me a full two years to finally “get” lasting sobriety. I have used my sobriety as a launch pad for my life.
After I got sober, I was able to really focus on the company that I had started. I gave a physician friend just enough money to start his own medical practice.
Continuing to use is a direct path to problems while a life in recovery is full of new opportunities. Things that I couldn’t imagine doing when I was using are now my reality.
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Comprehensive Care, the POC goes into treatment with love. We continue to meet as a family while they are in treatment. The family is also prepared to support their journey of recovery after treatment.
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When families ask to know the success rate of a facility, they’re really asking me, “will this work? Is it worth the investment?”
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We have all had cravings for food, cravings pop up out of no where and can be so strong that we ‘just must’ act on them. How many slices of pizza, General Tso’s Chicken, and late night Ben and Jerry’s binges have you had that were born of a craving for them?
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In recovery, the butterfly effect starts with a simple phone call. The first call is the start of a process, the first flap of the butterfly’s wings.
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As long as I could stop drinking 12 hours before flying, I didn’t see a problem with my drinking. In a way, having a federally mandated “hard stop” on my use kept my drinking in check, but it also allowed me to maintain the false belief that I didn’t have a problem.
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The trauma of loss – of culture, family, and country – could drive anyone to cope by using alcohol. People of those generations may have been trying their best to raise their children, but they probably didn’t have much bandwidth to parent.
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When I present someone new with options for recovery, I often hear two common objections. They are; “I’m a private person” and/or “I have to do it my way.” Both of these justifications keep the person from actively beginning their path to recovery.
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In early recovery, there are some major benchmarks to celebrate and also specific discomforts to expect.
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To fully recover from a substance use problem, we need to look at the places where our expectations don’t line up with reality.
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I don’t know how a trauma in my family a few generations back might show up in my life, that is until I recently passed up buying a pumpkin. I stood in front of a beautiful pumpkin at a farm stand. It was marked half price and I stood in front of it, frozen, unable to decide if I wanted to buy it. I walked away from that pumpkin feeling sick to my stomach.
Continue readingAfter a person completes treatment, there need to be changes at home. Prior to entering into recovery, there was a dynamic that allowed and perhaps even supported active addiction.
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I don’t like to do a lot of things in my adult life, and yet every day I do them. From courses in college I hated, to going to the grocery store and unloading the dishwasher, adulthood is filled with tasks that range from mundane to miserable. Everyday I do things that I don’t like or want to do and I still get them done and the same goes for attending 12-step meetings. I have to do it. Still, people entering into recovery have a lot to say about why they don’t like 12-step meetings, why they don’t want to go, and why it won’t work for them.
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The process of intervention is an opportunity for the family to come together and manage the addiction in a proactive way. For years, families respond to the chaos of addiction. Intervention is the opportunity for a family to look at that pattern and determine how they will handle future situations.
Continue readingFamilies know in their guts that something isn’t right. When they address the concerned person, a process of gaslighting, or turning the warranted concern around on the person that voiced it. As a result, loved ones start to question their premonition and offer the person the benefit of the doubt all the while, the addiction is unknowingly in control of everyone affected.
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If you consider yourself a functional alcoholic, are you really functioning at your highest level? Or have you lowered the bar of what’s acceptable to cater to your addiction?
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The effects of P2P meth can be devastating; debilitating side effects of meth use are now realized in a matter of months – side effects that were not seen for years with traditional crystal meth.
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