Addiction is a disease that comes with many lifestyle choices. Therefore, in order to recover effectively, you have to make a significant amount of changes in your life. In treatment, you will not only address the underlying causes of addiction, but you will also make plans post-treatment that will help you to live your life in recovery successfully. These plans are unique to your needs. With help and support from New Creation Recovery, you can learn what changes you need to make and begin to understand how it will look to live your life free from addiction after treatment.
Importance of Plans Post-Treatment
Effective treatment for addiction includes healing the root causes and addressing how your lifestyle has been supporting your substance abuse. According to research, there are many parts of your lifestyle that might be contributing to your challenges with addiction. These include:
- Chaos
- Lack of stability
- Poor social networks
- Unemployment
- Lack of physical or emotional safety
As a result of your lifestyle having such a significant impact on recovery, it is important to address what your life will look like after treatment. This means making post-treatment plans that will help you to maintain your recovery when you go home. As you will be going back to a similar environment, these plans need to incorporate how you will live your life differently than you have in the past.
How to Make Plans Post-Treatment
Making plans post-treatment can feel overwhelming. It requires that you take your unique needs into consideration, and set achievable goals for how you will live and function after treatment. Having support while you make post-treatment plans is vital. Support often looks like individual therapy, group therapy, and family involvement in your treatment and post-treatment plans.
Understanding Your Needs
The first step to making plans is to understand what the plan needs to address. In terms of addiction recovery, your post-treatment plans need to support your recovery process. However, while this overarching goal is important, you also need to break the goal down into what you specifically need.
Your knowledge of your unique needs in recovery will grow in treatment. At New Creation Recovery, you can gain insight into yourself as you work with an effective care team that helps you to know yourself better as you heal. What you need to support your recovery may include a specific type of social support, self-care habits like exercise and healthy eating, or an environment that is low-stress. As you discover what helps you, you can begin to make post-treatment plans that will help you maintain long-term recovery.
Example Plans to Be Successful Post-Treatment
Your post-treatment plans that will help you will be unique to your needs, situation, and challenges. However, seeing examples of post-treatment plans can help you think through what it looks like to plan for success in recovery. Two examples of commonly effective post-treatment plans include joining community groups and continuing your education.
Joining Community Groups
According to the journal Substance Abuse, “Spouses, family members, peers, and neighborhood factors have been shown to play key roles in both an individual’s addiction and also in his or her recovery.” Social support aids in recovery due to its impact on a person’s engagement in treatment and long-term recovery. With social support, you tend to stay involved and motivated to continue towards healing. As recovery from addiction is a long-term process, it takes continued involvement and focus to successfully maintain your recovery.
Therefore, joining a community group is often an effective strategy to plan post-treatment. As you engage in a community group, you begin to build social support into your life. These support networks give you motivation to keep yourself in recovery. However, they also provide you with care and support when you are struggling with any aspect of your recovery.
Your plan for joining a community group is unique to you. Ideally, you will find a group that you enjoy and that you feel is a good fit for you in terms of time, connection, and identity.
Furthering Education
Addiction is a disease that impacts every aspect of your life. Your brain changes due to addiction. However, your lifestyle, relationships, and self-care are all also affected. In treatment for addiction, you will learn about many pieces of addiction and how it has influenced your life. However, there is often more to learn after you leave treatment.
Furthering education, or continued education, that helps you to learn more about addiction and yourself in regards to addiction is an effective strategy when looking at a post-treatment plan. This plan may include individual therapy, group therapy, or educational experiences that interest you and help you to learn more. By staying involved in the learning process, you also help yourself to stay focused and engaged as you continue on the path of recovery.
Adjusting to life after addiction is complicated. There are many aspects of your life that you need to plan for while you are in treatment. At New Creation Recovery, we understand that these changes take time, and we provide support to our clients in order to leave treatment knowing that they have a plan that will help them to be successful in their recovery. If you are struggling with addiction and concerned about the transition from treatment into recovery, we can help. We offer treatment for addiction, co-occurring mental health challenges, and trauma that is effective for you to build a different life after treatment. Call us today at (877) 868-5730 to learn more.
