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How can you be successful in your long-term addiction recovery? While that might not be the first question that you ask when you enter a treatment facility, it comes soon after. Once you are able to avoid substance misuse, you want to ensure that you do not go down that path again. These four pillars of successful long-term addiction recovery will help you move toward a lifetime of recovery.
While there is no short, easy way to ensure addiction recovery, there are four pillars of recovery that help support this lifelong process. Without creating the right foundation for recovery, it is harder to ensure that you will be able to avoid substance misuse in the future. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, these four pillars are health, home, purpose and community.
While recovery is about managing addiction, ensuring your long-term health involves a lot more than abstaining from drugs or alcohol. It involves “making informed, healthy choices that support physical and emotional well-being,” according to SAMHSA.
Ongoing healthy choices include:
Becoming too hungry can make it easier to relapse. If your body does not feel well, then it is easier to turn to what has given you temporary feelings of ease in the past. When your body feels excellent without drugs and alcohol, then you will not be nearly as tempted to return to those habits, because you will feel good without them.
Drug and alcohol dependency are harder to manage when you have an unstable home life. For you, stability might look like this:
When you feel like you have a strong purpose in life, it provides you with a focus and a pleasure other than alcohol or drugs. This purpose could be a job or an educational endeavor that you enjoy. It could also involve volunteer activities, caring for family members or creativity.
Finding a drug and alcohol treatment facility that focuses on purposeful practices can help you start enjoying life again. For instance, art therapy, meditation or animal-assisted therapy can be something that helps you achieve sobriety, and it can help you maintain it and can be one source of meaning in your life.
Finding a purposeful life is not always simple, and you can encounter challenges as you work to achieve a life of purpose. For example, parenting can be a very purposeful activity, yet it is still one that is very difficult at times. As you work to achieve your life’s purpose, make sure that you have a strong support system in place so that you can work through the challenges of these relationships and activities without using drugs and alcohol.
A community is important to every person, and it is particularly important when you are having struggles with mental and physical health. Moving into a healthy space with your group of friends and your family members allows you to find the support you need to maintain ongoing sobriety. When you are seeking community, you should focus on:
At The Recovery Village Columbus, we know that recovery is an active, lifelong process. Are you looking for Ohio addiction treatment resources? If you want to start that process, contact us today. Learn how we can help you and your loved ones move into a sober life together.
The Recovery Village aims to improve the quality of life for people struggling with a substance use or mental health disorder with fact-based content about the nature of behavioral health conditions, treatment options and their related outcomes. We publish material that is researched, cited, edited and reviewed by licensed medical professionals. The information we provide is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It should not be used in place of the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider.