Getting sober is one of those life changes that often cause people to go in a completely new direction. One of the major factors that could have influenced you to choose to go to treatment might have been a growing sense of dissatisfaction with your current lifestyle. During the active phase of your addiction, you might have experienced broken relationships and challenges with maintaining a career. You might also dislike where you live or question if your friends were ever really there for you, other than during the times when you were drinking or using drugs. Asking what happens if you don’t want to go back to your old life is a good sign that you are open to making the necessary changes to stay sober. Now, all you have to do is start envisioning how you want your new life to look.
People completely change their lives all the time, and most situations in life aren’t permanent. Even senior adults are capable of change, but you will want to start off by asking yourself a few of these questions to decide just how drastic you want your next steps to be.
- Are there relationships that you can still salvage?
- Are you interested in a different career path?
- Have you thought about living somewhere new?
- What did you hope life would be like when you were younger?
- What do you like and dislike about your current lifestyle?
- What types of support can you find for changing your life now?
At first, answering questions about what you want to change can seem hard. You might feel challenging emotions, such as guilt or anger, about some of the things that you are facing today. While this is normal, you also want to make sure that you are surrounded by people who can help you work through them. In your drug or alcohol treatment program, you’ll work with professional counselors that can help you determine what to do to make life better in sobriety.
Begin Building the Life You Want In Sobriety
Once you enter a treatment program, you can rest assured that you’ve already taken one of the biggest steps towards changing your life. Building a new and healthier lifestyle is difficult when you are under the influence of drugs or alcohol. In fact, getting sober helps to clear the clouds from your mind so that you can begin making better decisions that lead to success. Keep in mind that these changes won’t be instant. You’ll first need to go through the withdrawal process to get the chemicals out of your system. Those first few days of treatment might be hard, but you also benefit from receiving therapy right away. As you begin to feel better, you’ll be able to dive deeper into the underlying reasons for why you developed an addiction. Learning more about your mental health gives you insights that you can use as you plan for making life changes.
Some people enter addiction treatment with coexisting mental health conditions such as depression. In some cases, you might not be able to tell if you are dealing with depression or are truly dissatisfied with your lifestyle. Professional therapists can help you sort through your emotions to figure out what you really need to be happy. For some people, you might just need to attend counseling sessions with your loved ones to strengthen relationships that grew weak during your addiction. Other people might need to undergo more radical lifestyle changes. Moving to a new state, going back to school or even ending harmful relationships are a few possible actions that you might take if your life needs a bigger change.
You can’t run away from the past, but you can work on building a healthier and happier future. Going to treatment has a way of shining a spotlight on what isn’t working in your life, and it is completely natural to want to make some major changes. Whether you need a complete life overhaul or just want to make your marriage happier, you’ve got all the support you need from the counselors and other professionals who make up your treatment team.
When life isn’t working out the way you want, there’s always a way to make it better. Give us a call today to start getting sober and build the life of your dreams. We’re available now at 833-846-5669.