Part of addiction treatment is learning the skills needed to navigate as a sober person. There are various phases of recovery. Each is important and can’t be skipped over. Addiction specialists and therapists work with you to develop an early recovery addiction plan as you begin recovery. A component of that will be focused on learning and practicing various aptitudes in an early recovery life skills group.
At Mile High Recovery Center, we give full attention to each rehab phase and support you long-term in our aftercare program to ensure that your sobriety skills are secure. To learn more about our early recovery addiction treatment and what comes next, reach out to us by calling 303-268-2144 or completing our easy online form.
Early Recovery Plan for Addiction
In early recovery, the skills to focus on are all about managing day-to-day in early sobriety. The life skills that you will focus on later in your recovery journey can be long-term-goal oriented. For now, with or without the support of a life skills group, your early recovery addiction plan will likely include skills such as the following:
Keeping a Schedule
Thoughtfully managed time is an excellent strategy to resist the dangers that boredom and inactivity pose to sobriety. Your schedule will provide structure. There was little to no structure to your days when you were using, aside from the time you spent thinking about, accessing, using, and recovering from drugs or alcohol. Even if you have never been an organized person, it is important to become one now. It helps to plan out your entire day, write down the schedule, and stick to it. Most people can schedule a 24-hour day and carry through on that schedule with practice.
Identifying Relapse Triggers
A trigger can be a person, a location, an activity, a time of day, even an object that sparks cravings. If you consistently met your coworker in the parking garage during your breaks to use drugs, the garage, the coworker, and your breaks could all be triggers that your brain subliminally connects to drug use. To stop the cravings—which is a significant goal of addiction treatment—you need to recognize your triggers, avoid them, and replace them with other activities, places, and people.
Decluttering
In early recovery, simplifying your environment by removing clutter and keeping things ordered and clean has a positive effect on your mental state. Often our inner state reflects what surrounds us, and vice versa. Proactively removing chaos from your surroundings makes it much easier for your mind to rid itself of turmoil and the stress that it induces. This skill also extends to keeping up with the tasks of daily life, such as the dishes, laundry, grocery shopping. We recommend putting these tasks into your schedule.
Setting Achievable Goals
Setting achievable goals is a sensible rule for anyone, and a vital skill in early recovery. The initial hours, days, weeks of your sobriety will likely be challenging. In addition to having the support of therapists, having evidence that your efforts are working is critical. Setting small goals and meeting them provides validation that you can do this. At first, a goal might be to make it through an hour without calling someone who threatens your sobriety.
You can break the day into 24 individual hour-long goals. Eventually, you might have the goal of never calling that person again, but that is too big a goal for early recovery. Another goal might be to find your old résumé on your computer. The next day your goal could be to work on updating the resume. The next day might be to look online for 20 minutes at job postings and then another 20 minutes the following day. These are achievable small goals that will eventually make the bigger goal—obtaining a job—attainable. Your success at meeting these expectations will also encourage you in your ongoing recovery.
These components of your addiction recovery plan can be learned in rehab and practiced both while you are in treatment and beyond.
Mile High Recovery Center and Your Addiction Recovery Plan
If you decide to enter treatment for your addiction at Mile High Recovery Center, our staff will work with you on your recovery plan, focusing on a coordinated approach to your treatment. It will involve evidence-based therapies, support groups such as a 12-step program, and opportunities to learn and practice your new sobriety skills.
To learn more, talk to one of our staff by calling us at 303-268-2144 or filling out our online form and letting someone get back to you in short order.
