Content
- What Does It Take for Most People to Achieve Long-Term Recovery from Substance Abuse?
- Theme 1 – the transitions that put them onto the journey of sustained recovery
- Prevention & Resources
- How many people abuse drugs every year?
- Surgeon General’s Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health
- Long-Term Sobriety
As with any other chronic illness, the more informed you are the better you will be able to support them. Drugs and alcohol can rewire the brain, disrupting function and leading to dependency. It results in a distorted value system that shifts toward supporting ongoing substance use. Implement recovery-oriented principles and practices in real-world practice settings with diverse groups of people diagnosed with behavioral health conditions. Mental health and wellness tips, our latest guides, resources, and more. When this happens, it can be useful to stay with the urge until it passes.
Dependability refers to the ability of the study to be replicated in a consistent manner with the same participants in the same context [17, 26, 27]. Strategies to ensure dependability include providing a dense description of the research methods used; triangulation of data sources and investigators and peer examination and consultation [17, 26, 27]. Family members often have their own emotional problems that come from coping with their loved one’s addiction. They can often benefit from attending their own support group, sharing their stories and experiences with other families. Nar-Anon, an offshoot of Narcotics Anonymous, is the most well-known.
What Does It Take for Most People to Achieve Long-Term Recovery from Substance Abuse?
“They fought to only keep me in [rehab] for 14 days; they didn’t want to pay for 30, and I knew that wasn’t enough for me,” Rasco recalled. “They didn’t want to put me in a halfway house. I knew I needed a half-way house.” Similarly, the roughly 95,000 deaths each year in the U.S. attributed to alcohol represent a fraction of high-risk drinkers. Less visible are the people who survive the illness and rebuild their lives. It is also important to recognize that there is no shame in asking for help. If a person refuses to ask for help when they need it, they are more likely to relapse.
Assists employers and union representatives with policy development, drug testing, employee assistance, employee education, supervisor training, and program implementation. Travis Rasco in Upstate New York says he’s grateful he got enough time, enough sober house chances and enough help to rebuild his life. Eddie said their research suggests more needs to be done to keep people alive while the healing process works. Meanwhile those with more financial resources or milder forms of addiction often heal faster.
Theme 1 – the transitions that put them onto the journey of sustained recovery
Additionally, not everyone who struggles with addiction feels they need to or want to enter treatment. Throughout recovery, be sure to keep these points in mind for yourself or your loved one. They can help remind the person of what’s important in their recovery journey so they can rise above the stigma. Even after you’ve completed initial treatment, ongoing treatment and support can help prevent a relapse. Follow-up care can include periodic appointments with your counselor, continuing in a self-help program or attending a regular group session. Many, though not all, self-help support groups use the 12-step model first developed by Alcoholics Anonymous.
For example, your drug dependency may have developed from a desire to manage pain or to cope with stress, in which case you’ll need to find a healthier way to relieve pain or to handle stressful situations. There are many ways to describe an addiction, but no single definition captures each individual’s experience with this disease. The reality is that addiction recovery is a unique journey for each person. However, in spite of all the differences, there are certain obstacles that most people in recovery can relate to. Stress is a major stimulus for drug craving, according to people with opioid addiction. Not surprisingly, life stress is one of the main reasons people give for relapsing into prescription drug misuse.
Prevention & Resources
This is especially true during the detox stage, when they are attempting to rid their system of the substances they have depended on for so long. The symptoms of withdrawal—which include sleeplessness, mood swings and digestive problems, among others—can be very challenging to manage without the aid of substances. The present study examined the personal journeys of 15 South African adults who have managed to sustain recovery from SUDs. Although previous research has investigated and reported on sustained recovery [9, 10, 14] and the recovery capital required to sustain recovery no existing data was found within the South African context.
