Does the title of this post scare you when you think about getting sober?  Does it make you reconsider sobriety, even if all the arrows in your life are pointing in that direction.  OK, there may be one possible way to keep your entire social group when you decide to become sober.  Your entire social group gets sober right along with you.  If that sounds like a near impossible task, then you get the point.  Getting sober may be absolutely necessary for your life, it does require some real sacrifice and change on your part.

What Will You Do With Your Time Sober

You may be wondering what in the world you are going to do now.  What if you can’t hang out with the girls after work on Thirsty Thursdays, or on the usual Tuesday Happy Hour, or getting drunk together in the backyard throughout the summer while the guys grill?  And the ladies bowling league - every Saturday night for nine months out of the year.  And that doesn’t even count the times you drink at home, either on your own or with anyone who comes over.

When you take a closer look at it, you may be stunned at how deeply drinking is embedded into your daily life.  What do think about when it’s your usual time to drink?  Do you think about it much at all, or does it all seem pretty automatic anymore?  Work is done, it’s the weekend, it’s league night, a friend has dropped by - and you crack out the alcohol right away.  You drink until you are drunk most if not every time you start.  Most of the time, even if you say you aren’t going to drink that much, you get drunk anyway.

Social Influence Matters With Alcohol Recovery

How in the world could you stay sober if you kept up with that bowling league group, with your friends that drop by and drink with you, with the people that come over in the summer to grill and drink, stopping by Happy Hour and Thirsty Thursday with those friends?  The answer is that most likely you can’t.  Even if they are sympathetic to your needs, are they all going to stop drinking entirely when they are with you so you have no temptation?  If they all would, that is an incredible group of friends.  If not, you’ll need to make some decisions.

Perhaps after you have been in alcohol treatment, you might ask someone if they know of people who don’t drink while they bowl.  Maybe you can see that a few of your relatives or friends may not drink much to start with and would enjoy starting a different social tradition.  Or maybe some of the people you meet in AA already do some of these types of gatherings that you could attend.  Regardless, the reality is clear about your social group.  A dramatic change needs to take place if you are going to truly stay sober.

Alcohol Treatment Helps You Manage Your Fears

This may seem really hard to imagine, frightening because you don’t know how you’ll handle the boredom and loneliness.  Alcohol rehab can help you work through those fears and find solutions to you social struggles.  The support you find at alcohol treatment sessions can help you get through the valleys of alcoholism recovery.  Yes, you’ll need to make change, but you won’t have to be alone through it.

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Do you sometimes miss your drinking?  Do you wonder if you really needed to get sober, or if it was just your relatives being worry warts?  What was the harm anyway if you got drunk now and then?  Stop right there - don’t let another one of those rosy thoughts go by.  Do you know what happens when you let your mind think like that?  It’s addiction thinking sneaking up on you again.

Remember The Good Times Forget The Bad

Addiction thinking likes to make light of addiction, make it seem totally justifiable and basically harmless.  What a disaster if you were to fall for such a clever argument in your own mind.  Sometimes, nostalgia has a way of making parts of the past seem rosier than it really was.  In some ways, that is a good thing.

If you really had a good father in your life, you would much rather focus on positive memories than of the times he got mad at you.  And it’s probably a good thing mothers don’t always remember the gory details of delivering their babies, or most women may not want to ever do it again.  But for a recovering addict, a rosy colored picture of their addiction past can be toxic.

Slippery Slope Of Alcohol Addiction Thinking

Remember the DUI, the embarassing incident when you fell down the stairs and almost broke your leg, the blow-up arguments at family holiday gatherings, the exile from your grandmother because she just couldn’t deal with your lies anymore?  What if you saw the DUI as someone else’s fault, and really not a big deal?  What if you blamed someone else for tripping you down the stairs?  What if you said everyone at the family gatherings picked on you, and it had nothing to do with your drinking?  What if you said you really weren’t all that close to your grandma anyway?  You really enjoyed drinking, hanging out with your buddies all night, having few cares in the world most of the time - and now you aren’t sure why you ever gave it up.

