Getting through a rehab program is a huge step on your path to addiction recovery and sober living, but it’s only one step; to secure your future, you need to give a bit of thought to what you’re going to do after rehab, to keep clean, stay sober, and be ready to tackle life. These tips should help you on your way to doing exactly that:
1) Keep your environment temptation-free
Whether that means asking your roommates or family to stop bringing alcohol or your drug of choice into your home, or finding a sober home to spend a transitional period in while you further refine your ability to resist temptation, you want to make sure you’re not going to be directly challenging your sobriety straight out of rehab. Take your time to build up to that level.
2) Plan your excuses, explanations, and alternatives in advance
If you’d rather keep your brush with addiction and addiction recovery private, decide in advance how you want to handle inquiries about drinking at parties and other occasions. For most people fresh from rehab, avoiding these environments for a time will be a good idea; just make sure you’re prepared to explain, honestly or not, why you’re not drinking at social events.
3) Stay positive
Positive thinking begets positive results, according to countless research into the matter. So stay positive, even in the face of temptation and the challenges ahead. It’s okay to acknowledge the difficulty ahead of you and steel yourself against it, but make sure you take a nice 20 minute break to think as happy, positive, and cheerful a set of thoughts as your mind can wrangle. This builds good mental habits, strengthens your mental core, and gives you an edge on resisting pessimism and a return to addiction.
These three tips aren’t the only things you’ll need to stay sober after your exit from rehab, but they’re very important so keep them in mind. Most of all, you need to think carefully on your addiction and sobriety — not obsessively, not pessimistically, not over-optimistically. Just objectively consider where you were, where you are, and where you want to be in the future.