month.
This commentary is not meant to “throw stones” at people who love chips and rewards, and certainly not Monopoly, who doesn’t love a good Monopoly game! It is to show you, the pressure of “first days”, the undue stress of watching someone else “pick up chips” can be a stress that is never spoken about. It’s somewhat like the feeling of your friend owning Park Place and Boardwalk; you still like them, but now, don’t want to visit. One famous Nike ad campaign was build on the theory of rewards and recognition, it works, “I want to be like him.”
Stress is real and it comes from the strangest of places. If we know this, then we must see the wisdom of discussing it and inspecting it.
And it is easy to understand from an outsider’s view why the term “failure” is the term most sees as fitting. If you or your family paid out, five, ten, twenty or thirty plus thousand dollars for an extended treatment, they, the person footing the bill, have thousands of reasons to expect a “positive” return on their investment. They, “paid for you to get better,” and if you “return” to the drug of use, then, they see the money as wasted, and in that sense a failure. And that means we need to follow up with another topic, the difference between a lapses, and relapse.
And if you are “one of those” that has been to a treatment center on multiple occasions, and your family, private insurance, friends, or yourself was the one spending that kind of money, then you most certainly feel the added pressure and stress of, I need this to work, (this time)! And if you have returned to substance use, misuse, or full dependence, then the feeling of self, your esteem, commitment, remorse etc… are affected.
But before we can address lapses or relapses, can we avoid part of it, is there something to help you, get past the obstacles you face, in those hours, first days, and weeks would be more beneficial. If we can avoid the lapse or relapse obviously we have moved the success marker forward.
R2D created a simple cognitive tool, called a Recovery Stress List. To address what is going to happen, and how we can prepare for it.
Learn it in a day, practice it for a lifetime at www.recovery2day.org
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