Aftercare In Riverside County

In sober living, establishing a routine is crucial to recovery.  Those in recovery often find they have had to cut ties with friends or family who are addicts or enablers of their addiction.  When all of your friends are at the bar or drug dealers, sobriety can be a lonely experience.  Sober living facilities provide the social framework of a sober lifestyle with other like minded people.

Accountability is important in building a continuation of sobriety.  Outpatient programs offer regular testing, checking into a facility 3-5 days per week, a few hours each day, and also provide group or individual therapy on a regular (if not daily) basis. Addiction is often trauma-related and continual treatment after rehab is important in working through those issues.

Individual and group therapy is something recovering addicts can benefit a lot from over the long term.  Getting to the root of the source of addiction is important, as well as the validation therapy provides to battle an illness such as addiction.  A good therapist will work with someone in recovery to establish good coping skills and tools to add to their recovery toolbox. 

Some of the triggers of substance abuse are psychological in nature.  Stress, coping strategies, cravings, and numbing oneself to pain are often pathways back to using.  Therapy gives other alternatives to reacting to these triggers.

Those struggling with addiction are not alone.  Addiction is a disease that affects millions, and meetings establish support networks and a sense of fellowship when it comes to moving forward through recovery.  12 Step Programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous are very widely known and work for a lot of recovering addicts, but there are other programs as well which might suit one’s needs differently and more effectively.

Some of the triggers of substance abuse are psychological in nature.  Stress, coping strategies, cravings, and numbing oneself to pain are often pathways back to using.  Therapy gives other alternatives to reacting to these triggers.

Sponsorship and Mentorship helps recovering addicts outside of a meeting or a facility.  With this dynamic, a mentor can show empathy to someone who is going through the process of recovery, knowing what is happening because they have been there themselves.  By establishing a mentor/sponsor relationship, many recovering users find strength in numbers and lose the feeling of isolation that can cause relapses.

Some of the triggers of substance abuse are psychological in nature.  Stress, coping strategies, cravings, and numbing oneself to pain are often pathways back to using.  Therapy gives other alternatives to reacting to these triggers.

 Sobriety is a big lifestyle change from addiction, and without the routine of something like drinking or drug use, many people in recovery need something to fill that void.  The chaos of substance use was often exciting, and sobriety might be a boring departure from that other life.  Sometimes a trigger for relapse is simply “this is what I used to do after work”. Aftercare provides ways to rechannel those routines into a new life.

At some point, the student of this new life can become a teacher, and like a mentor/sponsorship method, those who have successfully gone through aftercare can give back to others who are just beginning their journey.