5 Essential Steps to Overcome Your Addiction

If you have a substance abuse problem, you may find yourself battling between staying sober and being under the influence. Whether addiction runs in your family or you've turned to substances to cope with life's stresses, you can overcome your problem if you seek help. It's easy to become addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, but it takes even more effort to kick a bad habit. There are a few steps you can take to overcome your addiction.

Recognize That You Need Help

The first step to overcoming your addiction is to recognize that you need help. If you don't accept the fact that your habit is negatively impacting your life, then you won't be able to effectively and fully overcome your addiction. Perhaps your spouse is unhappy with you, you've lost multiple jobs or your kids don't look at you the same. Whatever the case, it's important that you're willing to take a look at yourself and see that you must change in order for your life to improve. Once you begin to accept this, you can start your road to recovery.

Seek Emotional Support

When you're going through something as serious as addiction, you need someone who can support you while you recover. This is helpful because you'll have someone to talk to or vent to. Instead of using alcohol or drugs to cope with stress, talking to someone can be a great coping strategy. Not only will having someone in your corner make you feel more confident about kicking your habit, but it'll also help you realize just how important your close relationships are. If you have people to rely on, you're less likely to relapse.

Go to Rehab

Many addicts don't like the idea of going to a rehabilitation center to get better. Part of that is due to their unwillingness to accept change. Another reason is that they don't trust that rehab will help them with their addiction. If you're open minded and want to try something different, you can find a utah drug rehab center that will help detox your body, provide talk therapy, and offer a calming environment. All of these features can help anyone, even those with the strongest addictions.

If the thought of being an inpatient at a rehab center makes you uncomfortable, you don't have to go this route. You can still get the help you need as an outpatient. You can get cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), which is designed to help you control your behavior by analyzing your thoughts and feelings. If you can get a better grasp on the thoughts and feelings that drive you to use drugs or alcohol excessively, you stand a better chance of quitting.

Cope With Withdrawal Symptoms

Withdrawal symptoms can be scary and very uncomfortable. However, it's important to know about these symptoms and how long they tend to last so that you learn how to deal with them. Withdrawals from addictive substances include:

Alcohol: Anxiety, fatigue, tremors, mood swings, irritability

Cocaine: Depression, restlessness

Opioids: Flu-like symptoms

Benzodiazepines: Anxiety, insomnia, sweating, headache

Whether you experience withdrawals from alcohol, painkillers, heroin, meth, or benzodiazepines, the symptoms will only be temporary. In fact, within a week or two of quitting, most of the acute symptoms should be gone.

Avoid Relapse

After you've recognized your need for help and sought out ways to overcome your addiction, you might have some success with quitting. However, relapse is always a risk. Certain drugs that are more addictive such as crack cocaine, heroin and meth are extremely hard to give up. This means that you'll need to have a strong resolve to fight your urges to go back. Keep yourself busy or find an accountability partner who can help you stay on track.

Addiction is such a complicated problem. It can ruin your life if you let it. That's why you need to be ready to make big sacrifices to beat your addiction.