The answer to the question is in the question itself.
How do I get Better
Not Cured, Better.
You see there is no cure for the disease of addiction, but there is a lot of people who have long term recovery that will testify there is Better.
The road to recovery is simple. Keep focused on that. Addiction is a Medical Disease with a Medical Treatment. There are three (Count them 3) components to recovery:
- Counseling
- Medication
- Support
I know this is a lot to read, but don’t miss the end!
Counseling
Like any long term relapsing disease, knowledge is power. With counseling you can learn about the disease of addiction. How you got it, what are the symptoms, how you treat it and how you live with it (And you can!).
With counseling you learn to understand the disease and how cravings and triggers can lead to relapse. Counseling will give you tools (Call them actions or behaviors) to manage cravings and deal with triggers when (Not if) they occur.
Medication
There are several steps to recovery and medication can help with several of them. Stopping use can cause symptoms of withdraw. Medication can help with the symptoms as the body “Detoxes” for a few days.
After detox, there are several medications that can help with entering and staying in recovery. The evidence from many studies show the success rates (Success being long term recovery) of those that use medically assisted treatment (MAT) to be very high (As high as 75%). Much better than those who don’t use MAT.
Find a qualified doctor who specializes in Addiction Treatment. A good place to start is here:
Support
Studies on cancer survivors have shown social support groups are beneficial to the quality of life for patients . The same can be said of the disease of addiction.
People with the disease of addiction are facing many challenges. These can be personal: Challenges to stay sober, challenges to find treatment, challenges to find understanding. These can be family: Challenges with children, parents, siblings, husbands, or wives. And other areas: Housing, food, job, career, health, clothes, legal (and the list goes on).
Getting support means finding people who have walked that road, successfully come back and are living in recovery. Finding that your story with the disease of addiction is not unique, is reassuring. More importantly finding that someone has come back from that same situation and they are in long term recovery, is inspirational. Most importantly, finding out how did they did it, and then doing it everyday, is critical.
I met a girl who was struggling with recovery. She had many obstacles to overcome, the biggest was getting her child back. We talked about support (NA for her). Her statement: “I don’t need that spiritual hocus pocus”. I then offered: “That’s not why you go to support. You go because they know how to accomplish what you want to accomplish. Getting housing, getting jobs, finding healthcare, establishing a life, getting your child back”. Might some of this include spiritual hocus pocus? Perhaps, but if it worked for them, why re-invent the wheel?
Working Your Program
Counseling, Medication, Support. These are the core pieces that will give you the tools, medicine and road map to long term recovery. With that map, the medicine and the tools, it is on you to WORK YOUR PROGRAM.
First and foremost, go to your sessions, appointments and meetings. Just like learning math in school, go to class, study a book and do your homework. Do all three, you learn math, do one or two, you struggle, do none, you fail. Same goes for the disease of addiction.
Cannot stress this enough: KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. Especially with the disease of addiction. When you know your own brain is lying to you, that you have a medical disease, and all you have to do is your treatment, it will free you.
Next: Do the work. Counseling will give you tools to cope with the disease, MAT will give you medication to manage the disease, and support will give you a road map to get your life back. Use the tools, take the medicine and follow the map, everyday, all the time. Follow the straight and narrow path and to the best of your ability keep your feet on that path.
One Day At A Time
Wow, that sounds like a lot. It certainly doesn’t sound simple. But, and this is important: IT IS SIMPLE, because we only have to do it today. Better yet, for the next hour. Let tomorrow or the next hour take care of itself. Just focus on working your program TODAY.
Maybe it isn’t possible to go to every counseling session, but we can make the one today. We can take our medicine today. We can go to our meeting today. We can be clean today. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Focus on today, right now. Because in the end, that is all we can do.
Relapse
With hard work, much love and luck you might make it to long term recovery without stepping from the path. Perhaps the your path isn’t so straight and narrow. Perhaps relapse (falling off the wagon, returning to your old habits, using your drug of choice) is an unfortunate part of your path. The good news is, there is a path back to long term recovery. The even better news is you are not starting from zero, you already know so much more about the disease of addiction and you know where to get help.
Relapse is not a personal failing, or a judgement on your character. It does mean you need to work your program better. Think again about learning math, when you had a test, did you get every question right? So on the road to recovery, you might handle many triggers and cravings, but your brain still needs that stimulus and will find new ways to inch closer to the stimulus, perhaps resulting in relapse.
Recognize and accept relapse as part of the disease and look at a relapse as a chance to learn more about yourself and the disease of addiction.
Most importantly: If you are going to use, please, please , please use less (Your tolerance is lower after sobriety), don’t use alone and make sure you have Narcan. Many people overdose and die when they relapse. You have come so far, don’t die. We can’t help you, (And we do want to help you) if you die.
You are about to be given a gift few people get a chance to receive. The gift of self understanding. This is the key to understanding the disease of addiction, because you need to understand yourself to manage your disease. With that self understanding can come, peace, happiness and a long life.
Not Cured – BETTER