When people begin a treatment for any addiction, they often have a lot of questions about their recovery. If we try to summarize these questions into one fundamental question, maybe this question would be, what is necessary to quit drugs or alcohol and to stay sober?

There are a lot of possible treatments that could answer this question, and here we include some recommendations to keep in mind when beginning a new treatment to avoid failure along the road.

In first place, we need to understand and remember that if you believe that someone can stop consuming drugs or alcohol instantaneously and stay off them permanently, it simply won’t work. This is because the person will probably have a relapse eventually. It is necessary to also include a personal growth component to any treatment regime.

If you are involved with an active addiction yourself or with someone close to you without treatment, you have to understand drugs or alcohol will cause pain and suffering around you it can be difficult going through repeated relapses. Drugs or alcohol addict can’t have a full life and often only live day by day.

And, when we decide to modify these behaviours, thoughts and feelings around the consumption of alcohol or drugs, it’s important to start with emotional growth.

To achieve a sustained recovery over time, these are some relevant elements that any person in treatment must try to make:

  1. First step that is important is to carry out the direct treatment of dependence symptoms of drugs or alcohol. In this step the symptoms experienced when substance use abruptly suspended are treated. The patient feels these symptoms in the nervous system and the body, and they can often be very strong. For this reason it is necessary to treat insomnia, anxiety problems, and energy level problem, among others, that are very important aspects in this step.
  2. The second step is to have focus on the harmful effects of addiction in physical, psychological and spiritual health of the person in treatment. In this step it can be helpful to include relations with other people and participation in groups; the treatment is not only to achieve sobriety, it’s also important to develop human connections with beneficial people.
  3. The third step is to treat include psychological issues, here treatment focuses around anxiety problems, depression and chronic stress associated with the consumption of drugs or alcohol, as well as overcoming the fear of changes in  lifestyle and to learning how to have better interpersonal relationships.

But these steps are not enough to maintain the changes from a successful start to treatment and to stop the addict from relapsing. If we want to have a sustain rehabilitation, it is important to keep working at it. So, it is again necessary include others recommendations in treatment:

  • The treatment needs that patient includes a lot of energy, commitment,  motivation and responsibility by himself. Without these elements the treatment won’t work and is only time issue and the patient will relapse again. The patient must want to quit.
  • It is necessary to go to therapeutics sessions and to analyze what people, places and other factors are related with consumption. The drugs and alcohol consumption patterns are mechanisms and these recur over the course of the time.  It is possible to create methods and actions to change these patterns that perpetuate the addictive behaviours.    

The addiction process is associated with predictable behaviours, and these are repetitive. For this reason, the participation in groups going of individuals who have had the same experience and are in the same situation on a regular basis can be very important. To support to other helps to the recovery in yourself and others.

Again, the most important thing is to put in practice the recommendations made before treatment and to follow the advice given in treatment groups or by a therapist. When the person with an addiction starts to take in practice all the recommended treatments, day by day, one treatment at a time, their life will begin to change and gradually they will recover.  

Remember, alcohol, drugs and other addictions can be very difficult to quit. In general, this monumental and brave task is possible to achieve, as long as the affected person has a clear goal, the adequate tools and real help, and most importantly, they have support from family, friends and groups whom will be with them from the beginning to the end of the rehabilitation. 

It’s also important to remember that while a person is trying to recover from one addiction, they could be exposed to other substitute addictions, like addiction to shopping, food or sex. Some people possibly have an addictive personality and it is possible that these people only exchange one addiction for other. It’s possible to find others treatments for this problem of addiction personality in and of itself.