Sobriety Strategies: 13 Tips for Staying Sober

The hope is that you will be ready to resume daily life after treatment, manage stressors and triggers, and stay sober for the long term. The reality is that many situations can make it hard to reintegrate into normal life without some hiccups and potential for relapse. Aftercare programs make it easier to remain in recovery and avoid returning to substance use. If you don’t have a family or strong social circle to return stages of getting sober to post formal treatment, a personalized plan may include interpersonal therapy, which can help you build a healthy social network. This research-based technique has been shown to support sobriety. One study from Substance Abuse showed that women struggling with alcohol misuse and depression, who participated in interpersonal therapy, were able to give up alcohol and maintain sobriety longer than those who didn’t.

• Most people recovering from addiction will cycle through the stages of change three or four times before completing the cycle without a slip.
• Research shows that if you maintain these types of toxic relationships, your chances of relapsing are greater.
• Financial troubles and problems finding and keeping employment are major triggers for relapse, but it is possible to take baby steps and get your finances in order.
• You can begin working toward emotional wholeness and sobriety today.
• It is a state of maturity characterized by an ability to regulate your emotions in a positive way.
• Males who have 15 or more drinks per week and females who have 8 or more drinks per week are considered heavy drinkers.

However, most people can expect to experience at least some of the following factors. It’s important to understand that recovery and sobriety is not an easy process. It takes time to address alcohol abuse and possible underlying factors that can cause continued abuse or relapse. If you see yourself in these descriptions, fret not; healing and exciting new ways of living are well within your reach.

Get the Help You Need Today From Promises Behavioral Health

Once you understand that you have a problem and need help, knowing what next steps to take can be confusing. After a client has transitioned from inpatient care with a treatment team responsible for the daily schedule, it may seem a little overwhelming to plan one’s own day. Some people may need to attend 12-step meetings three times a day in the first few weeks to get through this difficult transition period. Try to identify the people, places, and situations that encourage you to drink.

• If you or someone you know shows signs of delirium tremens, go to the emergency room immediately.
• “I am starting to feel more human. The exhaustion has gone away, and my concentration seems better.”
• Emotional sobriety means letting go of immature ways of dealing with life, such as numbing out with alcohol or drugs, and other behaviors like pouting, screaming or shutting down.
• Staying sober may require several strategies and supports, including seeking professional and peer support.
• Turning to junk food, for example, may create new problems further down the line.

Setting goals for your recovery will help you maintain your motivation. Often it can be helpful to personally identify some of your underlying values. Knowing what you value in life will help you set goals that are relevant and important to you.

Focus On Your Mental Health

Prolonged abstinence along with healthy eating and exercise during this stage can also allow people to begin recovery from liver damage. At this stage, defense mechanisms are in high gear, and people are reluctant to even acknowledge they have a problem. They may try to avoid the topic of their drinking or minimize the negative impacts of their alcohol use.

If you or a loved one are considering sobriety, you may wonder what it looks like and how to get there. Sobriety can be a particularly challenging pursuit for someone with an addiction like alcohol use disorder. Our recovery programs are based on decades of research to deliver treatment that really works. Doing a cost-benefit analysis to weigh the benefits of alcohol use against the cons and costs can sometimes help a person find clarity at this stage. By the time people reach the contemplation stage, they’ve begun to recognize they have a drinking problem and may want to get help, but they’re often on the fence about it. Engaging in subtle and sympathetic conversations and getting alcoholics to explore the pros and cons of their own behavior, for example, can help to lay the groundwork for the second stage of recovery.

Find A Support Network

If you are trying to maintain a sober lifestyle, those feelings can become toxic and contribute to relapse if you don’t deal with them properly. I think of the first couple of weeks of my sobriety as the “acute withdrawal” stage. Unfortunately, the severity of my habit created a severe physical dependence on alcohol. When I broke this dependence, I experienced a host of physical reactions.

Motivation to recover is strongly correlated with ongoing sobriety, so it is critical to your long-term success that you think about what is motivating you to want to make this life change. It can be helpful to write a list of all the reasons why you want to get clean and sober, as well as all of the things you have lost due to addiction. Deciding to overcome an addiction to alcohol or drugs could be the most important decision of your life.