6 Facts to Understand About Sober Living

When you ditch drugs and alcohol, you’re doing your mind and body a world of good. However, this is as much the start of a new chapter as it is the end of an old one. Sober living is not a matter of just saying you’re done with vices and not having to do anything else. These are six facts to understand about sober living.

1. You can’t do it alone

As much as you might put pride in your resilience, sobriety cannot be achieved all by yourself. There’s no shame in accepting help from others. Professionals in drug treatment dedicate their lives to understanding the nature of addiction and how best to address it.

2. You need to focus on starting positive habits

Just kicking negative habits to the curb isn’t the secret to sober living. Instead, you need to replace them with positive ones that keep your mind occupied and giving you a sense of accomplishment.

3. You’ll need to change in multiple ways

Sobriety can be difficult to maintain if everything else about your life is more or less the same. If you spend most of your time lying around in front of the television, you need to quit that as well. Counseling can help you to understand and undo negative thought patterns.

4. Relapses are possible

We don’t mean to sound pessimistic when we tell you that relapses are common among those overcoming an addiction. There are multiple causes, from difficult changes in life to believing it would be okay to have “a little bit”. But what should be focused on is not how the relapse happened but what can be done moving forward.

5. You have to be committed

You can only achieve something to the extent that you want it. Someone who is indifferent about their sobriety is going to have trouble making it possible. It’s not going to be a breeze, but it will be far more satisfying to know that you’re putting your mind in the right place and are being serious about getting clean.

6. Some days will be harder than others

There will be days when you feel on top of the world and that you’ve conquered your addiction for good. There will also be days when you feel like the world is against you and that there’s nothing you can do. The bad days are undoubtedly rough, but they shouldn’t be seen as determining your future. As long as you can keep hope alive, you can find your way through sober living.

Sober living might end up feeling like the first genuine living you’ve had in quite some time. With your brain no longer numbed by drugs and alcohol, you can regain clarity and feel things as you haven’t been able to in quite some time. But in order to reach that point, you must commit to the requirements of sober living.