When people have been drinking alcohol for many years as I have, we tend to forget how it actually feels to be sober.  We sometimes put our addiction before anything.   Some of us even put it in front of our own families and love ones.

We live in a world of make believe and like the feeling that we get when using our drug of choice.   All of us deep down inside would love to give up alcohol but, we are so addicted to our drug that it seems impossible for us to quit.

In my journey from alcoholism to sobriety I have found a few things that have helped me in my recovery period.  I have learned certain Ways to Live a Sober Life.

First, when you have finally admitted to yourself that you do have a alcohol addiction and you are willing to surrender to your demons, is when you will start to see a difference in your life as I did.

It will not happen overnight, but in time you will see how the world looks when being sober and what you have been missing all the years of drinking alcohol.

One of the things that really helped me to become sober was that I was so mad at myself to allow this addiction to run and ruin my life that I created such a anger in my mind towards my demons. By creating this huge hatred in my mind towards my demons would be the same as someone hating another person so bad that they would not ever in their lives associate with them again.

This is how I feel towards my past friends, my demons.  However this may seen to some, like how would creating this hatred help in achieving sobriety?  The answer that I have with my own experiences, is that when you are so low in life or even close to hitting rock bottom I know that by getting these huge feeling of hatred I will case my demons away.

I made my mind up to surrender and quit drinking alcohol and start and new life, which I am so happy I did.

I keep myself always busy throughout the day, not leaving any open time to think about the addiction I once had.

I have never hated anyone in my life, but with the method I created for myself regarding hating my demons, certainly helped me to live my life in Sobriety once again.

From the very start of my life change, I made my mind up to always keep a Positive Attitude in everything I do.  This too has helped with my journey to sobriety.  Everyone needs to Think Positive, with never any Negative thoughts in mind.  By doing so you will see how things start to turn around for the better in your lives.

If you happen to have played through all of the top 10 Wii games then you just might be addicted gaming.

Actually the real addicts are those poor souls who get sucked into online games like WoW that literally steal their souls away.  Apparently there are even treatment centers now, both in the U.S. and in China, that are dedicated to treating people for this type of addiction.

My opinion is that if you are addicted to gaming then this is not the same thing as chemical addiction.  The reason it is different is because when you engage in a chemical addiction, it seriously alters your mind and your ability to make rational decisions.  The emotional pull of gaming is not quite as strong as that, in my opinion.  Others will disagree no doubt, as some have played these games even after their spouses have left them and their life is nothing left but a shell.  (Go ahead and give them a feeding tube and stick them in a baby crib or something!)

What do you think?

Thinking about checking into treatment?

It’s a scary move for anyone and if you’ve never been to treatment before it can be the most terrifying thing in the world.  It’s perfectly normal to be nervous about it so let me answer a few of your questions in advance here.

What are you in for when you check into addiction treatment?

Most places you can expect pretty much the same routine.  You have a detox area with medical supervision, and also a residential side where you attend groups and lectures throughout the day. Detoxing from alcohol addiction is dangerous so you want to be sure they have medical staff available to help with this process.

You might also have a therapist or trained counselor who will talk with you individually.  This person will probably also be in charge of helping you design an aftercare plan for when you leave treatment.

The groups and lectures will likely be informative and also have some group therapy involved, but most treatment centers will supplement this with 12 step meetings.  Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are generally brought in from the outside and these usually occur on a daily basis.  As such the majority of treatment centers (probably over 90 percent) are 12 step based and rely heavily on this as their recovery solution.

Cost can be a real problem for those seeking alcohol addiction treatment, as it can be quite expensive and many people do not have insurance to help pay for it.  There are some agencies depending on what state or country you live in that can possibly help with funding.  In many cases the cost might be covered completely for those who cannot afford to pay.  It is certainly worth a phone call to a local treatment center to find out.

Treatment works and if you want to see a major change occur in your life then take the steps necessary to get yourself checked in somewhere.

What if drug rehab was free?

I happen to work in a treatment center so I get to see clients come and go and I witness various degrees of success with these people.

It is amazing how different the funding can be for different clients.  Some people come to the same treatment center, over and over again, without spending a dime of their own money–simply from taxpayer dollars.  Others are not eligible for this, don’t have insurance, and end up having to pay cold hard cash if they want to go to treatment….and of course this runs into the thousands for only a few days worth of detox, and even more if they stay for a week or two.