Do you see the slippery slope you get on when you see the past in that rosy sort of way?  Do you see how the evidence of family destruction, legal problems, and health risks get swept under the rug because your memories are being manipulated by your addiction thinking?  You may become tempted to start drinking and not even realize the pit you are about to fall into.

Alcohol Rehab Can Get Your Thinking Back On Track

If you find yourself being nostalgic about your drinking days, you may need to find an alcohol treatment center soon.  Perhaps you may only need some stronger aftercare support rather than full-fledged alcohol rehab.  Or, if you have already started drinking again after feeling like your sobriety wasn’t that important, you may need to consider true alcohol rehab.  Relapse is a normal part of addiction recovery, but you don’t have to fall for the lies every time they crop up.  You can learn to spot these things before they steer you in the wrong direction.  Call an alcohol treatment center near you for more support.

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You may have preferred being a lone wolf when you were addicted to drugs and alcohol. You didn’t butt into anyone else’s business, and other people left you alone with yours.  Yet this isolation allowed your addiction to grow and and endure. Read on to learn more about how isolation can be a big red flag for addiction relapse.

Isolation Keeps Your Focus Too Narrow

Black-and-white thinking is a hallmark of drug and alcohol addiction. It narrows everything down to some sort of extreme. Something either is or it isn’t, no gray area in between. Unfortunately, most things in life quite a bit of gray in them. This makes drug addicts and alcoholics fairly ill-equipped to deal with the realities of everyday life.

This ultra-narrow focus keeps a person from truly getting healthy. Isolation provides a much more conducive environment for this type of narrow thinking to flourish. It can resemble the black-and-white thinking of their active addiction days enough to make relapse more likely.

Isolation Empowers Your Addiction Mind

Much of the reason for social support groups and group treatment is to help recovering addict connect with others. Addiction turns a person’s mind off to other people’s opinions, creating a very selfish outlook on life. Their relationships often end up broken and dysfunctional because of their addiction.

Drug treatment and support groups help them reconnect and learn how to get through rough patches in life support from others. When left to their own devices, an isolated person in recovery may allow their addiction mind to take over. Most likely, this happens so slowly that they don’t notice for some time. But before they know it, they are thinking negatively, feeling rejected, and wondering if their sobriety even matters.

Isolation Can Provoke Emotional Triggers For Relapse

In nearly all situations, a drug addict or alcoholic began their use because of emotional reasons. Child abuse, trauma, family chaos, stress over financial trouble - all of these problems are steeped in emotional upset. When a drug addict or alcoholic in faith these emotional issues with a clear sober mind, they learn to manage their feelings and stress.  The triggers for a person’s addiction may surface frequently, causing them to drink and use to survive through the stress.

When a person is in recovery but isolated, feelings of insignificant or loneliness can seep in.  This general emotional discomfort can start a chain reaction of  provoking other emotional triggers. Without the social support of other recovering or healthy people, the weight of emotional pain can cave in on that person. The urge to use drugs or alcohol may be irresistible at that point, making relapse an imminent problem.

Isolation May Lead To More Support From Drug Treatment

Isolation can seem like personal independence. But be careful, recovering addicts spend very little time in connection with others are add a clear risk for addiction relapse. When you or your family notice that you are spending way too much time and isolation, consider this a big red flag. It may be time to get back in touch with your sponsor, contact your drug rehab alumni group, or even see a counselor again. Remember, your addiction recovery is a lifelong process, not a single event. For more ways to get support during your addiction recovery, contact a drug or alcohol rehab center near you today.

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Grief is a complicated thing.  It’s a mix of remembering and letting go, not easy to do when it’s someone you care about a lot.  Even more difficult is when someone dies under traumatic circumstances.  The shock and horror can make grief something much bigger and overwhelming.  Let’s take a look at how grief can become connected to drug and alcohol addiction.

