You are just one of those people with a temper. It gets a lot worse when you are high and drunk. People have told you when a jerk you are, and you’ve gotten in trouble with the law a few times from it too. You know you should get it under control, but you have no idea how. And what’s got you so mad anyway?

Addiction Is The Bad Guy Not Anger

We should take a good look at what anger really is. It’s often made out to be the bad guy - something to avoid and eliminate. In fact, it can be a very useful tool if you know how to use it. Anger is a signal that something disturbing is going on. It may be something meaningful like social injustice, or something trivial like someone with too many things going ahead of you in the express grocery lane. Can you tell the difference inside you? Do you know what to do with it?

It is so much easier, and socially acceptable, to express and deal with anger than more complex emotions. You are ashamed because you lost your job, so you badmouth your boss to your former coworkers/friends. You anticipate feeling embarassed when you show up to your meeting late (again), so you show anger to other drivers on the road. You are deeply hurt and disoriented by the death of your sister, so you snap angrily at everyone around you when they try to talk about her.

Women Start Addictions With Emotional Pathways

More than likely, these deep complex emotions are the ones that lead you into your addiction in the first place. Deep shame from sexual abuse, unspeakable disappointment about being abandoned by your family, depression and frustration from daily family chaos. If you don’t feel well equipped to face them, turning to the bottle or needle can give you a quick escape.

Unfortunately, addiction and anger can be a scary combination. The root of your problem continues to fester while the drug addiction hides it from your awareness. You break things and scream, but you may have little to no idea what is really underneath all this rage. Not only that, but drugs and alcohol often lower your inhibitions, increase impulsivity, and mess up your judgment. You are a nightmare on wheels when this all comes together.

Anger provides an opportunity - you can either face it and try to bring more peace to your life and others near you, or you can add selfish negativity to the world and make your life more difficult. If you find yourself with a drug or alcohol addiction and anger that is out of control, it is time for drug and alcohol rehab.

Use Your Anger To Help With Your Drug Addiction

Getting angry at how the addiction has wrecked your life can lead you to the decision of going to drug rehab. Anger doesn’t always have to be your enemy, it can be your ally. Get angry at the betrayal of addiction, get angry at the lies you hear in your mind, get angry at the negative change in your life. Then use that energy to do something positive - get help, go to drug rehab, stand up and fight for your life.

The alcohol looks the same, smells the same, and goes down the same for alcoholic women and men.  However, alcohol does things differently inside women’s and men’s bodies.   And depression is said to be the “common cold” of mental illnesses - not as mild as a cold, but certainly common.  It’s quite likely that a significant number of alcoholic women also have depression.  When a woman gets a one-two punch like this, it can feel impossible to ever stand up straight again.  The answer is specialized alcohol rehab for women.  This is nothing to try handling on your own. 

Alcohol and Depression Bad Duo For Women

Alcohol and Women

When you drink alcohol, it gives you a relaxing effect.  You might feel slowed down, or like your reflexes are off, and that you don’t care so much about problems.  This effect happens because alcohol is a depressant drug - it depresses and dulls the entire nervous system, including the brain. 

A woman with depression already has a slowed and dulled nervous system.  They may drink to escape worrisome thoughts or emotional pain, but they are actually making their entire situation worse over time.   Women usually begin an addiction through an emotional pathway, such as feelings of depression or anxiety.  These feelings could range anywhere from mild anxiety to a prolonged clinical depression.  Whether a woman turns to an addiction depends on many factors.

When a woman drinks alcohol to escape emotional pain, she is likely to develop a tolerance and drink even more to get the same strong effect they started with.  Eventually, this brings on more emptiness and disconnection with the world.  This often deepens the woman’s emotional pain, especially if they had a diagnosable level of depression to start with.  

Women at Risk for Depression

It may seem cliche, but women are generally more driven by emotion for good reason.  Their brains are set up with many more connections in the emotional centers.  This doesn’t mean that women are “weak” or unable to use logic.  It simply means that emotions generally take a larger importance in daily decisions and communication for women. 

This emotional atunement has its advantages - greater ability to pick up on subtle emotional clues, consideration for others’ feelings, good sense about status of relationships.  However, it can also make women more open to depression.  Emotions are amplified during depression, and more connections means this can overload a woman’s senses more easily. 

