Real life is a part of life after drug or alcohol rehab. As a recovering drug addict, you’ve probably being working hard to get back to everyday living. Sometimes, you may wonder what you get in return for your frustration. Don’t worry, this feeling is normal. You may face some challenges, but getting through them is what will make your real life worth living in the weeks, months and years following alcohol or drug rehab.

Develop Healthy Routines

Your daily routines may seem boring and tedious at first. But as you get used to them, they will become your best friends. You can rely on them because you know what to expect. Even the little routines give your day a sort of gentle rhythm and security.

You’re going to have ups and downs each day. Some days or weeks will be better than others, but your routines carry you forward. They are the steady bedrock of your day.

Face Your Fantasy World

We all have a fantasy world we’d like to escape to. You wake up to a spotless home each morning. Supper is always made and your children are well-behaved. Your bank account is strong and you have a youthful glow about you every day.

Well, you may hit a few of those once in a while, but probably not all the time. If you spend a lot of time getting caught up in your “if only” fantasy you might have trouble facing the best parts of your actual real life.

You might be sweaty and ache all over, but you get to appreciate the splendor of finishing up a personal project. Maybe you planted a garden patch, fixed a crooked door, or bake a tasty dessert. You have that personal joy for yourself and to share with others. The deep satisfaction that comes from this experience is yours for the taking in real life, and much better than any fantasy in the long run.

Ease Into Real Life Again

You may have been able to juggle a lot before you entered rehab. Don’t fall into that trap now. You can do your multi-tasking later on. Now is the time to establish your foundation. You need to focus on keeping your stress levels manageable. And to do that, you need to keep things realistic and consistent.

Go to support meeting, get rest, eat well, get a little exercise, get a little social time, and go to work (if you work). Do the basics well for a while, and then you can start taking on more challenges.

Getting Back To Real Life After Rehab Treatment

It’s time to get back into real life. You can stay sober and start getting your life back one day at a time. Drug treatment and alcohol rehab are great for starting your sobriety. But at some point, you have to live well on your own. Remember to get some good routines going, beware of your escape fantasies, and take it easy on yourself.

Crystal methamphetamine is one of the most difficult drugs to fight with drug rehab treatment. The psychological withdrawal symptoms are too easily forgotten a few months after drug addiction treatment and when the urge to get high crops up again, many believe they can use “just once” without fully falling back into addiction. Unfortunately, it seldom works out that way and most who relapse end up living with crystal meth addiction within a relatively short time.

So how do you make crystal meth addiction treatment last after you return home? How can you help yourself to remain clean and sober when the “itch” to relapse hits a few months after your drug rehab graduation?

Surviving After Crystal Meth Rehab: Don’t Follow Your Emotions

The first few weeks and months after crystal meth rehab, many women feel really good. The future looks bright and they are hopeful about rekindling positive relationships in their lives. The feeling of happiness is enough to sustain them and they may or may not have anything more than this and the recent memories of methamphetamine rehab to sustain them from day to day.

Soon, however, feelings change, as feelings are wont to do. A stumbling block will arise, someone will say something inconsiderate, something you were counting on won’t quite pan out the way you had hoped and feelings turn bleak, angry or sad.

Reminding yourself that feelings are by nature a changing force and nothing to base your continued health and recovery on is essential. Reminding yourself to base your decisions on practical matters and goals and making the next right choice you can to get yourself closer to those goals is the only way to move forward.

Surviving After Crystal Meth Rehab: Building a Support System

For many, support in recovery after drug addiction treatment starts with a 12 Step program. Here you will find recovering addicts with months and years of experience in living without drugs and alcohol. You’ll find other newcomers in their first few days without their drug of choice. You will find mentors ready and willing to provide you with one on one guidance and support as you navigate your way through the pitfalls of early recovery. Many find everything they need in the meetings, the sponsorship and the literature that accompanies a 12 step program.

Others may add to this by incorporating strong friendships and family relationships. Though it is not advocated that you embark on a new romance right after rehab-many even suggest that you don’t focus on an old romance unless that person has always been clean and sober while you were using-relationships with young children, support parents or siblings, and extended family can help keep you grounded when the going gets rough. New friendships will certainly form as you continue to attend meetings, find a new job, take classes, get involved in new hobbies and little by little you’ll build a world for yourself that doesn’t include drug use.

If you’d like to get started building a life for yourself that doesn’t include crystal meth addiction, contact The Orchid today for more information about our crystal meth rehab program for women.

Willingness, honesty and open mindedness are the considered the essential tools necessary to succeed in any recovery program by most in the 12 step community. For women entering heroin addiction treatment, this holds true. But what exactly do these three things mean and what does it look like in action when a heroin addict takes those first strong steps into a new life without heroin addiction?

Heroin Rehab and Women: Willingness

Obviously, if you are over the age of 18, no one can drag you kicking and screaming into a heroin rehab program. You have to agree. You have to be willing to walk through the doors, sign the papers, and prepare for a new way of doing things. It may sound simplistic but that is exactly what heroin addiction treatment is made of: a series of simple steps in the right direction. These simple steps and decisions never stop and the first one is the willingness to conceive that there is hope for you outside of heroin.

Heroin Rehab and Women: Honesty

Honesty is an interesting characteristic of successful heroin addiction treatment for women. Most people define honesty as the simple act of not lying, but honesty in recovery means also being honest with yourself. There are lies that everyone tells themselves to help them make dealing with certain things easier. Most heroin addicts, for example, may downplay the level of their heroin addiction for years in order to make it easier for them to continue living the way they do. Even with the willingness to enter heroin rehab, they may not fully be honest with themselves about the extent of their heroin addiction. For a real shot at success in heroin rehab, it’s very important that women are not only honest with their therapists, their counselors and their doctors but with themselves and each other as well.