So I’m just sort of wondering…what does the cost of treatment have to do with the outcomes?

My friend Keith over at drug addiction recovery would probably argue that free treatment is not going to be as beneficial as if someone pays good money for it.  This will be especially true if the person actually worked to produce the money that they are using to go to treatment with.  I believe Keith would argue this based on the fact that he is a recovery coach and receives money from clients to help them realize their goals in life.  He also sponsors people in the fellowship for free and notices a difference between when someone is paying him and when someone is not.

Now traditional 12 step meetings are free and many have found their solution in them, so I am not knocking the “free model.”  But if someone is using rehab like a revolving door then they are not likely to get much benefit out of it.

On the other hand, those who pay exhorbitant prices for luxury treatment centers are probably under the assumption that they can buy their sobriety–or their hopeless family members are under that illusion.  Unfortunately this is not the case.  Relapse rates are miserable regardless of what the treatment costs. Free drug rehab is just as uninspiring as the overpriced luxury treatment center.

The key issue here is if the cost changes the motivation of the individual.  I believe that it can if they actually paid their own way through hard work and earned wages.  But if they are riding on someone else’s dollar then there is no added incentive there to make a more sincere attempt at recovery.

It’s important to focus on the important stuff in early recovery.

Sometimes we can get so overwhelmed with all sorts of different suggestions, that it can be difficult to prioritize in early recovery.

For example, you might get clean and sober and attend an AA or NA meeting.  There, you will most likely hear a LOT of suggestions for how to stay clean and work a proper recovery.

Some of the suggestions seem like they are conflicting though.  Everyone is genuinely trying to help you, and give you some good direction, but it can become overwhelming.  At the same time, one of their suggestions is to “keep it simple,” and another suggestion is “Easy does it.”  These phrases seem contradictory in the face of a complex program with dozens of suggested actions for you to take.  You might hear things like:

“Get a sponsor and call them every day for the first 30 days.”

“Start writing in the steps.”

“Get some recovery literature and read it every day.”

“Go to 90 meetings in 90 days and don’t use in between.”

And so on.  These suggestions are just the tip of the iceberg, there are actually a lot more out there!  So how can we know exactly what we should be focusing on?  We need to find a way to prioritize.

<h3>The solution: focus on what is truly important</h3>

What you might want to do is sit down and figure out what is most important for YOU in YOUR recovery.

This will be a bit different for each person.  Then, write down the single most important thing for your recovery at the top of a sheet of paper.  When I did this exercise, I wrote down:

“Physical abstinence.”

That was the most important thing for my recovery today–to not pick up a drink or a drug.  That is number one for me.

Then, figure out what the second most important thing is for you.  For me, this happened to be “spiritual connection.”  So I try to do a few things each day to focus on this spiritual connection with my higher power, and thus cultivate that relationship.

You can keep going down the list and adding things in order of importance.  Some people might have “sponsorship” at the top of their list, whereas for me, that was down near the bottom (not so important).  It all depends on what you need to help YOU stay clean and sober.

For more information on this, you might want to check out how you should focus on your recovery.

A good question was posed as to whether or not California treatment centers offer any better odds of recovery based on the fact that they are basically luxury resorts.

One argument says that luxury treatment centers must certianly offer some advantages, simply due to the fact that you are dealing with more money, so that can offer a lot of solutions.  While money might not be able to fix anything and everything, here are some things that it can buy:

1) Longer stays at treatment

2) More one-on-one time with therapists or counselors

3) More specialized and individualized treatment

4) Wider treatment options, can accompany different modalities/philosophies

5) Better, and more comprehensive medical care at treatment centers

The question then, is this: do we really need a luxury treatment center in order to have these things?  Can we not incorporate these ideas into “traditional” treatment centers, without having costs spiral out of control?

What can we learn from luxury treatment centers?

We have all heard of the lousy relapse rates when it comes to treating addiction. But what about some of the success rates you hear about from various treatment programs or drug rehabs? Do these programs and rehabs really have the magic answer? Let’s take a look:

Keep in mind that sometimes the numbers are manipulated a bit, and a certain treatment method or a specific rehab might distort their numbers a bit. This occurs naturally as businesses want to look good and encourage more business, even if their particular method is not really all that successful at truly helping addicts and alcoholics.

