As you know by now, recovery is a journey that addresses many different parts of yourself. After all, addiction is never just about the substances being used. In order to achieve lasting sobriety and recovery, you had to continuously address aspects of yourself that help you grow. Doing so helped you implement new, healthy habits for yourself in your daily life.
In order to ensure that you maintain your sobriety and personal growth after leaving treatment, you must continue therapy in some way or another. Doing so can prove to be vital for your overall health and well-being. The stresses of life do not go away after completing treatment. Although you have been given invaluable tools and skills during treatment, continued care can help you navigate unforeseen challenges outside of treatment.
The Benefits of Being A Part of Alumni Programs
Being a part of an alumni program can help you significantly after treatment. More specifically, they can help keep you grounded in your commitment to your recovery even while enduring the challenges of the outside world. They can do this by providing you with continuous support from your peers, helping you manage daily triggers in your everyday life, and allowing you to give back to others in the recovery community.
Source of Support
When you leave treatment, you may realize how lonely life can be navigating recovery. Not everyone around you has made the same changes and commitments to sobriety as you. Unfortunately, old friends and family members may no longer be reliable sources of support for you as they had previously been. This is because you have gone through so many changes that they may not be completely able to understand. Or perhaps your relationships were strained during active addiction. While this is not inherently a bad thing, it does mean that you are at risk of relapsing if you do not have people around you who understand your struggles and are able to support you.
Alumni programs offer the support and understanding you need in order to continue committing to your recovery. Even after leaving treatment, this process cannot be accomplished alone. Those who share in your struggles can be excellent sources of support by encouraging you to stay sober, empathizing with you, and offering their own experiences as well. Those conducting alumni groups can also offer continued advice, skill-building tools, and exercises to help support you along the way.
Helps You Manage Triggers
While life outside of treatment allows for plenty of newfound freedom, it also can expose you to new triggers. Before leaving treatment, you probably planned for expected triggers and how to avoid or be able to live with them in a healthy, functional way. No matter how much planning you do, however, you will probably encounter triggers that you did not plan for.
For example, perhaps you meet someone who you begin to start dating romantically. The demands of romantic relationships can be highly triggering in recovery. Since you did not necessarily plan on beginning a romantic relationship after treatment, you did not plan for the triggers it can bring up for you. Perhaps your new partner does or says something to make you feel jealous, and now you do not know how to cope with or process this emotion. Maybe you struggle with maintaining your individuality in a romantic relationship.
No matter what your circumstance, Alumni programs can help you navigate new, unforeseen triggers. Dealing with such triggers can be incredibly overwhelming and disheartening, to say the least. That is why having a group of individuals who can offer understanding, compassion, and assistance is vital for your continued recovery.
Allows You to Give Back
One majorly gratifying aspect of being a part of an alumni group after treatment is being able to give back to others in recovery. Perhaps there are some individuals in your alumni group that are struggling significantly and need your support and advice. You are giving back by offering them empathy and advice regarding their recovery struggles. You gained so much useful information and guidance from caring individuals in recovery, so now is your chance to do the same for others. You may even find that doing so can make you feel confident and valued as a member of society.
The benefits of being connected to an alumni group after treatment cannot be overstated. Even though you have grown exponentially during treatment, the work does not stop there. You still need the help of like-minded individuals when the daily stress of life becomes overwhelming. They can help keep you accountable and remind you why your recovery is always worth it.
Staying involved in an alumni program after treatment can prove to be significantly beneficial for your continued recovery. Being involved in an alumni program can provide you with support from others, help you manage triggers, and allow you to give back to others who need support during their journies as well. If you are searching for an alumni program to be a part of, contact us at West Coast Recovery Centers. We can provide you with peers and professionals that understand what you are going through in a way that others in your life may not understand. These people can help support you through your time after treatment and provide you with additional skills you may need as you progress in your journey. To learn more about our programs and what we can do to help you, call us today at (760) 492-6509.