Accountability is a critical element in recovery. It helps keep you grounded, gives you a sense of routine, and sometimes it might be what keeps you going in sobriety when your motivation to stay clean is running low. Because accountability comes in so many forms, it will look different in every individual’s recovery. Here is a look a some of the many ways that you might find and build accountability in your own recovery.
Earlier this month we discussed in this blog post what the downward spiral of addiction looks like, taking you through a cycle that involved repeated negative feelings and compulsive actions. It can be easy to see addiction as a downward spiral, where there appears to be no way out; but the good news is that it’s possible to break the cycle of addiction. In fact, you might imagine breaking the cycle of addiction as a kind of “upward spiral,” where the individual actively rewires the brain and engages in positive actions as they progress in recovery.
When describing the negative effects that addiction can have on a person’s life, people frequently use the phrase “downward spiral.” But what does this phrase mean, exactly?
This topic looms large in the mind of any single former addict. You struggle to put your past behind you, but still need to be vigilant about your personal challenges, and truthful about your history.
In our last post, we briefly talked about the people in your life who have to know about your addiction recovery. Today, we talk about something a little harder to determine: the negotiables.
>After embarking on the addiction recovery process, it’s difficult to know how much you should share with the people around you. We don’t want to make the mistake of oversharing and being awkward or a burden on those around us. On the other hand, keeping secrets can strain relationships and be unfair to those around us. It can even impede recovery. So here’s a quick guide and some advice.
When a loved one returns from an addiction recovery program, we struggle to know how to interact. Strained relationships, and misunderstandings between the recovering individual and his or her loved ones can lead to isolation that severely impairs healing and regrowth.
Alcohol has, of course, been linked with many different types of cancer—particularly liver cancer. In fact, it has been classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization as a Group 1 carcinogen, meaning that there is sufficient evidence to show that alcohol can directly cause cancer in humans. But just how strong are these links from alcohol to various forms of cancer, and which forms of cancer are those with alcohol addiction most at risk of developing? Here is an in-depth look at alcohol and cancer.
Healing broken and impaired relationships is a central part of recovery from addiction, and it can require making a series of deep, heartfelt apologies to those who are closest to you. Doing your part to say that you are sorry for any pain you caused, however, is a little more nuanced than you might think. There are a variety of ways that we say that we’re sorry to one another, many of which actually do not make for an apology at all. These not-quite-apologies are commonly referred to as “non-apology apologies,” “fauxpologies,” and “nonpologies.” Here are some common ways that we say we’re sorry without actually making a sincere apology.
When we hear the phrase “prescription drug abuse,” most of us think about opiates, benzodiazepines, and amphetamines. Barbiturates, however, are another type of prescription medication that carries a high risk for abuse, and many underestimate just how dangerous dependence on or abuse of barbiturates can be.
