You Must Do The Work for Successful Meth Recovery

Picture walking into a 20-story office building, recognizing that your approaching meeting is on the top floor. You walk into the building and right away search for the elevators. To your shock, and disappointment, some of the elevators show "out of order" signs, and the rest are presently being worked on by a team of repairmen. You ask one of the repairmen how to get up to your meeting on the 20th floor, and he points and says with a shrug, "You'll have to take the stairs." While circumstances exactly like this may not have ever happened to you, metaphorically, it's your life in Meth recovery.

You want to be successful in your recovery, stay clean and sober, and off the killer substance Meth. You want to not only be successful, but find the shortcuts or "elevator" to recovery.

Though you recognize your success in any undertaking, requires some effort, wouldn't you like to make it as painless and easy as possible?

There are no "overnight" successes in recovery!

True recovery success comes from "taking the stairs" and moving toward your goals one step at a time.

As you start to walk up the stairs to your meeting (metaphorically), you realize that while you would have rather had an easier way, there are some advantages to the stairway. You are getting exercise, building your endurance, getting a new viewpoint, creating a new experience, and as you go up the last flight of stairs, you understand the pride that comes from the effort!

All of this is true for the effort you put into life and your Meth recovery. The pains you go through create exactly these same benefits: exercise, endurance, new viewpoint, experience, and pride.

Given the symbol of "success in the stairway," what are the ways you can take the realism of effort and make the most of your effort, improving your likelihood of reaching the top floor as quickly as possible?

There are some ways you can utilize your effort intelligently to make your path to success straighter and more direct -- even if you do have to walk:

• Knowledgeable effort (Find the right path.). A lot of people believe that to generate big results, you must work hard. Effort is required, but it doesn't have to be overwhelming. Are you doing things the way other successful recovering addicts have done them? Are you taking time to learn the things that will minimize your recovery effort? Make your endeavor more informed, and recovery can be easier.
• Constant effort (Keep going.). Getting into the stairway is great, but you won't reach your destination unless you keep going. In order to be successful in recovery, you must make constant effort. What did you do last week to move toward your meth recovery? What about yesterday? What have you done (or will you do) to have recovery success today?
• Effort viewpoint (Does it have to be overwhelming?). If you always think about your recovery being overwhelming, guess what it will be? (Here's a hint -- it will be overwhelming.) But does recovery have to be overwhelming? Could it be eye opening? Could it be rewarding? Once you get a different viewpoint for effort, you make climbing the steps to your Meth recovery so much easier.
• Joint effort (Why not recover together?). Find others to travel your journey with you. Usually when people feel like a part of something bigger than themselves – they’ll be more disciplined and more effective. Who do you know that could mentor you or work with you or support you? Or, who can you mentor, help, or support? Check out NA meetings.
• Wholehearted effort (Get something out of the trip.). Choose to get something out of the trip up the stairs to your recovery. The fact is the elevator is broken; the walk is real and required. Why not decide to find the positive and get something out of the experience? It goes faster and easier. You know this is true. Make the choice to be more enthusiastic and positive.
  

Yes, effort is absolutely still required, but these are things you can do to make that effort more effective and agreeable.

Success in any area of life, especially Meth recovery, requires effort -- there is no free ride. But how you view and deal with that effort will make all the difference in the speed and ease with which you climb your path to recovery.

Addiction Recovery-Keep Anger From Sabotaging Recovery

Anger may seem to be nothing more than an emotion. A person gets mad and we may think either he has anger management issue or there was something that brought it on. Even for people who have anger problems, there is usually something that triggers it, no matter how irrational it might seem. So, we are going to talk about the different causes of anger (not the obvious ones) because it can affect recovery.

We are going to center on triggers that affect us without us really knowing why.

Here are 6 of the more common causes of anger that can throw us into an emotional state that can jeopardize recovery. By understanding these, you can be more level-headed when these things come up and have a better understanding of the feelings.

1. Being Overwhelmed
Being overwhelmed is a main cause of anger and happens to people who have difficulty handling daily stresses. These feelings make one feel trapped and unsure of what to do, so they lash out or relapse.

2. Wanting to Retaliate
Retaliating against someone who is angry at you is another cause of anger. This is a direct response to somebody getting angry at you. This is a defense mechanism to someone’s frustration with you, which can make you feel threatened and can cause anger and relapse.

3. Being Paranoid
Being paranoid can also be a source of anger, especially for those that feel taken advantage of or those who are going through withdrawal. It’s normal for people to get upset if they feel someone is trying to take advantage of them, but being paranoid is one step past. If have trust issues and low self-esteem (which addicts usually do), you may get easily offended by other people's actions and become angry.

4. Feeling Threatened
Feeling threatened is a huge trigger for anger. The threat could be anything. It could be a person, situation, or occasion that jeopardizes your plans or goals. This anger is a way to communicate to the party causing the threat that something is wrong which requires urgent attention. This anger doesn’t have to be all bad if it’s not allowed to go too far and end up in relapse.

5. Being Judgmental
Being judgmental is another trigger. If one is judgmental, it can easily spark anger. If you pre-judge people and circumstances, it can let temper and rage consume you.

6. Chronically Angry
Chronically angry people don’t need a reason to be mad. They have no definite cause for feeling this way and are more or less addicted to the feeling. Remaining in this state can have severe effects on recovery and one should seek professional help.

Take an honest look at these anger triggers and figure out which ones trigger anger in you.

Are you overwhelmed, do you unnecessarily get defensive, do you have trust issues, do you get angry when things don't go your way, are you unfairly judgmental, or are you just chronically angry?

