Discarding Old Ideas and Starting a New Life in an Addiction Program in Los Angeles

“Is not our age characterized by the ease with which we discard old ideas for new, by the complete readiness with which we throw away the theory or gadget which does not work for something new which does?”  – The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 52

How many times have we changed our minds about a situation, a person, an idea?  Our beliefs may have fluctuated throughout our lives depending on what we’ve learned, seen, heard and/or come to understand regarding a situation where initially we may have thought differently.  So, in this, we can look back and realize that perhaps our initial ideas weren’t always correct or as informed as we may have thought.

As we approach sobriety and enter an addiction program in Los Angeles, we may need to reevaluate our belief systems, recognizing that the ones we have relied upon have not always led us to make the best choices and/or place ourselves in the optimum situations.  Perhaps it is time to rely on a different source for direction.  In this, we begin to realize our own concepts haven’t been as reliable.  Maybe, in our initial belief systems we were sure there was nothing greater than ourselves, that there wasn’t a greater Intelligent Power to guide us.

If we are as inclined to discard old ideas for new based on what we’ve learned through our lives, doesn’t it stand to reason that, perhaps, we may want to reevaluate our idea of relying on a Power greater than ourselves?  Just as we once could not imagine a sober life and are now learning a new life in an affordable rehab, we can see where perhaps our new life may have room for a power greater than ourselves. Even if we are still unable to fully grasp that idea, an idea which is constructed as we move forward by our own respective understanding, it could be conceivable that we function under the premise that there is a Power greater than us, whether we are ready to accept that in full or not.  When we live through the idea of something bigger than merely ourselves, we begin to live in a way that allows us to extend past our own designs and schemes and we bring the better part of ourselves into the world.

Prioritizing Life at a Drug Rehab in California

In the beginning stages of sobriety, it can be very easy to become quickly overwhelmed when faced with more than one task at a time.  To know which direction to go first can be very confusing.  As we move through our lives, while sober, we begin to learn where to place our energies and attention.

Prioritizing is a learned skill.  When the focus has been simply obtaining alcohol and/or drugs and then imbibing them, for most of us, that was the one and only priority to which we centered our attention.  Our lives were solely propelled by our addictions.  We needed nothing more than the substance(s) to which we were beholden.

Now, as we begin rebuilding our lives, we have tasks to accomplish; there is have work to be done; activities in which to participate, etc.  We begin to live our lives, lives that extend far past just the drink and/or the drug(s).  Learning what needs to happen in what order can be confusing, overwhelming even.

Thankfully, at this drug rehab in California, the staff helps us learn how to build our day.  We are given a schedule and that schedule then becomes the outline by which we see what needs to happen when during the course of each day.  As we transition from living in a drug rehab facility in LA, to living in our respective environments, be it our own home or a shared sober living program, we have to learn and eventually know how to structure our day.  If we need help knowing what to do when, we learn to ask for guidance.  We do not have to become paralyzed by the prospect of more than one thing to do at one time.

What comes first in preparing for the day?  If we make our bed every morning, many times the rest of the day falls into place.

Get a New You in the New Year with Alcohol Addiction Help

This week begins a new year and, for many alcoholics and addicts the holiday season has been rough. They have burned more bridges with their families, missed precious moments with loved ones. Maybe the alcoholic or addict we are talking about is you and you don’t want it to be for one more day.

It doesn’t have to be. You can get alcohol addiction help. You don’t have to remain trapped in the same cycles for the rest of your life or even another moment. Even one of the many brief 30 day rehab programs can set you on your way to a new you and a truly new life in 2012. For alcoholics and addicts, the holiday season can be especially tough, particularly when we go to parties and attempt to be festive with friends and family, getting into the holiday spirit and trying to control our drinking so as not to embarrass ourselves, cause any hurt feelings or say and do things we might later regret. Waking up in the morning knowing that there are people we love who are upset with us can be pure torture for the alcoholic addict as it is seldom the thing that we intended to do. Some alcoholics who have well learned the lesson that they cannot control their drinking at parties choose to stay home, making up reasons they can’t attend and, instead, staying away from festive holiday gatherings with loved ones.

Maybe that was your story this year, but it doesn’t have to be the same thing over and over again. Getting alcohol addiction help in California rehab centers doesn’t have to be expensive. There are so many rehabs that take insurance and are waiting to help you on the road to your new life in the new year.

New Year’s Resolutions to Support Sober Living CA

Connect to a support group.

If you attend regular 12-Step program addiction group meetings, commit to a home group. Become an integral part of a community that you can rely on, and vise-versa.

Keep learning

Resolve to learn as much as you can about addiction and recovery strategies. Build your own recovery library, and share it with friends and family.

Remember the Golden Rule

Refuse to play the victim or get caught up in anger. Reflect on how you’d like to be treated and find a way to treat others that way.

