The purpose of a stay in a alcohol and drug rehab center is to change yourself and your behavior. It is also to become responsible for your actions, reguardless of what other people are doing. So many stimes in life everyone, including clients, their friends and family constantly try to deflect the responsiblilty away from the person. So often we hear the “speeding car ” defense. I call it this because so many of us have used it to try and get out of a speeding ticket. You get stoped for driving over the posted limit. You know you are guilty. However when the police officer tries to give you the ticket, you point out all the cars that are traveling faster than you. You ask, “How come they are not given tickets?”

Just because everyone who breaks the rules, or laws didn’t get caught has nothing to do with your responsibility for your actions. Just because everyone who brings drugs into a drug rehab center does not get caught that particular time, does not mitigate in any way shape or form those who did get caught. To suggest you cannot enforce any rules unless you catch every single offender every single time is foolhardy. Every drug and alcohol rehab center must make every effort to enforce the rules, but perfection in enforcement will never happen.

Take responsibilty for your actions. Don’t deflect and cloud examining your poor judgement by bringing the actions of others into the picture. Admit clearly to yourself what you did. You will never get the level of change you seek as long as you use other peoples behavior as a reason why you are not doing what you feel you should be doing. Work on yourself and let karma take care of those other people in your life who were not caught.

What do drug and alcohol rehab and the frist year of med school have in common? Actually more than you might think. They are both educational experiences that are intense, 24 hour a day, 7 days a week experience. They both involve bonding with your fellow students and will make some of the most durable and intense friendships you will ever have. Something else happens to be in common with both of them. A fancy term might be educational projection. A more flip term would be medschoolgotititis. When learning and reading about new conditions and diseases in med school, it is very common for the student to either feel they themselves have a version of the disease, or several people around them have all the symptoms, and need to be “cured”.

The combination of new knowledge and a genuine desire to want to help and change can lead to this. The very same thing can happen in rehab. A good drug and alcohol rehab program will have lots of information about addiction, relationships, anger, time management, health and fitness. When you learn these things and start to change you may feel an overwhelming desire to help other people in your life. You may genuinely want to save them the pain of the lessons you have learned. A word to the wise. Just concentrate on making yourself better. Just because you have tried a new skill, and have found it useful to you does not mean you are experienced enough to recommend it to someone else. Take the time to master the skills and change you aquire in drug rehab. When you have learned them, your behavior will have changed and demonstrate to others you have something they don’t. They will seek you out for advice when it is appropriate for them. Don’t be a med student who practices medicine after only taking half a semester. Stick with improving yourself.

When you leave a drug and alcohol rehab program there is one thing that is paramount. It is the same thing we have discussed many times. It is structure. The timetable of daily events that give meaning to your life and give you someting to do and get up for. “Free” time is not healthy during the first weeks and months after a drug rehab visit. At rehab, especially in the last week, you will have come up with a relapse prevention plan that will have lots of structure built into it.

How do you keep the structure strong once you leave rehab? Simple, you have to plan it. Daily you have to look at your plan, and add to it, and follow it. Once a week, Sunday night always works well, you really might want to take 30 minutes and look out at the next week. Look at the structure you have for the following seven days. How well is it planned? What are you going to learn in the next seven days? How many healthy relationships with people are you going to strengthen?

If you don’t review your structure weekly, it will quickly become stale and boring. Then you will simply stop following it. As corny as it sounds, old fashioned weekly goal setting and review is the only way to build truly great structure in your life. Structure will keep you sober. Best of all it will also get you all the other wants and dreams in your life, that will make it great.