Phases Of Addiction Recovery

What You Need To Know About Phases Of Addiction Recovery.

Recovery from addiction begins with admission. Unless the patient acknowledges their addiction and admits that they need help, any measures to rehabilitate them will bear little fruit. For this to happen, the patient needs to be aware of their addiction and how it affects their health, relationships, work and other important aspects of life. Admittance is clouded by euphoric recall, where patients want to remember the positive experiences their addiction brought them, while ignoring the many negative experiences. However, it is not until one decides to take action concerning their addiction can they move to the second phase. The second phase is compliance, which involves agreeing with the set rules of abstinence.

The patient needs to understand why they have to abstain from their addiction. They should also learn coping and refusal skills, which will keep them from going back to their addiction time and again. During this phase, defiance is common. This is where patients begin to reject any care extended to them or claim that they deserve an occasional taste of their addiction since they have followed all compliance rules this far. Often, defiance is accompanied by feelings of anger towards oneself and others. This is a good sign as it leads to resolving one's emotions.

Once the defiance cools off, one will have an improved sense of emotional stability and they are more likely to accept treatment. This is the fourth phase, acceptance. It enables one to begin to trust themselves once more and others too. At this stage, one can begin to critically evaluate themselves. The last phase is surrender, where one chooses willingly not to engage in their addiction again. In this last stage, patients work towards being happy, joyous and free. A lot of personal growth is involved. One deals with personality issues and what causes them, changing unhealthy behaviors and handling issues that originate in the family.