Finishing drug treatment is an exciting accomplishment, but your work in recovery is never done! It’s time to live your life on its terms and meet the challenges you face. After all, one of the reasons you went away from home was to get away from everyday stress and triggers. When you get home, you’ll need to manage those while staying sober. Managing your recovery requires commitment, flexibility, and willingness. You’ll need to rely on the tools you’ve learned during treatment to solidify new behaviors.
Here are some ways to stay on track and continue your journey when you’re home.
Create a Structured Daily Routine
One of the biggest challenges after treatment is adjusting to a new lifestyle without drugs or alcohol.
Structure is crucial for maintaining stability and reducing the risk of relapse. Plan your days or keep a calendar that schedules your productive activities such as work, school, or aftercare, along with self-care and goal-oriented tasks.
It helps to:
- Have a consistent waking time and bedtime every day. Planning at least 8 hours of sleep into your day can help your body continue to recover from addiction and keep stress levels low.
- Focus on staying healthy in body and mind. This means getting exercise, eating healthy foods and meals, and spending time relaxing or recuperating from a long day.
- Schedule time for something you love! Many people in 12-step meetings share interests in common, such as surfing or meditating. Make sure you take time to do things you enjoy!
- Attend recovery meetings and therapy sessions. Completing treatment doesn’t mean graduating from recovery. Instead, it means it’s time to get serious.
Life in recovery can feel overwhelmingly difficult at times. We live in a stressful era and often don’t notice stress building up until it’s too late. The temptation to isolate can be hard to resist, and this allows many people to pursue their addiction in private. Support groups can be a key part of any successful relapse prevention effort.
Humans are social creatures, and addiction often takes away some of that humanity. It can fill the addicted person with shame and self-loathing. It can isolate people from their loved ones and keep them from doing things they enjoy.
In recovery, activities with other recovering people can be the glue that holds your new life together. Support groups—especially 12-step meetings—are a powerful way to manage stress and maintain emotional balance. The sense of fellowship, support, and camaraderie at meetings can lend stability to your life, even when everything else feels uncertain.
Even studies show that “people power” - the kind you discover when you’re at a 12-step meeting or recovery-related event - actually contributes to better outcomes for people in sobriety. Long-term research has shown that people who attend 12-step meetings regularly - up to three times a week or more - stay sober for much longer than those who don’t, often up to 16 years or more without a relapse.