Are You Ready for Recovery |
| There are certain questions in life that no one else can but you. To find the answer, you must search within yourself and decide for yourself. “Am I ready for recovery?” is one of the questions that are for you alone to decide. However, recovery starts with the desire to change. Even if it's a small step forward, it's still a change. If you're tired of the way you have been living, tired of the direction your life is headed, and believe you're ready for even a small step, a small change such as harm reduction, then you just might be ready for recovery. Stages of Change: Originally developed by psychologist James Prochaska with further development by psychologists Carlo DiClemente, John Norcross, and many others, this well-established, research-based approach has been used successfully for decades in helping people change a wide variety of behaviors including smoking cessation, weight loss, stopping alcohol and drugs, managing anxiety and depression, and many more. |
What are the stages of change? The stages of change identify a person’s readiness to make behavioral changes in their life. The stages range from denial to acceptance. Going back to the behavior, or relapse, may occur. A person may cycle through the stages of change more than once on their journey, too. Determining the stage you're in helps you to create a plan.
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Is today going to be the day? The day you decide “Enough is Enough”…that you deserve better than this? ou are always just one decision, one action, one choice away from a completely different life. It could be positive; it could be negative. The choice is yours. Recovery isn’t about people who have more willpower than others…it’s about people who are ready to change when others are not. Are you ready to change? The only thing holding us back from the life we say we want is the excuses we tell ourselves, the excuses we tell the people we love. The truth is, if you don’t move forward out of addiction, you will be stuck in the worst day of your life…forever! You can’t wait for your life to get better before you start on your road to recovery, because life will always be complicated, life will always be messy, life will always hard. That’s the nature of life! And addiction only complicates it more, makes even messier, and makes it soooo much harder. It might feel like addiction is your friend because, if only for a moment, it makes you feels better, it makes you feel stronger, and it temporarily numbs your pain. But make no mistake, addiction is not your friend, addiction is your enemy. Addiction steals your life away, one day at a time, one relationship at a time, one dollar at a time, one job at a time. Until one day, you are no longer the person you use to be. That person has been possessed and replace by the monster of addiction. Your life has become something you never thought it would be, lived by a person you swore you would never be. Drugs don’t care about you. Alcohol doesn’t care about you. They don’t love you. The people selling you drugs don’t love you. The people you hang with to do your drugs don’t love you. The people who keep begging you to quit, in spite of how horrible you’ve been to them, the people who keep pushing you, even though they know you’re going to say the meanest things, yell, scream, throw things, and even disappear for days, weeks, even months, they are the ones who love you, the ones who truly care. If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t fight for your sobriety. Even though you’ve told yourself they don’t care, they don’t love you, because if they did, they wouldn’t turn you away. But it’s not you they don’t love, it’s the addiction monster they won’t tolerate. They’re still waiting for you to show up…but instead, it’s the addiction monster that keeps knocking on their door. And the addiction monster is not welcome. You have given them a million reasons to give up on you. And even though you’ve made it extremely difficult on them, they still care. Just for a moment, stand in their shoes. I want you to think of one person you love more than anything in this world. Now imagine a very busy freeway. Cars, trucks, semis, are zipping past, going both ways. Now image, this person you love more than anything is standing in the middle of the road. You keep trying to hold back traffic so this person you love can make it across the freeway without getting hit. And every now and then, you are able to stop traffic long enough for them to make it to safety. Yet, for some unexplainable reason, they keep running back to the middle. It doesn’t matter how much you want them safe with you. They have found their comfort zone in the middle of the freeway. And you know, it’s just matter of time before someone crosses the center line and takes your loved one out. You can’t help them to safety because, not only do they refuse your help, they yell at you and say all sorts of nasty thing because you offered. And every time you watch in horror as a car gets too close, your heart constricts, you cant breathe, and another piece of you dies just waiting for the inevitable. That knock on your door, that phone call that will change your life forever. Pretty soon, it becomes unbearable to watch. So, you close your eyes and turn away before the fear completely consumes you. You still love that person; you can just no longer bear to watch. Maybe you think your family and friends are better off without you, that you’ve caused too much pain, or done too many unforgiveable things…maybe you think you’re not worth saving. But the ones who love you will go down swinging for you…but that mean that you have to fight, too! You have to Stand Up for your own recovery first. You can work to keep your addiction…or you can work toward recovery…it’s the same amount of work! Addiction is about dying…Recovery is about living. Our Recovery Challenge programs are delivered one day at a time, one easy challenge at a time. Detox gently and slowly with our guided tapering system. Then start building a foundation for continuing recovery. With knowledge comes understanding. With understanding comes enlightenment. With enlightenment comes the strength you need to take each step and repair all the damaged areas in your life. |
We're Standing Up for Recovery Because We Care! |