Often times in drug and alcohol rehab clients come face to face with their behavior.  While actively using they rarely think about the results of all their actions.  Consumed by the quest for their drug of choice, life focus is simply on procuring more drugs and alcohol, and covering the tracks of such usage.

Once the cloud of being high is removed, reality starts to sink in.  Remorse and sadness flow freely.  Much of this stems from the permanent damage of the past.  Days and months that have been lost are gone forever.  Lies and manipulations will always be in the backs of the minds of families and friends.  Sometimes it seems that being sober, the clients think they will never restore the damage that has been done.

It has to be remembered that forgiveness is an internal personal thing.  Do not make it external.  Decide for yourself what behaviors you want to exhibit and those you will never do again.  Then follow your plan.  Decide on what you consider a resonable period of time following this path to start to forgive yourself.  Each day you follow this path, forgive yourself more.  When you have made real changes, and those in your life know it, you may want to appologize for your previous actions.  Forgive yourself as you acknowledge your mistakes. 

Those around you in your life may forgive you or they may not.  Both is O.K.  It is their right not to forgive you if that is what they desire.  Be open to them, but let them follow their path.  Your personal feelings should be determined by the rules you set for yourself for forgiveness.  Live in the present.  Forgive in the present.  Love in the present.

In drug and alcohol rehab, just like in a lot of areas of life, people want certainty.  They want an answer.  If they are going to spend their hard earned money, they want even more certainty that the product or service will do what they want.

Unfortuanately, in treating addiction there is no certainty.  Even with long established programs with a track record, there are still only probablilities of success.  There are other ways of looking at it though.

A client in a rehab program will learn new skills.  A client while in the program will experience sobriety.  A client in a drug rehab program will be safe, and have good food and make new friends.  A client in a drug rehab will be away from his or her “using friends”.  These are certainties.

Another certainty is that if nothing new is done or tried, the situation will most likey deteroriate.  For the majority of clients with a severe addicition, it dosen’t gradually go away.  It gets worse.  It also gets worse for everyone in the family.  They all suffer as well. 

Sobriety is a process everyone can learn.  Not everyone will learn at the same rate, or with the same effectiveness.  To turn away from drug and alcohol rehab because there is no sure thing makes no sense.  A life is at stake.  The way to solve anything is to contiune to try new and effective strategies while consistently applying good research based solutions.  Never give up.

By the time clients get to alcohol and drug rehab, most times the addiction has been going on a very long time.  Always, at least a time frame of years and more often then not even a decade or decades.  This leads to the questions of how and why do addictions go on so long before treatment is sought?  Do people really need to destroy their life before they will consider rehab?

The first question boils down to the truth, or more precisely the lack of truth.  When drugs or alcohol start to become a problem is someone’s life nobody really wants to hear about it.  They are uncomfortable discussing it.  They readily accept the stories and manipulations used to explain the deterioating situation and the progressively poor behavior.  If a family lives in truth and is comfortable discussing truth, addictions most likely would not progress to the destructive stage seen when most clients arrive at rehab.

The second question is obvious.  No, you don’t have to destroy your life before you can successfully seek help and move past addiction.  “Hitting Bottom” is a subjective term that is moved repeatedly as behavior deteriorates.  By confonting the truth and bad behavior early, much pain and suffering for all those concerned can and should be avoided.

In taking a drug and alcohol rehab program, one of the biggest gifts is time to think.  In all our day to day lives many times we don’t take the time to evaluate our prorities.  We all say that family is important.  We all say that love and connection is important.  But is it really?

If we look at our actions, often what we think we really value is not given the top amounts of time and effort in our lives.  Family may be important but finishing the lastest project from the office often ends up taking prority.  When we are not congruent with our real values in our lives something has to give.  This leads to emotional and physical symptoms of stress.  Covering up this pain and stress with drugs or alcohol is often the beginning of addiction.

Time spent in a drug and alcohol rehab program is a golden opportunity to look at the prorities of life.  Being removed from the day to day business of life is a rare and beautiful gift.  Being with a group of people doing the same thing is an even rarer gift.  Take the time to visulalize what is truly the most important things in your life.  Decide what portion of your time and resources will be given to the most important things in your life.  Then we you leave drug and alcohol rehab you will be much clearer about your bottom line in life.  Living with your most important values being cherished and protected will provide true inner strength.  This leads to a wonderful and sober life.

Ever notice how two people can have the same experience and yet describe it in totally different terms and have totally different outcomes.  Your success in a drug rehab center and in the rest of your life following rehab will be determined by your focus. 

By focus I mean how you look and and describe the situations and events of your life.  Some people look at the 10 new things they learned in a lecture and say it was great.  Others talk about the 15 things they heard before and say the lecture was a waste, even though they as well learned 10 new things.  The power of focus will make or break you drug and alcohol rehab program. 

We have all heard the question, is the glass half full or is it half empty?  How you habitually ask questions in your head will determine your answer.  If you approach it from the positive, i.e. “How much water do I have?” , you will have a positive response.  If you ask, ” How much water is missing?”, you will get the glass is half empty. 

By asking yourself, “What can I learn and use from this lecture to help me stay sober?”, you will always leave will new tools and have a great rehab experience.  Asking, “why am I stuck here listening to this crap?”, will lead you down a less useful path.  The choice is yours.