Women Take Stronger Effects and More Damage From Alcohol

The double-whammy part of this is that alcohol is quite unfair to women.  It takes less alcohol to get a woman intoxicated, and the same amount will do more damage in a woman’s body than in a man’s.  Because of relative smaller size, she has a smaller amount of the enzyme that breaks down alcohol in the body.  Birth control medication can affect the rate that alcohol is processed and eliminated from the body.  As compared wtih men, women really get the short stick with risk for alcoholism.  

Give Yourself a Chance at Alcohol Rehab For Women

You may be seeing yourself in this article - depressed, drinking to escape, and now drowing in a sea of despair with no lifeboat.  Give yourself a chance by going to alcohol rehab for women.

Ask anyone who’s addicted to an opiate drug such as prescription pain killers or herion - it’s a nightmare trying to quit.  Opiates take over your body a chemical level with no holds barred.  It’s a hard hitting addiction, and getting sober without help just doesn’t work very well.  Opiate rehab is almost a certainty for someone trying to get a clean life. 

Opiate Detox Is No Picnic

Opiate treatment has two defined stages - detox and drug treatment.  Detox is never a fun experience, and it can be particularly hard for an opiate addict.  Because of the chemistry involved, opiate drugs make themselves physically necessary to avoid overwhelming pain and other uncomfortable symptoms.  Getting past these symptoms are often the hardest part of the recovery process.  That is why it is so difficult to just go “cold turkey” with an opiate drug addiction.

Specially formulated detox medications help reduce cravings and withdrawal symptoms.  The chemistry is a close enough fit to make the person feel better, but it’s not exact enough (most of the time) to perpetuate the addiction and create its own withdrawal symptoms.  A person can remain on detox meds at some level until they have stabilized their life and been through a period of treatment.  Ideally, the person can wean off the meds so that they are free from any form of opiate. 

One of the most well known opiate detox drug is Methadone, which has its own unfortunate potential for addiction with some people.  Two others used to treat heroin addiction are Naloxone and Naltrexone.  Another relative newcomer is Buprenorphine recently approved for use with pregnant women needing opiate detox. 

Opiate Treatment Programs

Treatment is the next stage of opiate rehab.  Once a woman has gotten past the initial detox stage, she is very likely feeling well enough to begin the holistic therapies and addiction treatment sessions.  These involve individual and group counseling sessions, group psychodrama experiences, yoga, nutritional counseling, exercise, and other healing practices.  Everything is backed by solid research and the guidance of an all-female addiction treatment staff.

The Orchid also has programs for other types of opiate addictions.  Regardless of how a woman has come to be addicted to an opiate drug, she needs the support and understanding that can only come from highly trained staff and other women who have been there.  The tenacity and ferociousness of this addiction is so strong - anyone trying to fight against it needs a team behind them. 

In particular, there are differences in the way women come into their addictions.  Painful emotional pathways are usually the beginning points of an addiction.  Certainly not every woman with emotional pain in her life becomes addicted to something.  But in studies of female addicts, painful emotional pathways are at the foundation of their addictions.

Does This Sound Like You?

If you’ve been through the opiate detox and treatment carousel, you know what this is like.  Opiate treatment isn’t easy no matter what.  But not every drug treatment center is alike.  If you are a woman needing to have a life-changing drug rehab experience, contact The Orchid.  You’ll finally discover the help you really needed all along.

You’ve been through hell the last few months - drug addiction, family problems, having an addition intervention, then finally starting drug rehab.  Now your life is pointed in a much better direction and your rehab journey is over.  It’s time to start living your life out in the world again, away from the cocoon of rehab.  What’s next for you?

Outpatient Treatment After Drug Rehab

Certainly one option is to do drug treatment with an outpatient treatment clinic.  This could include group therapy two or three times a week plus individual sessions.  You would live in your own home and community, blending yourself back into your life and your new treatment plan.  If you have good support at home and an environment that will adapt well to sober living, then you may be comfortable heading home directly after your drug treatment is finished.  It can be comforting to be back among people who love you and are ready to help you keep the changes in your life.

