Our recovery journey brings with it huge transformation and an inner peace we may never have felt before. We heal deeply rooted fears and emotional patterns that caused us severe pain. We create new, healthy patterns and habits that serve us so much better as we move forward. We gain a newfound sense of self, a new set of coping skills, and valuable knowledge we can use to help ourselves and others. With everything we stand to gain, and with everything we improve upon within ourselves, we also have to make some sacrifices along the way. What do we sacrifice in our recovery?
Perhaps the first thing we think of, when it comes to the sacrifices we have to make, are our drugs of choice. We have to give up the substances and behaviors we’ve become dependent upon and attached to. We have to learn how to cope without them, how to live our lives without numbing ourselves, self-medicating and attempting to escape our pain. We have to figure out what it means to live life without distraction, without avoidance and denial. As happy as we are to be healing and getting better, this can feel like a huge loss. As damaging and destructive as our drugs of choice are, we feel so attached to them that we can feel empty and incomplete without them. They’ve been a major part of our lives for as long as we can remember. We can feel sad and alone without them. We find ourselves not knowing how to cope without them. We can struggle to find meaning in life, because for so long our energy was so fully committed to our addictions.
Along with our drugs of choice, we also have to sacrifice the lifestyles and habits that went along with them, that supported and maintained them. This might include our routines of drinking with friends. It might mean having to forego the events we used to attend, that we looked forward to. We might have to separate ourselves from the friends with whom we engaged in our addictive behaviors, who enabled our patterns and contributed to our self-destructiveness. If they themselves aren’t ready to recover, we may need to remove them from our lives altogether. This can feel like an overwhelming and painful sacrifice that we have to mourn the loss of.
The Guest House focuses on guiding you as you discover the underlying causes of your addictive attachments and behaviors, and the outcome of this mission is to reduce and reverse any harm that your self-defeating habits have caused. Call 855-483-7800 today for more information.