Develop friendships with other sober people

We’ve all lost friends along the way in our journey towards recovery. Refuse to live in isolation. Take time to meet others who are in recovery or abstain from drugs and alcohol. Gym memberships, civic events and church groups are all great ways to meet healthy people who are engaged in sober living CA, and don’t need to depend on the crutch of drugs or alcohol.

Make a list of your goals for the coming year

Jot down the things you want to accomplish in the healthy, sober weeks, months, and years you have ahead. Keep your list of goals where you can see them and work on making them a reality.

Take time to meditate

Make a commitment to daily prayer or meditation. The practice of praying and/or meditation can help get your through temptations or challenges, and also help to deflect toxic stress.

Hold steady your focus on sobriety

When times get tough, it’s important to remember why you sought out drug addiction detox in the first place. Those reasons are still important, and by remembering what led you to sobriety, you reinforce your commitment to recovery.

Stay optimistic

Every day won’t be a walk in the park. Recovery has its challenges, but maintaining a positive outlook is invaluable. There are always two ways to look at life; choose to see the glass as “half-full” rather than “half-empty.” Laugh often, enjoy family and friends and resolve to make the most of life. Celebrate and be humbly grateful for the alcohol addiction help that made it all possible. Happy New Year!

 

Early Sobriety and Emotional Nature

When we are newly sober, we will doubtless encounter a barrage of feelings that, in some cases, seem wholly unfamiliar and in others, remind us of why we drank and used to begin with. Sometimes they are things we have been consciously avoiding other times, they are things we didn’t even know were there. Throughout our sobriety, and especially in the beginning, we are confronted with and explore a wide range of emotions and experiences.

For most alcoholics and addicts this is a very confusing time. 30 day rehab programs provide an excellent beginning and path into recovery.  The professional staff of rehab programs in California are trained in many facets of addiction treatment including the best ways to guide you through the unfamiliar territory of navigating emotions and situations without drugs and alcohol.

While we were drinking and using, we became so accustomed to reaching out to drugs and alcohol as our first coping mechanism that, once we are without them, attempting to control our emotional nature seems all but impossible. We are, at times, ebullient and at other times morose and often have little idea as to what has set us in one direction or the other. By working with professional counselors, attending 12 step meetings and working the 12 steps, we are able to come to a clearer picture of what our feelings are, why we are having them and how to address them in a healthy way, honoring our feelings, our selves and those around us.

The Alcoholic and Powerlessness

“At a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic, he passes into a state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail.” – The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 24.

This is Powerlessness.

Our souls beg us to cut out the drinking.  There is attempt after attempt to engage our will to halt the madness of the drink and no matter how hard we try, we cannot.  The body sends signals that the drinking isn’t doing what it initially did; the mind, fully conscious that nothing but misery is at the bottom of every glass, is incapable of overriding this burning need.  Even feeling all of these feelings and intrinsically knowing that all of these more-than-obvious clues scream STOP, we continue to imbibe.  We gamble our very lives, and as we lose over and over, we watch, almost as outsiders, any and everything loved and cared for slip away.  It still isn’t enough.  We plead with ourselves; we make promises, fully meaning them at the time; we swear on all that we have or don’t have and yet, we cannot stop.

Why is this?  It’s the allergy of the body which is triggered by the drink itself and subsequently it ensnares our mind causing an obsession that overrides EVERYTHING else and that, in turn, relies on and continues our spiritual bankruptcy.  It is a threefold catch 22, which is the disease of alcoholism.  And, our very starting point is our Powerlessness over alcohol.

In early Recovery, this first half of the first step can be difficult to grasp, to truly learn how insidious this Powerlessness is.  The California alcohol rehab staff has an intimate understanding and can clarify and expound on this, going so far as to give examples of what this looks like and how it manifests.  If we don’t have a thorough comprehension, there is the possibility we may still hold to the idea that somehow, someday, we can control our drinking.  As alcoholics, we must grasp this fundamental truth.

On Studying the Twelve Steps

“Many of us exclaimed, “What an order!  I can’t go through with it.”  Do not be discouraged.  No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles.  We are not saints.  The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.  The principles we have set down are guides to progress.  We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.” – The Big Books of Alcoholic Anonymous, pg. 60

There are many times we strive to do things perfectly.  We set those around us and ourselves up for a failure of magnificent proportions based on our idea that whatever it is we’ve set out to accomplish will be performed nothing short of perfectly.  When this happens, many times, after the first major mistake, we shy away from any action remotely resembling the initial failure.  In effect, we are being paralyzed by our fear of getting it wrong or doing whatever it is we wanted to/meant to do less-than-perfectly.

