Sometimes life does repeat itself.  This is especially true in addiction.  We can get stuck in a self destructive cycle.  Poor choices and behavior leads to anxiety and depression.  This leads to more poor choices and so it goes.  The problem with this model is that it fails to take into account the cumulitive effect of poor decisions stacked on top of eachother.  So instead of a cycle we actually have a downward spiral.  At first the spiral spins slowly downward, but over time the spiral picks up speed.

Once the cycle is really established the momentum can actually pull in and damage those in close realtionships with you.  This again leads to more and more stress, more depression, and more drug and alcohol use.  Now the drug and alcohol have become less effective, as tolerance develops in your body.  Now the lack of effectiveness actually adds to the stress and discomfort you are feeling, as the increased use leads to the need for more and more money for the drugs and alcohol.

This can be why a rehab is useful and neccessary in someone life.  With so much momentum behind the cycle it might be impossible to stop on you own.

In the big picture of drug and alcohol treatment centers, sometimes the value of small things gets lost.  The importance of structure in your life in relation to sobriety has been spoken about repeatedly.  When we talk of structure, what pops to mind most often is a good job with meaningful work.  Then next is groups that you can belong to that meet at regular intervals to learn, socialize, or exercise.  Volunteering on a regular basis is a great source of structure as well.

Developing a set of daily rituals can be another excellent source of structure in your life.  Getting up early every morning and having a cup of coffee by yourself and giving thanks to the world can be an wonderful source of structure.  If you take some music lessons, then practicing playing at the same time everyday is another way to put structure back into your life.  They become a grounding force in your life when you do them every day, NO MATTER WHAT.  In addiction as it progresses the drug  and alcohol use take priority over everything in your life.  In sobriety and sanity you can and will value many things and can honor them all.  Your sense of dignity and committment to many things becomes most valued of all.

Phoning a family member at the same time every day to check in and see how they are doing can be another source of structure.  If you have an eldery or solitary relative living away from you, it will become the high point of their day.  It will also be one more reason why you matter in the world and one less reason to drink or use drugs.

Filling a good chunk of your day with structure will free you from the tyranny of choice.  Being free to choose is a wonderful thing.  Having to choose what to do every waking moment of every single day is a burden.  Let structure and daily rituals bring peace and comfort to your life.

In a alcohol and drug program there are many things to learn.  When you leave a program to venture back into your life there are even more lessons to gather and incorporate into your life.  A chance meeting with a stranger last night, posed a question that I think we all struggle with.  We were standing in a dance club listening to the music at the bar.  I ordered a diet coke, and so did he. We laughed and he asked why I wasn't drinking, and we started discussing rehab. 

He had been to a rehab program to stop drinking.  I asked what had happened and he told me about a DUI he had.  He decided he needed to stop drinking and went to a treatment program and stopped several years ago.  He turned to me then and and asked, " Why do we have to get hit between eyes and get arrested before we change?" 

So many times in life we wait until we have to change.  We wait until we have few or no choices but to change.  Then the change we are given is not the one we would have chosen.  Our only real choice at this point is about what attitude we will adopt as we are forced to change.  Being forced is never any fun. 

We all might benefit from looking at the direction of the path we are on.  Where exactly are we headed?  If the direction you are on is headed to a brick wall, why wait for the impact?  If you are in a drug and alcohol rehab program or center and you are not fully participating, why wait until they ask you to leave before fully committing to it?

We can chose to make the changes we want and need or as my new friend said, we can wait until we get hit between the eyes.

When you enter a drug and alcohol rehab treatment center, some of the behaviors you will change are obvious.  Stopping drug and alcohol use are a top priority.  Telling the truth and no longer lying are easy to figure out as well.  Manipulation and re-establishing boundaries are also simple to figure out.

However, what sort of person do you really want to become after drug rehab?  What qualities do you wish to have?  Two years after you are sober, how would you like people to descibe you?  Kind, confident, competent, fun, energetic, patient may well come to mind.  You see the qualities I first mentioned above like no drug useage and telling the truth mean you will be sober.  These last qualities will determine what kind of sober person will you be.

