Here are three of the most important things for you to consider after rehab.

Surround Yourself With the Right People

One of the most common reasons for relapse is returning to circles of friends who brought about addiction in the first place.  There is not only the chance of them pressuring you into drug abuse again, their behavior and even their presence may remind you of your addiction and make it harder to recover.  Distance yourself from those who use drugs or alcohol and move forward and prosper.

This also means distancing yourself from placing where such people might spend time.  Do not return to old clubs, bars or locations where drug abuse may occur.  This will do you no good.

Additionally, make sure you don’t have anyone in your environment that is trampling on your abilities and ruining your self-confidence by belittling you.  Such people are not always easy to spot, as they often pretend to be your friend but in fact end up making you feel small and insignificant.  These feelings can lead to relapse.

Set and Follow Goals

Without goals, a person is a tumbleweed, easily swayed by peer pressure, boredom and other influences.  It is essential that you determine your own life goals and begin working toward them.  Not only will this keep your mind off your addiction, it will keep you moving forward.  The more prosperous you are, the less likely you will be to relapse.

Drugs are used to fill a void, to solve a problem.  If you are accomplishing your goals, you are solving your own problems no longer need the help of drugs (which don’t help anyway).

Do not be afraid to set high goals for yourself.  Ignore the voice in your head that says you cannot do it.

Your goals may be related to your career, family, personal image, or even hobbies.  Perhaps you wanted to take up piano as a child.  Maybe you always wanted to help needy children.  Or it may be that you always wished you’d learned to play chess but no one had ever taught you.  Set goals for all areas of life, and you will truly flourish.

Stay Happy

In addition to supportive friends and family, and positive goals, it is important that you do things that make you happy.  This can be as simple as going to see a movie that you like, or a music concert.  Exercise.  Eat food you enjoy.  Get a dog.  Garden.  Paint.  Race cars.  Travel.  Meet new people who make you feel good.

Revel in the life that is yours, because truly living life is a greater high than any chemical substance can provide.

Above all stay true to yourself and make good decisions. Use the tools you learned during treatment to stay drug free. And build a support system around you so if you do start having trouble you have options for help.

For more articles and information on drug addiction and recovery visit our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/narconon.

Going back to work after treatment can be something to confront. It is a change of environment and schedule that you have to prepare yourself for.

However, a number of studies show that going back to work after treatment can make a tremendous difference in how you continue to cope with addiction and manage your sobriety.

From Boredom to Stress

A study in the journal Addiction found that nearly sixty percent of unemployed men drank more than eight drinks per day, while only thirty-three percent of employed workers did the same.

True, unemployed people may have more leisure time. However, is this really all it’s cracked up to be? When cravings strike, wouldn’t you rather be busy enough to keep your mind on something else?

Not only do unemployed people have more time on their hands, they also have more stress. Bills pile up, worries compound, drama erupts. Stress and insecurity are leading factors in substance abuse.

Not a very good formula for continuing to fight addiction.

Benefits of Working

Going back to work after treatment may be the very thing to get you through the aftermath. There are several benefits to this:

• It will keep you busy, thereby keeping your mind off your cravings and other nostalgia about drugs.
• It will keep your income high, preventing stress over bills and providing financial freedom.
• It will keep your morale and self-confidence high, allowing you to feel like you’re accomplishing something worthwhile.
• It will give you the opportunity to meet new people and expand to other, more sober social scenes.

The exception to the above points is whether your workplace really is a nurturing environment. This is an important issue to confront when facing what drove you addiction in the first place.

Change Your Workplace, Not Your Ability to Work

In many cases, it is the workplace that drives people to addiction. Be it an unfair boss, a stressful line of work, or a group of cold-hearted co-workers, oppression at work will inevitably get to you. It is important to surround yourself with people who boost your confidence and make you feel important. If your place of work is making you unhappy, it is essential that you find another line of work.

Additionally, it is crucial that you surround yourself with sober people. If your co-workers are continually inviting you to have drinks over lunch or hang out at a bar after work, it would be wise to find different friends.

If your place of work is not the environment that will contribute to full recovery as an addict, it is vital that you find another job or even find ways to work for yourself. A growing number of jobs can be found online, working from home. The Internet also makes it very easy to start your own business, in an area you are passionate about. Perhaps you always wanted to be an artist, a writer, a musician. Now is the time to pursue your dreams. Free from the shackles of drugs, you now can.

For more information on effective aftercare and treatment contact Narconon today.

Source: http://andycore.com/work/importance-work-life-balance-higher-productivity-workplace/

Now, let’s take something a wee bit more questionable like coffee.