One of the problems with this is that our subsequent fear of failure creates this idea that if it can’t be accomplished without a flaw it shouldn’t be attempted in the first place.  This pattern of inaction keeps us at the bottom of the river, wearing cement boots & drowning in our own expectations.

As we move forward in our Recovery, we learn that making mistakes is par for the course.  That, not only is it expected, it is actually okay.  We learn not to set ourselves up for the unattainable, which is based on our expected ideal of a failure-free action.  Through these moments of trial and error, we actually learn and grow.  Our mistakes become our teachers and our ideas of perfection shift to actions of progress.  With this, we move ever closer to our goal of being an effective, valuable member of society

Rebuilding Trust in the Family

Many times previous to our getting sober, we have done damage to the relationships with our families.  In the midst of drinking and/or using we set fire to the bridges that brought us here.  The relationships we have sacrificed, many times, are the people closest to us and that usually means our families and closest of friends.

When we begin the process of our journey to living a sober life, perhaps our families of origin and/or our families of choice, i.e. close friends, don’t have any semblance of trust nor are they immediately inclined to rekindle what was broken and, subsequently, lost.  They are skeptical at best.  There are times when, the pain and betrayal we may have caused them supersedes their wanting anything to do with us after such personal attacks, be they direct or inadvertent.

In the throes of our alcoholism and/or addiction we may not only haves set fire to said bridges but, perhaps, we insured our separation by pouring gasoline on the stick of dynamite we threw into the burning flames.  We cannot expect that just because we are in early sobriety that everything that came before is immediately wiped away and our slate is instantly clean.  We have to recognize and take stock of where we have done wrong and what we can do to amend and rectify the situation(s) at hand.

To rebuild the trust and love in our families can become extremely important as we develop our support network.  Time, however begrudgingly we may find this idea, is often the healer of circumstance and can offer us and the people with whom we injured the opportunity to begin anew.

As trust was whittled away over a period of time, even if that time was mere minutes, it takes far longer to return however, fear not, the possibilities of repairing our relationships can happen.  The drug rehab in Los Angeles gives us a firsthand view of how to begin reweaving our threadbare, at best, fabric of understanding and trust with our families.  It is not impossible; however, it simply does not occur overnight.  The road is long but through our actions, not just our words, will yield the signposts that lead the way for our friends and family to return.

Learning to Control our Emotional Natures

“… we couldn’t control our emotional natures…”  The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 52

What does controlling our emotional natures mean?  Have we run rampant over others, without any regard for them, due to our feelings?  How has this been magnified when we’ve been drinking and/or using?

Let’s consider how we’ve reacted to people when we’ve felt emotionally challenged while under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.  When we’ve been angry, have we responded by shouting or screaming, name calling, or even physically lashing out?  Maybe we’ve taken the other route; being sullen & silent, behaving in a passive aggressive manner with the attempt at manipulating situations to try to wound the other person without every stating we were upset.

Now, while getting sober, it may be even more of a challenge to learn how to contend with our feelings while not defaulting to and relying on how we’ve reacted previously.  It is in the best interest of all for us to be willing to be reeducated, so to speak, in how we respond; recognizing and becoming mindful of how our reactions affect others.  The staff at this Los Angeles drug rehab has intricate knowledge of how to not only recognize when an overwhelming reaction is building up but to also quickly diffuse the emotional component of the situation.  In the moment, they offer a new view to what may be happening and a possible way of how to respond while still being in touch with our feelings, instead of allowing those feelings to be our only reaction.  This is, more often than not, a learned skill and simply because it might not be easy or even understandable, it can be acquired and honed over time.

Learning to be Present

As we find ourselves without our crutch of drugs and/or alcohol, we may have a tough time staying in our respective seats.  We hear the platitude, “One day at a time.” and suddenly even the mere idea of twenty-four hours seems interminable. Sitting still can be almost painfully agonizing as we begin our journey toward living in the world sober.

How do we stay in our literal and figurative seats?  When trying to exercise sitting still, there are times when no matter how much clock-watching we do, each minute feels like an eternity.  An option to being overwhelmed by the idea of an entire day, we can shorten that idea of “one day at a time” to “five minutes at a time.”

It is an undeniably challenging task.  The longer we can stay planted in the chair, in which we are sitting, the more likely we are to hear a message of depth and weight.  If one’s willing to consider it parallel to another situation, the analogy could be a small, thin branch waving wildly in the breeze versus a sturdy Redwood with roots for days.

This Los Angeles drug rehabilitation center can provide one with the exercise of learning how to stay put.  The counselors understand how difficult it can be and do their best to be compassionate about this difficult lesson.  This could be, at least initially, one of our biggest hurdles to cross.  If we continue to pursue this life of service and contribution, we may very well find ourselves being less antsy and then by default, perhaps without even realizing it, we find ourselves able to stay still.  It will take work, without question, and know that it’s possible.