Will you be a jerk who just happens to be sober, or will you be a joyful inspiration and contributor to those around you.  Kindness is cultivated, and can be learned by anyone.  Confidence is a habit like any other. Practice it enough times and you will aquire it.  Energy is attained by eating quality foods, exercise and getting enough regular sleep.

If you are going to go through a drug rehab program why not change some traits other than those directly involved in the addiction?  Why not go for great instead of just good?

In treating addiction in a drug and alcohol rehab program, there is one powerful friend or an equally powerful foe.  It is your beliefs.  Your belief system going into a rehab program and your belief system when you leave a rehab might very well be quite different.

If you believe you will never stop using drugs and alcohol you will have a very, very difficult time at a drug rehab center.  If you thing all people who don't use drugs cannot understand what it is like and therefore cannot help you, it will be next to impossible to get help.  If you think that like without drugs is boring and for "losers", drug rehab will be a drag and semm like a prison sentence.

Conversly if you can believe that change is magical and the main reason we are on earth, going to rehab will be fun and life changing.  If you think that learning new tools will change your destiny and path in life, it will.

How can you change your set of beliefs?  The first task in to find out what your beliefs really are.  This is not the set of things you tell everyone else.  This is what the little voice in your head, that we all have, is actually saying to you about going to rehab.  What if this voice is saying to you, "Look loser, you will NEVER stop using.  You just don't have what it takes to stay clean."

To change a belief, you have to weaken it first.  To weaken the above belief you can start by looking at the millions of people who have moved past addiction.  Then start to look at specific people in those millions.  Look at the thousands and thousands of people who had less talent skill and knowlege that you, and who moved past addicition.  Look at the times in the past that no matter how brief, you will able to not use drugs or alcohol.  Continue this process until you have a mountain  of evidence against your old belief.

The next time your voice says to you "you can't do this!", simply answer back, "This belief is not true because of ______."  List off all the evidence, with all the emotion you can muster like you were in a court of law.  At the end of all the evidence, simply state,"What I really believe is, ______."  State your new belief here.  Do this as many times as the old belief comes up. 

Change your beliefs to ones that will make your time in a drug and alcohol program one of the most amazing times of your life.  Don't let disempowering beliefs ruin another day in your life.  Remove they today.

It is easy when attending a drug and alcohol rehab center to slip into the trap of fixing everything else except what you really came there to fix.  You listen to a lecture and you know your sister needs to hear the imformation presented.  So you phone her and e-mail her and tell her how this change, or that change, would make such a huge difference in her life.

The rehab program then has a discussion about how couples or partners should communicate.  You phone your parents and tell them all the exciting ways they could change their communication style with eachother, and all the wonderful differences it would make it their realtionship.

You start to look at the rehab itself, and you see all the wonderful "improvements" you could make to the program.  You might even want to form a peer group of some sort to involve others in the quest to change all the things you see as a problem in the rehab. 

This is not the reason you went to rehab.  It is very satisfying to help other people.  It may seem like a noble gesture to want to improve the lot of the clients who follow your steps in rehab.  This is however just a deflection to keep you from working on the changes you need to work on within yourself.  Don't try to change your sister, your family, or the rehab program itself while you are there.  Just get the absolute most you can out of the program for you.  Several months after you have completed a program and with the gift of months of sobriety and practice, you can make all the suggestions you want to others or the facility you went too.  Just do the hard work first, change yourself.

The first week in a drug and alcohol rehab program is filled with so many emotions.  Fear and hope go side by side.  Ususally there is some anger at letting your life get to the point where a rehab treatment center is advisable.  There is also the comfort of being with people in a similar journey and the knowledge you are not alone in this.

There is also some mixed feeling about all the rules in rehab.  Sometimes clients feel like they are in some sort of voluntary prison.  All of these extra restrictions may seem like just one more burden to bear besides the addiction they came in with.  The rules are there for the solitary reason that moving past an addiction is hard work.  Sometimes it is uncomfortable work.  All the rules provide the truly safe enviroment for change to take place.  It it were possible for the person to change without all these rules and protections, they would have done it before they got to the rehab center.