Once you understand what triggers your anger you can find ways to cope with it. Find an outlet that won’t harm you or others. Try deep breathing, look for emotional freedom techniques, meditation, and try some exercise. These are just some of the things one can do to keep anger in check.

Remember, you can’t completely change a person or a situation, but you can change the way that you deal with your feelings by learning how to react differently to it and not let it get the better of you or sabotage your recovery efforts.

Relapse-Steps To Help You Stay On The Path To Recovery

Recovery is never a straight line. Frequently it's a matter of one step forward, two steps back. Having a relapse after we've started some new habits or set new goals happens. The choice you make after you've "fallen off the wagon" is vital.

The best of intentions can get squelched by procrastination, old habits, or self defeating thoughts. Here are a few tips to get back on track after you catch yourself falling into old patterns.

1. Celebrate Your Awareness
Do you instantly launch into self-recrimination and judgment when you are stepping off the path? Instead of kicking yourself, choose to celebrate your consciousness. Within the relapse are the keys to creating a lasting recovery. Find a positive motto or affirmation to use when you discover you're not striving for your goals. Try "Hey, I wonder what took me off course," instead of "Hey, you failure, you blew it again!" Love yourself into soberness.

2. Practice Patience
In a world addicted to split second gratification, creating new habits and thoughts takes discipline, repetition, and time. How many years did it take to create the substance abuse in the first place? It’s unreasonable to think that a few weeks or months of focused intention and action will erase the habit. When you get impatient …stop. Impatience can harm you. While sometimes the final putting down of a substance can just take a split second, often we just need to be more tolerant with our process.

3. Change Your Mindset
Einstein said, “Trying to solve problems at the same level of thinking that created them is an exercise in futility”. It's like trying to hammer a nail, when you have only a saw. Getting away from the deeply ingrained subconscious patterns often calls for changing your mindset. Realize you can’t possibly know it all. Work with a sponsor, find a good counselor, or connect with like-minded people who are getting the success you want to help you break loose from old patterns.

Use all of these tools to begin to get back on the right path with your recovery….. and most importantly, don’t try to do it alone.

Vital Facts About Our Purpose And Victories To Remember

Two thoughts have been brought to my attention on the subject of ‘why are we here’. The first comes from the insight of early philosophy, spirituality, and religious studies and the second from today’s positive psychology awareness. #1 says our key purpose is to live a first-rate life by worshiping whatever God is to us and treating others as we would ourselves. #2 says our reason for being is to be truly happy. However, there is a third thought; growing, learning, and finding out how to be truthfully victoriuos in our lives or battles with addiction and how we are living our life to fulfill that idea.

Vital facts about our purpose to remember:

1. Our most important ‘reason for being’ is to be victorious, but frequently our lives are a series of steps to first define accomplishment and secondly to determine how to be victorious, usually by a painful trial and error system, especially with an addiction. The majority of the uncertainty has to do with discovering what our true purpose really is. And then the test is deciding how to live our life for the greatest results. Staying focused on that main concern without getting sideswiped with all the humorous distractions, can easily lead us off the path.

2. There is no ignoring the practice of deciding how our own achievements compare with others, but trying to “keep up with the Jones’s” seems to never stop. At some point we all have to discover our own personal meaning of what victory really is. Eventually, victory, just like joy, turns out to be what you gain from doing what you have to get there. As with anything else that means something, we’re the only one who knows if we truly have it our not; it is or it isn’t and there’s truly is no in between that someone else can decide for you.

3. The policy for victory in life has already been laid out and a main struggle in life is to find out what these policies are. Using the right policies correctly leads to victory, and the opposite leads to everything else. It’s actually that simple, but we can misuse a lot of precious time by trying to make up our own rules or throw away even more time by not learning from our mess-ups and continuing them. However, the way to recognize what something truly is, is to know what it truly isn’t first. The pathway, especially to recovery, can be long, full of twists and turns, full of obstacles and full of dead ends for some of us. And naturally our pride or ego, regularly keeps us from seeing the genuine reality. More times than not we have wrong and partial perceptions, viewpoints, thinking and conclusions which we hardly ever want to face up to or admit to.

4. Becoming optimistic, cheerful and hopeful about victory is essential in actually achieving it, but staying this way all the time is easier said than done, especially if you have an addiction. Repeatedly, you have to be more conscious of your own thinking and emotions and begin catching yourself when you are thinking and feeling faint hints of disapproval and doubts. These could be making you unable to achieve your victory, whatever it is. Turning these faint negative feelings into a positive thing can be a slow and agonizing process.

No doubt, there are degrees of victory, but when these facts are known, accepted and used in your life, doubts start to dissolve.

Vital tips on how to use these facts in order to be more victorious:

1. Remember what it is that you eventually want out of your life (ask why until there’s nowhere for the answer to hide), or what you’re doing to get there, until it becomes apparent without a doubt. Then think about how victorious you are by knowing what victory really is to you, what progress you’re making getting there, and how this all makes you feel.

2. Get yourself moving away from the accepted mentality of comparing yourself to others and begin focusing on what it takes to better yourself to move closer to where you want to be and not where you are. Remember to be grateful for any forward movement you make, no matter how tiny.

3. Realize the worth of slowing down and noticing the tie between what you now think your purpose is, what you’re doing now to fulfill that, and the real outcome you’re getting. Do this in a totally open, truthful and sincere way. Connect to your sober mind and emotions to notice the existence and impact of faint negativity.

4. Always remember where the potential and opportunity for being victorious comes from and constantly grow your humble admiration of this ultimate truth that makes the whole thing possible.