I met a lady once that was getting carried away, adamant that she could not get her favourite brand of coffee in the morning.  Okay, so she was getting on my nerves when her particular addiction was not satisfied.  On the other hand, although stressed by it, she was not likely to engage in retribution in order to satisfy her craving.

Our next substance is plagued by a scare campaign of a “don’t do it or you’re gonna die” sort of message.  Tobacco and cigarettes are being phased out of popularity in the society we live in today. Tobacco is bad, real bad, we hear again and again. We can see that many individuals appear to spend a fair amount of money plus relinquish some of their health by being addicted to tobacco. However, cigarette smokers are neither committing crimes to satisfy their need for nicotine nor is their behaviour altered enough to merit it rightfully being called an addiction.  So what do we call an addiction?

This next one has its own name as we don’t call it “addicted to alcohol” but rather alcoholism.

That’s where serious problems start to “hit the road”.  We’ve seen drunk and too drunk and it doesn’t take a specialist to understand that there is something really not good in abusing alcohol in any given form no matter how great the celebration it is supposed to honour.

Some start drinking to help them loosen their tongue in social gatherings or to gain some extra confidence to say a few words to a love interest.  More often than not, your tongue gets overly loose and your extra confidence takes a nosedive and gets increasingly difficult to recover.  Having uttered inappropriate comments, you suffer the pain of regret and unwanted shame burdens your self-esteem.  In this light, the problem you were attempting to solve just got more difficult, not so fun.

The next level is addiction to hard drugs.  Again, at first the drug was to solve pain (painkillers), or to get more into the mood of things (crack, cocaine), or to solve your shyness and unleash your full potential (LSD, crystal meth, heroin, prescription drugs and so on).

Oh yes, you’ve unleashed your potential alright and every waking hour this potential has to find its next dose or else.

 Show Me an Addict and I’ll Show You Pain

I really like what this man tells us about addicts and addiction.  I can sense that he’s seen it all before.  It’s possible that every addict that has misguidedly started using drugs surely would not have done so had they only known the facts before they began.

And so, should we prohibit advertising for alcohol as we did for tobacco?

Should we restrict prescription drug advertising in the same way?

Well as for me, I’m frowning on those practise every chance I get.

Let me know what is your take on advertising drugs and alcohol…

- Deitan

Some will try to explain this problem with the ever so popular ‘rat studies.’ One was done recently that started by getting rats to become addicted to cocaine and then stimulant their brains to have less of a desire to use it.

While humans have evolved way past the intelligence and ability level of rats it is difficult to deduce any real facts on addiction based on the study. Other than the fact that if an animal or human is given a drug they will likely become addicted to it.

The Real Cycle Of Addiction

With the above said, we at Narconon have found that there is a very specific cycle to addiction and substance abuse that can be explained very simply:

1.    A person sees drugs or alcohol as a solution to a problem they are having or something to numb unwanted feelings or sensations.
2.    The environment around the individual promotes whether it’s through movies, television, social media or real life examples of use and its acceptability.
3.    The individual uses the drugs (or alcohol) a few times and starts to believe that there is value in the substances.
4.    From this they begin to become ‘dependent’ and use more and more.
5.    The physical aspect of the problem sets in including withdrawal symptoms. They will start to crave the drugs.
6.    Seeing this many will try to stop and be unsuccessful. This is where the addiction becomes real. They can’t stop and are not hooked on these substances.
7.    At this point getting and using drugs will become central in one’s life. They will start to ignore responsibilities and other things and their main focus will be to get and use drugs.
8.    Ultimately this may go on for a few days, weeks, months or years until the individual seeks help, gets arrested or experiences a major health problem or even death from addiction.

The Key To Stopping Abuse

Many things in one’s life are affected by drug use and abuse. Addictive drugs reduce a person’s ability to make rational decisions when they are set on getting access to their drug of choice. As a result they will begin to ignore people and things that are important in an effort to take more drugs.

Rehabilitation professionals the world over are looking for ways to make it easy to get off drugs and stay off of them permanently. Enforcement are doing their best to stop the problem. And many schools, parents and groups are trying to implement effective prevention measures to avoid it all together.

At Narconon we have been able to successfully resolve the problem. This is by a combination of things including drug free treatment, education with life skills, full detoxification and resolving the issues that lead to use in the first place. The truth is that even with the severity and complexity of the problem is it one that can be simply resolved to where a person can get and stay drug free. For a breakdown of the parts of our treatment program visit our Narconon forum or call 800-468-6933 to speak with a counselor.

Source: http://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2013/04/nih-shines-bright-light-cocaine-addiction/62738/