Heroin Rehab and Women: Open Mindedness

This is arguably one of the most difficult of the three characteristics of a successfully heroin rehab stay. Willingness will get you through the door and you have to make the decision to be honest every time you open your mouth but open mindedness, that is what happens inside your head where no one else is there to hold you accountable. Are you open to hearing what your counselors have to share? Are you open to trying out the new coping skills in your everyday interactions and thought processes? Are you open to putting in the work it will take to learn how to live a life without heroin addiction? Are you open to the possibilities that will come your way as come across new ideas, new people, new opportunities?

No matter how wonderful the idea or opportunity or person that crosses your path, if you don’t have an open mind, it won’t benefit you in the slightest.

If you think you have the willingness, honesty and open mindedness necessary to succeed in heroin rehab, contact The Orchid for more information today.

One of the most damaging myths about drug addiction treatment and its efficacy is the idea that one must want to go to rehab in order to be successful. The truth is that even women who would like to live a life without heroin addiction, alcoholism, painkiller addiction and addiction to other drugs, few really sign up for drug rehab with a happy, gung-ho attitude. Almost everyone is scared: scared of “failing” through relapse and scared of succeeding and living with the intimidating task of figuring out how to get through each day without drugs and alcohol.

There is no magical way to overcome these fears and the general reluctance of even the most willing, but if there were it can be summed up in a single phrase: “Act as if.”

What “Act As If” Means to Women Entering Drug Treatment

“Acting as if” means walking through the doors of a drug rehab like you want to be there, even if you don’t. Rather than beginning each day with overwhelming thoughts like “I can never get high again” or “I’m done with drinking forever,” you start the day thinking, “What do I want for breakfast?” You act as if living without drugs and alcohol were the most perfectly natural thing in the world and whenever nagging doubts start to creep in, immediately rearrange your thoughts to focus on the next thing someone without a drug and alcohol addiction would think about.

Is “Acting As If” Dishonest?

One of the primary tenets of any successful drug rehab program is honesty and some are concerned  that “acting as if” is just another form of lying. If you honestly feel like you want to get loaded, is it dishonest to ignore it and pretend that you feel anything different? It’s an interesting question, but when your goal is to strive toward stability and a solid foundation based on positive thinking that sets you up to make the next best choice in any given situation, then “acting as if” is the best way to get there on the days when this seems like the most difficult thing in the world.

When Does “Acting As If” Turn Into a Real Desire to Live Without Drugs and Alcohol?

This will vary from person to person. But desires, and feelings, come and go in early recovery, and they’re difficult to pinpoint and hold onto, much less use as a foundation for a new life. Even those who have been clean and sober for decades have days when they don’t feel like doing it anymore. But the whole point of “acting as if” is to let goal of sobriety rule your decisions as opposed to how you feel. Actions based on feelings are usually compulsive and rarely the best choice for you. Actions based on well-thought out goals and healthful positive directions for your life are always going to serve you better in the long run.

If you’d like to learn more about drug addiction treatment for women, contact The Orchid today.

Food addiction among women is a common occurrence; in drug rehab, it is almost ubiquitous: women who struggle with addiction to drugs and alcohol very often also have co-occurring food disorders. These disorders look different in different women, but some of the most common include bulimia, anorexia, binging, yo-yo dieting and weight loss. Living with co-occurring disorders of drug addiction and food addiction can make the experience of drug rehab doubly difficult for women. The only solution is a drug addiction treatment program that addresses both disorders simultaneously.

Food Addiction in Women Addicts

For most female food addicts, eating is emotional. Just like with drugs and alcohol, the tendency is to hide the amount of food eaten, lie about what was eaten or how much, and eat differently alone as opposed to in front of other people. For drug addicts who are also addicted to food, food may be used in an attempt to ease withdrawal symptoms or to replace drugs or alcohol when trying to quit alone. Unfortunately, when drug addiction and food addiction exist simultaneously, food often compounds the problem of drug addiction: female addicts tend to eat inappropriately despite emotional and physical consequences, organize their lives and choices based on food, or trying to control the addiction by making severe choices and placing rigid and arbitrary limitations upon their eating.

Food addiction and drug addiction can manifest so similarly that it is extremely helpful to apply the coping skills learned at drug rehab to recovery from food addiction at the same time.

Why Do Women Addicted to Drugs Have Food Addictions?

Just like drugs, food serves to provide some women with a means of escape. Bad self esteem, trauma, problems in relationships or at work, and chronic depression are all primary reasons that many women first turn to drugs and food. The “happy” chemicals released by eating comfort foods or sweets are similar in some ways to those released by using drugs, though on a smaller scale and for a shorter period. Unfortunately, the resulting health issues and the compulsive behavior as well as the constant cravings make it almost impossible to stop effectively and safely without professional help at an addiction treatment center.

Developing a New Food Addiction During Drug Rehab

Another phenomenon is the woman who begins drug rehab addicted to heroin, cocaine, alcohol, marijuana or some combination thereof, and finds that she replaces her drug of choice with compulsive behavior with food. Replacing drugs with another obsession-food, a new relationship, gambling, sex, et cetera-is extremely unhealthy as the focus should be on finding a healthful balance in your life that allows you to feel free rather than tethered to any one thing or activity. Notice how you are feeling as you progress through recovery and share your concerns about developing food addictions and other co-occurring disorders with your therapist and counselors to make sure that you get the treatment you need.

If you would like more information about co-occurring disorders, food addiction or how drug and alcohol addiction affects women, contact The Orchid and start your healing process today.