6 Tips To Help You On Your Road To Recovery From Alcohol Abuse

Life rarely goes as planned, and we often find ourselves struggling on more than one front, from your personal relationships to your career. Some can’t cope with the struggles so they numb the pain with whatever they could get their hands on. Things unfortunately don’t get better when the pain is numbed, and life often takes a turn for the worst for those who decide on that path. Yet, there is a way back. If you are struggling with alcohol addiction, you can find your way back to sobriety if you just believe in yourself. 

These are 6 tips to help you on the road to recovery from alcohol abuse. 

1. Establish a Support Network

One of the most important things that you need to do to recover from alcohol abuse is to establish a support network of your friends and family. Your relationship with them might be damaged on account of your addiction, but you still need them in your life to help you stay on track. Having such a network of your loved ones means you won’t easily regress, and you will always have a safety net to fall back into if anything goes wrong. Those people will know your struggle and will go out of their way to help you avoid any triggers or situations that can make you fall off the wagon. 

2. Understand Your Triggers

Picking up from the last point, you must identify your triggers so you could prevent any relapse. Triggers will vary from one person to the other, and only you could know what triggers your alcohol abuse. For some people, it is external conditions like people or job problems. For others, it is stress and emotional feeling of loneliness and distress. When you identify such triggers, whether they are emotional or external factors, you can come up with a plan to avoid those triggers and actively work on stopping them from taking hold of your actions and patterns. 

3. Take It Slow

A lot of people despair early in their journey to recovery from alcohol abuse, but you cannot afford to do so. It is okay if you find yourself missing drinking or yearning for alcohol, and if you fall off the wagon once, you need to pick yourself up and try again. As you can see in the article from iRecover, the most important thing is to never stop; it doesn’t matter how slowly you take things, as Confucius said before. Don’t beat yourself up if you encounter a roadblock along the journey, because you most likely will. As long as your will is strong, you can keep going no matter how many times you fall or how slowly you think you’re progressing. You will get there eventually.

4. Avoid Risks 

Triggers aside, you need to avoid any possibly risky situations where you might get an urge to drink alcohol. If you had a friend who was a heavy drinker and you always indulged in alcohol with them, then stay away from them for a while. If you were a regular party-goer, avoid going to parties for a while and look for smaller house gatherings with fewer people and less noise, where you wouldn’t feel as obligated to drink. This is the kind of lifestyle change that you need to make in order to stay sober and complete your recovery. 

5. Forgive Yourself 

The most dangerous thing a person recovering from addiction could do is be hard on themselves. Alcohol abuse means you might have hurt people you cared about in your life, and also hurt yourself in the process or destroyed a career opportunity you wanted. You need to learn how to forgive yourself and accept that the past is the past. Make amends with the people you’ve hurt and learn to not let your past affect your future. Only when you forgive yourself can you move forward to a brighter future. 

6. Change Your Routine

There’s nothing like changing your routine and lifestyle to help you recover from alcohol abuse. When you have a hectic, chaotic schedule, it can be easy to relapse. This is why you need to organize your life and practice healthy living whenever possible. Exercise regularly whenever you have the chance, make time for your loved ones, and always get enough rest and make time for yourself and your leisure. 

Recovering from alcohol abuse is not an easy journey, but it is quite a doable one. You can go back from that darkness and into the light if you believe you can and put in the effort to get there. Surround yourself with people who love you and care about you. Most of all, don’t let your past dictate your future. There is always a chance to get back on your feet; all you have to do is believe and start the recovery journey.