Whether you’re newly sober or well into your recovery, volunteering in the community is an essential part of your recovery process. Those who are of service to others have a far greater chance at long-term sobriety.

Getting Involved

Organizations like AA and NA have their own volunteer opportunities, but almost any national non-profit organization or charity offers opportunities for people to give back in some form or fashion.

Stress is a human reaction to many events or environments. Acute stress can appear and disappear quickly, without lingering effects. Chronic stress, however, can take a toll on a person. Living with chronic stress can damage the mind and body. It could also fuel an addiction, unless you have go-to methods for quickly calm down when stressed.

Use A Deep Breathing Technique
Breathing techniques are a foundation for combating stress or anxiety. Breathing is something we can control, making it useful for relaxing and clearing the mind.

Have you ever felt like you understood and shared another person’s experiences and emotions? The ability to share someone else’s feelings is called empathy. And if you’ve never known substance abuse, you may take this ability for granted.

Those struggling with addiction often lack the capacity to tune into the emotions and behaviors of others. Along with so many other important pieces of their lives, the addiction seizes their empathy.

Social media is everywhere these days, and despite its ubiquitous use, these platforms can have some detrimental effects – especially for anyone trying to maintain their sobriety.

Social Media and Your Recovery

Here’s how social media use might be negatively affecting your recovery:

Resilience can be developed. Many people have learned that firsthand this year, as they’ve had to build more resilience than they ever expected to need.

In the year or two before the pandemic, a new word started popping up in my writing about addiction, mental health and wellness: resilience. All of a sudden, the word seemed to be everywhere, from my reporting on childhood traumas to my discussions about what can help people succeed in recovery.

As the late, great Jim Morrison crooned, strange days have found us.  As millions adjust to social life filtered almost exclusively through the cold, unforgiving pixilation of digital screens, the need for genuine connection is more intense than ever.  Below are five ways of coping with isolation that do not involve more screens and may be helpful amidst these strange days that have tracked us down.

When people ask how to get a drug addict into treatment, typically they are really asking one of two questions. The first is: “What is the process for getting someone into drug addiction treatment?” The second (and the hardest one to answer) is: “How do I get someone addicted to drugs to want to go to and stick with treatment?”

Since it is relatively easy to answer, let’s tackle the first question now.

I was on Facebook the other day and I realized something – certain people on my friend list had mysteriously gone MIA. Now, granted, my Facebook is a little different than most, as I have many friends from my time in prison. But my missing friends all had one common denominator: a higher-than-normal level of anger.

While behind bars, these friends were always involved in altercations and violent outbursts. I looked into their whereabouts and sure enough, there was a reason I hadn’t heard from them: They had all relapsed, were back in prison or both.

I entered into recovery feeling completely broken – like I was shattered into a million little pieces. But recovery taught me I didn’t need to fix myself. In fact, I learned how to weave those pieces into a beautiful mosaic and love every inch of it.

The lessons in recovery are endless and sometimes they come all at once. There are times when I struggle to catch my breath. I feel like I can’t cope…yet, I do. Over the course of the last five years, I’ve grown up, developed my identity, accepted who I am, learned how to integrate in this world, and gained new coping strategies.