Creating Your Addiction Recovery Plan

Making your recovery plan for what comes next is a crucial step in treating your addiction. Those with a plan for getting better, with actual steps to follow, often do better in the long run and avoid returning to old habits.

Recovery means more than just stopping drugs or alcohol; it’s about growing, getting better, and living the life you choose your way. Making a plan just for you is like drawing a map to get everything you hope for in recovery.

Your Addiction Recovery Plan

A recovery plan, also known as a recovery agenda, is a clear and straightforward set of steps that someone can look at for help and a plan when they find it hard to stay sober. Your addiction recovery plan is important.

Recovery is a continuous journey with lots of parts to manage, which can be challenging for someone just out of treatment and getting used to everyday life again. Recovery plans give solid and doable steps to help keep people on the right path.

The aims of a carefully made recovery plan cover:

• Understanding how addiction changes the way we see things and react
• Making goals
• A plan to reach goals in work and personal life
• Ways to solve legal or money problems caused by addiction
• Relationships you hope to fix after treatment
• Specific support networks to depend on
• Addiction support groups to join

Why Create a Personal Recovery Plan?

You should make a plan for your recovery to keep yourself on track while living a sober life. This plan acts like a guide and a friend who supports you, ensuring you reach your goals. See it as a list of steps to follow and a buddy who encourages you every step of the way toward lasting recovery.

Just like every person is different, so is their journey to recovery. A good recovery plan fits just right for you and what you’ll go through. As you change and grow, your strategy for staying sober and avoiding slips can also change and grow with you.

Creating Your Addiction Recovery Plan

When getting ready to leave your treatment program, making a plan for staying free from addiction is important. This should be done with your addiction treatment team. Getting support from people outside who know you well and understand how to beat addiction is also beneficial. They can tell you things about yourself you might not see and help solve problems you might miss.

In trying to build a life that stays away from addiction, being honest with yourself about your dreams, what you expect, and what you can do is very important. Thinking about the big picture and making a detailed and extensive plan is critical to staying well for many years.

Here are some essential parts often considered and included in successful plans for overcoming addiction.

Coping Skills (Anger Management)

Getting better from addiction means you’ll face many feelings and challenging times. Instead of using drugs to hide those feelings, you’ll need to learn and use new ways to deal with them and keep your behavior healthy.

Here are some helpful ways to handle tough situations:

• Doing breathing exercises
• Learning how to deal with stress
• Practicing how to stay calm when you’re angry
• Stepping away from places or things that make you feel like using again
• Writing in a diary
• Getting active with exercise
• Meditating
• Trying art or music to express yourself
• Talking to a friend or mentor you trust

Individualized coping strategies help you healthily manage difficult emotions rather than bottling them up inside. If you think you could have dealt with a situation better, you can always take some time to review this part of your plan to improve and make changes to it.

Addressing Triggers

Triggers are things that suddenly make you want to use substances again or bring back memories of when you used to use them, which can make recovery more challenging. Handling triggers with a healthy plan can prevent sadness and relapse into substance use.

Triggers can be people, places, things that happen, specific dates, or even smells or songs. Some you can prepare for, and some will catch you off guard.

Here are some usual methods to deal with triggers:

• Staying away from places linked to your past use of substance abuse
• Stopping hanging out with people you used to use substances with
• Creating new memories and traditions for special times
• Taking non-alcoholic drinks with you to events
• Having reasons ready to leave places
• Using calming and coping methods you’ve learned
• Talking to people who support you and your recovery

Support Systems

Find out who and what support you have that you can turn to for help.

Support systems you can use might be:

• Your counselor
• People in 12-step meetings
• Friends who don’t use substances
• Family members
• The person who guides you in staying sober

As time passes, the people and help you will get bigger and change; remember to change your plan for staying healthy to match this.

Self-Care

Taking care of yourself is an essential but often forgotten part of a plan to improve.

Ways to take care of yourself include:

• Make sure you sleep enough every night
• Eating well and often
• Setting aside time for creative or physical activities
• Keeping up with fitness and cleaning yourself
• Not missing doctor and therapy visits

As the saying goes, sharing from an empty cup is impossible. Taking care of yourself first is essential to help others.

Relapse Prevention Strategies

Sometimes, even though friends and family mean well, they might not fully get what it’s like to go through recovery. Joining support groups where people understand and can remind you of ways to avoid going back to old habits can be helpful.

Ways to prevent going back to old habits or relapsing include:

• Creating a relapse prevention plan
• Going to support group meetings like Alcoholics Anonymous or Celebrate Recovery
• Writing down why you stopped using substances
• Thinking about what you’d lose if you went back to using
• Considering who else would be affected if you did go back
• Looking again at your ways to cope and take care of yourself
• Attending an addiction relapse prevention therapy session

Personal Goals

Your personal goals can be big plans for the future or small, important wins you aim for.

Some personal and recovery goals you might set are:

• Starting a regular exercise schedule
• Earning a higher position at your job
• Completing your education
• Fixing a friendship that was hurt by addiction

No matter how significant or minor your achievements are, it’s important to celebrate your progress and growth.

Learn to Live a Sober Life

Starting to live sober might seem like beginning all over again. But, using all these methods and looking back at your recovery plan can help you move from treatment centers to everyday life easier.

There’s no wrong way to recover; there are only chances to learn and grow. The key is to keep going and believe in yourself; everything else will work out.

Long-Term Recovery with Northridge Addiction Treatment Center

At Northridge Addiction Treatment Center, we treat the whole person using methods based on scientific evidence and proven research. We focus on your urgent needs and create a unique care plan just for you to use evidence-based addiction treatment programs with individual and group therapy sessions.

At Northridge Addiction Treatment Center’s treatment facility, dual diagnosis treatment is provided to address co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders. NATC’s residential treatment facility has a caring and empowering family-like environment to foster a happy, lasting recovery.

Our experienced and fully licensed team is with you during every part of your journey, helping you learn the skills and get the tools you need to start a new life without addiction and handle challenges successfully.

Our treatment specialists are excited to talk to you about your options for getting better. Contact them now to start your path toward healing and recovery.