How can success rates be manipulated for recovery?

One way is through the use of discounting those who relapse or fail through some line of reasoning. For example, a treatment center might do a follow up survey and ask all of the respondents if they were still clean and sober after, say, 6 months time. Many will say that they have relapsed, and the percentage of success will not look so great. So in order to improve that rate, the questionnaire might ask if they followed through explicitly with all of their aftercare recommendations (such as attending long term treatment, going to intensive outpatient groups, or attending 12 step meetings every day). If the person has not explicitly followed their drug addiction therapy (a highly likely scenario), then the survey results discounts this “relapse” from their results because the person did not technically follow through with their treatment program.

Another way that relapse rates are misrepresented is with the whole drug-of-choice argument. Say a person is addicted to crack and they go to treatment and they manage to stay off the crack when they are released and might even attend an NA meeting or two. In follow up surveys, they correctly proclaim that they have in fact abstained from their drug of choice, while in the meantime, they have started drinking heavily in order to self-medicate over the lack of their “real” drug of choice. Under such a survey system, this type of person gets counted as a success story, when in fact, they are simply switching one drug for another and are likely no better off then when they started.

A third way that relapse rates are manipulated is due to the creative use of time frame. An example of this would be to show how your treatment center might have a really high success rate at getting addicts clean and sober for at least 30 days. This seems remarkable at first, until you realize that this particular treatment center is a 28 day inpatient program in a strictly controlled environment. Basing the success rate on 6 months or years clean time would be much more useful, but obviously not as compelling when it comes to marketing purposes.

Action items – what you can do:

1) Don’t pin your hopes on a number. Success in recovery is not magic, and there are not short cuts. It takes work and dedication to achieve long term sobriety.

2) Don’t limit yourself to a single treatment philosophy. There are different methods and programs for staying clean and sober, and the choice of which one you use is far less important than what any single person will tell you. Why? Because everyone thinks that the method they used to get sober is the only true way that works. Simply not true. Which program you choose is almost irrelevant. What matters is your conviction to stay sober and your level of willingness.

How can you best choose the right drug or alcohol treatment center?

This is a common question for anyone that is thinking about going to treatment, and it’s also a big question for the family of a struggling addict or alcoholic. How can someone choose the right treatment center so that they can insure that they will stay clean and sober?

There are a few issues you will want to consider here:

What level of treatment does the addict or alcoholic need? Some people need a medically supervised detox, while others do not. This will depend a bit on what substance or substances are being used. For example, alcohol poses a serious threat when it comes to detox, so that will definitely need to be medically supervised. Opiate drugs such as heroin or Vicodin will generally need a medical detox as well. Keep in mind that not all treatment facilities have a full medical detox. Knowing what level of care you need will obviously be a key point in your research.

Is this any different from previous treatment centers? A surprising number of addicts and alcoholics go to treatment and then relapse shortly after leaving. What’s really shocking is that many of these people continue to go back to the same treatment center, clearly blaming themselves for failing to stay clean and sober. This is a tricky argument here, but I can assure you it is valid: if you keep failing with one treatment center, why not try somewhere else? Likewise, if you go to several different treatment centers for short term residential stays, why not try going to long term treatment instead? This is a concept that is thoroughly endorsed in AA as well: “insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try going back to treatment again. But it does mean that you might want to try a different drug treatment center, or even a completely different approach (for example, short term versus long term treatment).

Will this treatment center save someone that doesn’t want help? The answer to that question is no, which means that no treatment can help this particular person in their journey (yet). Unfortunately, no one can beat an addict or alcoholic into submission, and no treatment center can convince an addict to want to stay clean. Sometimes the best you can do is offer to help someone and then get out of their way.

A corollary to this idea is this:

“When someone is truly ready to get clean and sober, it doesn’t matter what treatment center you take them to.”

In other words, the success rate of the recovering alcoholic or addict is heavily dependent on their personal convictions, not on the strength of their chosen treatment program.

This can easily be confirmed to be true by interviewing a handful of successful recovering addicts and alcoholics. Simply ask them about the treatment center or method by which they got clean, and ask them which was more important: “That they were truly done using drugs and alcohol, and desperately wanted to change,” OR “That they found the perfect treatment center that somehow worked a miracle in them.”

I can guarantee that it’s personal conviction and level of surrender.