Here are some tips for recovering addicts to engage the creative life in recovery.
What is creation?
Creative recovery is the solution to the problem of “What can I do with myself now that I don’t do drugs and alcohol anymore?”
However, before the recovering drug addict can start creating this new life for themselves, they will need to conquer the first part of recovery. This indicates that they have to find some initial time to be clean and sober before the person can make an effort at creating a new life for themselves.
Making it past this initial part of recovery can be done in a variety of ways. The most effective strategy for accumulating some initial clean time is to use overwhelming force. This means that the recovering drug addict must go above and beyond what they think is necessary in order for them to stay clean. If they are using meetings, they should go way overboard with attending them and start going to two or three each and every day instead of just one a day. If the person is considering rehab, they might think about attending a halfway house or a long term facility instead of the usual short stay. This is overwhelming force, and it works extremely well for getting people through the first stage of recovery. Without using this type of extreme approach, addicts are highly susceptible to relapse and most will never make it past 30 days clean. Using overwhelming force is the best way to increase these odds.
For the true alcoholic, the idea that they can just stop drinking is no light matter. Because there are a bunch of different ways to get sober out there, which techniques prove to be the best and which ones don’t work so well?
1) Willpower – This is essentially the same as not using any technique at all, but only relying on one’s own willpower to avoid picking up another drink. Now this idea has been tested a million times over by virtually every alcoholic who has tried to beat the problem of drink, and the consensus is that it is never a sustainable method for anyone. Ever.
2) AVRT – this stands for “Addictive Voice Recognition Technique,” so this is essentially an example of a cognitive therapy for quitting drinking. The trick is to realize when your “addictive voice” kicks in and realize that it is only your addiction talking to you and not your true self. Then you are able to tell this addictive voice that you do not want to drink when it starts to get active with you.
There are other therapies out there that are similar to this, each with the concept that we can change up our thinking in order to change our behavior. These kinds of cognitive techniques do work well for some alcoholics, but for most of us in recovery, these types of mental gymnastics are not really enough to completely solve our drinking problem.
Alcohol addiction is a condition that disrupts every area of a person’s life. Drinking heavily affects the alcoholic more than just physically….they also are suffering from a mental, social, and spiritual handicap at this point. Their whole world is screwed up due to their addiction. Jobs are lost and people get fired. Relationships are screwed up. People drop out of college, lose contact with old friends, and so on. In short, alcoholism affects everything.
In most of these cases, the disease is stripping things away, right out of a person’s life. Any sense of spiritual growth or progress is removed and replaced with the drinking. Whatever used to be “fun” for the alcoholic is replaced by the booze. In short, drinking becomes the solution for everything, the remedy for any event in the alcoholic’s life. It becomes the path of the enlightenment and a way to keep emotional balance in check.
So when someone tries to stop drinking, the task at hand is so much more than just quitting drinking. The task is to replace an entire life that was dominated by alcohol. Not only that, but to find a way of living that works to replace all of those things that alcohol used to do for us, such as providing us with “fun” or with a way to deal with things emotionally.
If you have come to the conclusion that trying to control your drinking is no longer working for you, then it might be time to take a look at the possibility of quitting for good. Now this might sound like a death sentence at first but it really is not so bad once you get past the initial detox and start living a real life again.
Just realize that actually quitting drinking is pretty dangerous from a medical standpoint and can be life threatening, so be sure to find a full medical treatment center if you really want to stop. It is actually safer to continue drinking alcohol than to go through a serious withdrawal from it because the withdrawal can produce life threatening seizures.
If you do decide to give abstinence a try then one of the best breaks you can give yourself is to find a local treatment center to check into. There are a number of benefits to seeking treatment:
1) Full medical detox unit
2) Residential program – to learn about recovery
3) Peer support – you’re with other recovering alcoholics so you can draw support from this group
4) Professional help – those who work in the rehab facility can give you guidance and direction in your recovery