Sober Living Helps With Transition After Drug Treatment

If you are at all in doubt about your ability to stay sober because of your home circumstances or other issues brought up in rehab, the sober living arrangement may be well-suited for you..  This provides a home-like environment with the added support of an all-female staff and co-residents.  Everyone is either in addiction recovery or there specifically to help women with their recovery.  It provides more freedoms than inpatient drug rehab, but does provide more structure than a person’s home environment.

Curfews and visitation restrictions exist to protect women in post-rehab transition.  The women who live there have more open opportunities to join support groups and plan their individual recovery program.  Many people have the idea that a half-way house or sober living arrangement is just a run down joint in the seedy part of town.  This is hardly the case for the Orchid sober living home.  It has the same kind of compassion and attention to feminine needs as the inpatient drug rehab. 

Is Sober Living the Right Choice for You

It’s hard to know when the sober living home might be the best thing for you.  Perhaps it is as you transition from drug rehab to your home community.  You might decide that after being at home for a while, you would do better in a sober living arrangement for a while.  No matter what your choice, the Orchid’s sober living home has an open door and a welcome mat out for you.

Making the decision to start addiction recovery is challenging enough.  Getting released from rehab is a big moment, but it’s just the beginning of your journey.  Life in rehab is very different from life at home, no matter how supportive everyone is.  Choosing a sober living home following drug rehab is a way to make your adjustment a little smoother.  Dedicating yourself to a drug free lifestyle is so important, and sober living homes are a great way to bridge the gap between rehab and home.

Motherhood is a perilous journey all on its own.  Babies take so much time and attention, toddlers fall and bump into things, preteens have a lot of attitude and opinions, then kids start driving… Worry worry worry.  You give your kids the best you can, eaking out whatever time you can to get your workday done, have a peaceful home, and having a little quiet time at the end of the day.  When you throw an addiction in the mix, these priorities take a back seat.  

Motherhood and Addiction Don’t Mix Well

That “maternal instinct” that guides you gets drowned out by your drug addiction voice.  That voice tells you how badly you need your next hit, how and where you can get your next stash of drugs, and how you feel all day long. 

You you you, it’s all about you.  That what the addiction voice tells you - it is so strong and you go with it.  You may have moments of clarity, understanding that this is all mixed up and so wrong.  But without the right kind of help, the addiction will win every time.

Addiction Affects Mothers and Children

Oprah had a show that featured families affected by addiction.  The title was “Children in Charge”, which is often what happens when parents (especially mothers) become addicted to drugs.  One young man is a football player for Clemson University, raising his 11 year old brother on campus.  His mother has had an ongoing struggle with crack cocaine addiction.  He and his siblings were split up when they were removed from her care, although he was old enough to get temporary custody of one of his brothers.  The future for his mother and other siblings seems more uncertain.

In another family, an eight year old girl realized it was up to her to raise her siblings and take care of herself.  Her mom had had been addicted to drugs since before the girl was born.  For the next five years, she did everything her mom should have been doing including her own school responsibilities.  Her mother said it was “hard to believe” she’d done put her children in such a terrible position.  Her mother has been clean for a few years now and is reunited with her children. 

Mothers With Addiction Love is Not Enough

Few mothers intentionally put their children in harms way time and time again, taking pleasure when their children suffer.  Most mothers with serious problems love their children but have great difficulty overcoming huge barriers - mental illness, drug addiction, chronic poverty, very little suport from others, etc.  In many cases, a mother’s children are her shining rays of hope in the darkness.  They take whatever energy and hope they have and pin it on reuniting, making things right, recreating their broken family. 

Getting and staying on the path of addiction recovery is much like an endurance race.  It can be discouraging, difficult, a long process, and it can be nearly impossible to do without the support of others (especially those who understand the journey).  However, addiction recovery does not have a moment when you reach the finish line.  Instead, it is a continuous process of learning and understanding. 

The Orchid Can Help Moms Addicted to Drugs

If you are a mom and these descriptions sound painfully familiar, it’s time to learn more about the Orchid Recovery Center for Women.  Anyone who knows a mom struggling with addiction should do the same.  A mom needs to be healthy to give her best to her children - a mother with an addiction needs to know about the Orchid.