Q. What Are The Common Problems Addicts Face During The Process of Recovery?
A. Their own denial. So we’re going to start with minimizing. People come to me and they are down and out and they keep saying I need help, I need help, I need help and once help is offered to them they say… I didn’t need that much help.
I don’t want to go to those meeting or go to that group four nights a week I have other things to do.I have to make ends meet, I have to make up for lost time, so I’m going to go to work and do a lot of over time, you know to make up for lost time. Well, my answer on lost time is… Lost time is lost. You can’t get it back. One of the things that is a problem in early recovery is denial and the denial has not been penetrated and many leave treatment before that denial barrier has been breached.
I also believe that people need to be involved in a treatment program for a full year. People who cut it short for 30 or 90 days because they completed treatment then participate in a twelve-week aftercare program that meets once a week isn’t enough. People need good counseling, coaching and therapy and after that they need to engage in group therapy and some people may need psychiatric care. I people also need to engage in 12-step recovery. People whose families are involved in treatment and their own recoveries always do better. The other thing that needs to be implemented that is overlooked most of the time is a proper diet and exercise.
You would be amazed how much better you would feel if you simply ate better and exercised more. Again, a more barrier to this is denial as well. The denial about how much help or the level of help one needs combine again with denial of whether or not a person is an addict or not can and will prove fatal. So denial, in my opinion is the biggest problem people in recovery face and when forms of denial have been eradicated a person will get clean and sober.