Addiction To Cope With Loss

Sometimes the loss of a person can burn a hole through you.  It’s like your very spirit has been stolen from you, making it difficult go on every day.  Some of the most heartbreaking losses can be spouses, parents, and children.  When you just can’t see how you will survive that day, grabbing a bottle or some pills can make it seem more survivable.  It can give you something to do other than obsess about the person who died and your emotions.  You can finally have some freedom from your grief, but you may be setting yourself up for another long-term problem.

Addiction To Cope With Changes In The Family

When a person dies, it may feel like there is a huge cavernous hole in the family.  Nothing can fill it except the person who has been lost.  So it becomes a sort of elephant in the living room, something obvious and huge but not directly discussed.  Some family members may push others into the roles held by the person who died, trying desperately to resolve some sense of normalcy.

Those who can’t stand the emptiness may pin all their hopes on someone else to make them happy again - a new boyfriend, another child, the remaining parent.  This can put this other person in a spot where they can’t be genuine.  They are expected to become somewhat of a replacement for the dead person, not being valued for themselves.

When the “replacement” family member feels deep despair and emotional turmoil over this, they may choose to cover it up with drugs and alcohol.  Not only are they dealing with the grief and loss of that special person, they are dealing with the disappearance of their unique identity in the family.  While the family may not intentionally mean to hurt this person, these unrealistic expectations and pressures can cause tremendous emotional pain.

Drug and Alcohol Rehab Can Help Undo The Tangled Web

When the family web of emotions gets this tangled up, it’s often time for someone to go to drug and alcohol rehab.  Not only is the grief still there to be dealt with, but they also have to relearn how to face reality and rebuild their drug-damaged life.  Drug treatment can open up the doors to the grief they haven’t worked through, which can be stressful.  But coping with grief in an open honest way at drug rehab can keep the emotions from being in charge anymore.  That person can learn how to remember while letting go, and still keep their personal identity.  If you see these problems brewing in your family, call a drug and alcohol rehab in your community today to learn more.

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A dangerous trend is growing mostly among younger alcohol drinkers - mixing energy drinks and alcoholic beverages.  The popularity of energy drinks has swept through the younger populations of the United States and other countries.  How much do you know about the dangers of mixing alcohol and energy drinks?

The Truth About Alcohol and Energy Drinks

This article from Web MD shows some startling statistics about alcohol and energy drinks being used together.  Perhaps the most concerning is how people who have energy drinks with alcohol are three times more likely to leave the bar drunk than those who drink just alcohol.

The biggest problem is that energy drinks fool a drunk person’s brain.  They believe they are more alert and functional than they really are.  The energy drink masks the symptoms of intoxication, but it doesn’t take away the intoxication.  They simply become a “wide awake drunk”.

Poor Judgment With Energy Drinks and Alcohol

Because of this masking effect, an intoxicated person believes they can trust their judgment and their senses.  They drive, swim, and do other activities without truly appreciating the risk they are taking.  They may even continue to drink more than usual because they don’t feel as drunk. Their normal cues about their body are off track.

Without the normal sensations of intoxication, they may be at risk for alcohol poisoning or development of a high tolerance.  Alcohol poisoning can be immediately harmful, even lethal.  Developing a high tolerance for alcohol can also lead directly to alcoholism.

Just because a person drinks energy drinks and alcohol doesn’t automatically mean they will end up in alcohol treatment.  However, anyone who drinks excessively is certainly at risk for becoming addicted.  No matter how it’s done, the body will begin to adjust to high amounts of alcohol being present in the blood.  A person doing this may develop an alcoholic lifestyle before they even realize they have a large problem.  Alcohol treatment may be necessary to help someone understand how their life has changed and how they can get it back on track.

Alcohol and Energy Drinks Not Smart Choice

Alcohol and energy drinks may sound like a hip smart combination - counteract the intoxication and feel energetic all night long.  But this can lead to a poor use of judgment and miscalculation of risks.  If you or someone you know is using alcohol and energy drinks, stop for a moment and consider what you are really doing.  Take a look at how much you really drink, how you fit drinking into your life, and if you may need a lifestyle change.  For more information, contact an alcohol treatment center near you.

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