What Life Skills Are Needed to Maintain a Sober Life?
As anyone who has been through rehab knows, achieving a sober life is far more than just getting the drugs out of your body and accumulating what some people call “clean time,” or time spent sober. When you are living in some kind of supportive community like a residential rehab or a sober home of one kind or another, there is continuous support for your sobriety. While there are challenges anywhere, it’s when you are out on your own and dealing with life that it’s vital to have the right life skills to maintain your sobriety. The right skills may mean the difference between a fast return to rehab or a long and successfully sober life.
Here are the skills that are the most vital to develop to prevent relapse.
1. Communication and confront
If you can’t face another person, you won’t be able to deal with challenges or upsets. So your boss or spouse is upset with you – how do you handle it? Can you stay stable even if they are angry? Can you continue communicating rationally even if you are in the wrong? An effective rehab should build a person’s competence in confronting and communicating.
2. Choosing associates and friends
Many families say that their loved one began using drugs when they “fell in with the wrong crowd.” There’s truth to this statement. Staying sober requires knowing who will support your sobriety and who secretly wants to derail it. This ability should be learned by each recovering person.
3. Finding relief from guilt
Every addicted person carries a burden of guilt for the harm they have done, even if it’s just wasting money and harming themselves. In most cases, others have been harmed through neglect, theft and even abuse. The addicted person relinquished his own integrity as he began to harm himself and others. He needs to learn how to recover it and, in the process, he can relieve his own guilt.
4. Solving problems
A relapse can start with a challenge a person doesn’t know how to deal with. A relationship breakup, a setback in business – any serious disappointment can destabilize a person to the point that drug use looks like a good way to end the pain. If a person knows how to proceed to repair problems in life, it is easier to avoid relapse.
Narconon offers a drug rehabilitation program with 50 years of experience building life skills into those recovering from addiction. In a program with no set time limits, an individual has the opportunity to learn these skills and put them to use repairing his own life. Once he’s back home, these skills help him navigate life’s challenges so he can maintain his sobriety.
Call Narconon Ojai today to learn how someone you care about can recover a fresh new perspective on life and learn the skills she will need for lasting sobriety. Call 1-877-936-7435 for a confidential interview today.
