Getting Sober

The desire to become sober and the willingness to stop using all mind altering substances are the most important.

The first essential steps on the road to recovery is deciding that you want a better life. If you haven't yet made a commitment to sobriety, we really can't help. Once you have made that commitment, you'll need to examine the various pathways to sobriety. Experience has shown that after withdrawal, recovery falls into three phases, each lasting approximately a year or more.

Phase One: Saving Your Life

In this stage, which starts with a rude awakening more often than a spiritual one, your chief concern is survival. You may seem self-centered to family and friends, focusing all your energies on yourself and your recovery (just as you focused them on your drug or alcohol addiction). But that's the way early recovery is. A mutual support group like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) can help you move into sobriety successfully, You can learn to get the most out of such a group, and how to deal with your family and friends, and job during this time. Your body will probably complain bitterly, with new symptoms related to recovery and old ones you never noticed when your brain was anesthetized. Your head will probably be shrouded in fog, and your emotions will flip-flop frequently. You'll need to learn how to cope with body, mind, and moods without chemical support. We will help get you through this often difficult, sometimes painful, but ultimately rewarding adjustment period.

Phase Two: Enjoying Your Life

With the craving for alcohol or drugs diminishing and your recovery on track, you can switch gears from saving your life to making it more fulfilling. Work at rebuilding old relationships and beginning new ones; look for new educational opportunities and job challenges; and explore hobbies and leisure activities. With a smog-free head, more stable emotions, you can begin to have fun.

Phase Three: Extending Your Life

Somewhere in the third or fourth year of sobriety (a little earlier for some, a little later for others), the focus switches again. Once you've saved your life and learned to enjoy it, it's time to consider how you can best extend it. We'll explain how to do this with the help of a sensible diet, a realistic exercise program, and other preventive health measures. This phase is also the time to continue to reach out to help others.

SouthCoast Recovery is a drug treatment center in California that helps a person work through all three phases of recovery. Our facility has been helping people for 13 years work the phases of recovery.