Having a daily routine can be very helpful during addiction treatment and recovery. Making goals, writing up to-do lists, and focusing on your health are some examples of things that you can do to get productive and lead a happy sober life. However, creating a daily routine right out of rehab can feel intimidating. If you need some extra help, reaching out to your support system, therapist, or other professionals can do wonders with making sure that you keep yourself busy and stay on track. Here are some things to keep in mind when developing a healthy daily routine in recovery.
Remember to Focus on Your Health
One of the main points of undertaking an alcohol or drug detox is that it improves your health, so this is an excellent time to work on other areas of your well-being as well. There are tons of benefits to exercising, eating a balanced diet, sleeping well, and staying hydrated. The main positive change that you will see is that creating a healthy lifestyle reduces the intensity of withdrawal symptoms. “Drug withdrawal can be very difficult and some symptoms may even linger for months,” says Mat Gorman, CEO of Briarwood Detox Center. Everyone has a different experience with withdrawals, and various exercises and foods improve different symptoms. Therefore, doing your own research about these things will give you a better-individualized result. The second main benefit is that reserving time in your daily routine for exercising, cooking healthy meals, and getting enough sleep will keep you busy and help distract you from addiction cravings and triggers.
Set Goals for Yourself
Setting goals for yourself helps increase motivation and self-esteem, which is important for recovering addicts. When you have reasonable goals set, you can clearly see progress and recognize how far you have come. Working towards accomplishments also helps inspire you to incorporate activities such as exercising, hobbies, and even volunteering or working when you are ready into your daily routine. Achieving these goals tends to drive people into becoming more productive and happy overall. It can also be nice to focus on things other than addiction treatment and recovery for a little while.
Try To Stay Social
Reaching out to close friends and family can do wonders for improving mental health. Talking about your thoughts and feelings about addiction recovery, or even your everyday life reduces your chances of relapse and usually improves your overall mental state as well. Similarly, you can see benefits from attending things like support group meetings, classes, and social activities with your friends and family. Going to these kinds of activities can distract you from addiction cravings and triggers, and they can also help you to make some new friends as well. In addition, scheduling these outings can give you something to build your daily and weekly routines around while also giving you things to look forward to.
Try to be Productive
Being productive during the day can greatly increase self-esteem by making you feel like you are doing something worthwhile. Like with most other aspects of addiction recovery, starting out small with this will make your lifestyle more sustainable. Focussing on your health, personal hygiene, and the cleanliness of your home are great ways to start. When you feel ready for it though, volunteering or going back into the workforce are motivating ways to spend your time. Getting out of the house every day can be a great bonus to this as well.
Remember to Have Fun
It is very important that through all of this you remember to focus on the parts of your life that you enjoy. Addiction treatment and recovery can be a very difficult process, especially enduring an alcohol or drug detox. However, this can be a great time to focus on things that you have always wanted to try or pick up again. Focusing on the positives also tends to make addiction treatment more successful and reduces the probability of a relapse. Feeling excited about sober life can make this difficult process go more smoothly and seem less daunting. It can help with improving mental health as well.
Conclusion
The transition from a life of alcohol or drug abuse to sober living in Austin is not an easy process, but creating a healthy daily routine can help you get through addiction treatment and recovery safely. Focusing on your health and hygiene daily is an excellent first step to creating this routine. However, it is important to focus on activities that you enjoy, create achievable goals for yourself, and remember to stay social as well when you feel up to it. Forming your daily routine around these things will keep you both healthy and excited to get going every day. As your recovery progresses, you can also spend your time productively by volunteering or going back to work. The most important thing to remember though is to take your time and try to make the most of a difficult circumstance.
A professional writer with over a decade of incessant writing skills. Her topics of interest and expertise range from health, nutrition and psychology.