The Road to Recovery: Essential Steps in Alcohol Rehab and Beyond

Your road to recovery doesn’t end in rehab. You must now move on with your life and maintain your newfound recovery and hopefully make changes that will improve your life even more. Rehab may have been difficult for you, and adjusting to your new life may be even more difficult. But there are plenty of things in your control to make your road to recovery even easier.

Maintaining A Sober Life

Naturally, maintaining a sober life is paramount to your success moving forward. You will likely re-engage with work, family, friends, and hobbies that you had before you began recovery. Research suggests that most relapses occur in the first 6 months after completing treatment, which means that in order to maintain your sober life, you may need to make changes. You may have to find a way to develop relations with drug-free people, leave behind those that actively sabotage you, or make an entirely new change to maintain the most important thing – you.

Individual Therapy

Before we dive deeper into the important aspects of a new social life, it may be a great idea to continue, or even begin if you haven’t, therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy attempts to fight addiction by managing your underlying behaviors and habits that may have caused the addiction in the first place or make it worse. It can also be a great place to talk through distressing withdrawal symptoms and behaviors, or maintain a trusted confidant that can help you guide yourself through recovery.

New Social Life

We are the sum of the 5 closest people to ourselves, so you may find yourself noticing that some of those people influence you too much in the wrong direction. When one person leaves or when you have to remove them for yourself, it brings an opportunity to invite a new person to be influenced by. This will hopefully be a drug-free and supportive person that will help you find new ways to live. And if you can’t think of anything, or don’t even know where to start, here’s a quick list of some drug and alcohol-free activities that anyone can enjoy:

• Sports
• Movies
• Reading
• Volunteering
• Instruments
• Video Games
• and more!

If you need help maintaining a sober life, then please call us at Greater Essex Counseling Services at 973-623-7878!