So while I can sympathize with the feelings that the rules may seem to be in control, it is those same rules that you actually came to a rehab facility for.  Sould you really want to go to a place that had open drug and alcohol use?  Would you really want to stay in a center that allowed physical and verbal agression to take place?  Would you want to sit through lectures or groups where everyone was coming and going as these please, with all sorts of noise and distractions so you really couldn't understand what was being said?

The rules make the rehab and sometimes rehab isn't easy.

Sometimes people arrive at a drug and alcohol rehab facility and it does not meet their expectations.  They thought it was something different or they thought other things were going to be there and they are missing.  This actually happens more than you would think.  I am not talking about deception here. 

There a couple of reasons for this.  First of all there are many people involved in the process of going to a drug and alcohol rehab.  There is the client.  There are the intake personal of the rehab facility.  There are also 2 or 3 family members involved, often sho are providing the funds.  All this is completed during a high time of stress for the client and family. 

People often talk to several rehabs before choosing one.  So with all these different people discussing things often there is some confusion about what rehab had what parts of different programs.  With the stress and worry going on and the sleepless nights it is really to be expected to be a little confused and mixed up.

Add to this the client who is somewhat out of control.  They are not in the clearest of states.  If they were, why would they go to rehab?  They hear bits of one rehab's program and bits of another's.  Again given the mental state they are in, it is to be expected that some confusion would take place.

So if you are in a drug and alcohol rehab center and somethings don't quite match what you expected, don't be angry or deceived.  Nobody tried to trick you.  It goes with having so many people trying to help you at a stressful time.  Be thankful so many people care, and work with all of your heart at what is there.

The purpose of going to an alcohol and drug rehab program is to change habits and behaviors that do not serve you or those around you.  To make change you have to be present.  You cannot change the past nor can you live in the future.  You have to be present.  Sometimes for all of us, regardless if you are experiencing an addiction or not, it is difficult to stay present. 

We drift off to an endless list of "if only" s.  You know what I mean, 'if only I hadn't done this".  "If only I didn't say that".  My life would be so different  if only I had……  You end up being a pupet of the past and your life gets stuck. 

The same thing can happen if you spend all you time dreaming endlessly about better days ahead.  It becomes a sort of "I'll be happy when….." scenario.  I'll be happy when I have a better job.  I'll be happy when my spouse changes.  I'll bbe happy when people trust me again.

 You can change the direction of your future, but you cannot change the future.  You can only change the present.  The tough part is staying present, as the above patterns are just so darn easy to slip into.  The simplest way I have found is still to use the grateful list.  Start to list off things you are grateful for in you life.  The food you have today.  The people you have in your life.  Your arms, your legs, you eyes.  List off the things you are grateful for in your city and country.  List off all the knowledge you have gained.  List off all the wonderful experiences in your life.  When you are really feeling gratitude you are present.  There is no judgement in gratitude.  When you are truly present you can discern life as it is.  This is where change takes place.

If you have been in a drug or alcohol rehab program or not, you have probably damaged some realtionships in your life.  What is the key to restoring a realtionship?  What will truly make the difference, so that trust and love flow again.  One is that real change has to take place.  This of course can take one of two forms. 

The first one is to actually change yourself for real.  The change most likely will involve some traits that do not support you in forming the types of relationships you desire.  Judging, lying, lack of trust, are some things that will always, no matter how much you care for someone damage a relationship.  Before anything can be restored you actually have to change these behaviors and replace them with ones that support what you want to have happen.

 The other is a change in attitude.  You can change what you veiw as important in a relationship.  By this I mean simple things like being on time.  If your friend never runs according to a schedule, you can decide that their company and companionship is far, far more important than the clock on the wall.  This is a process of keying in on the values you wish in you realtionships and then not letting details get in the way of love.  Details and rules have damaged and destroyed more close and loving realtionships than anything else.

If your behavior changes, the realtionship will change.  It has too.  But your behavior has to change and be consistent.  You cannot demonstate love and sanity in a realtionship, with insanity.  Stories won't do it.  Drama won't do it.  Manipulation and guilt won't do it.  Behaving in a loving consistent self respecting manner will.  It is call learning how to love.  It's a nice place to live.