Being in a drug and alcohol rehab center is not the easiest thing anyone could do.  It involves a sacrifice of time, money and a lot of effort.  Sometimes people rub each other the wrong way. It happens to us all.  Many times though it leads to judgement and justification.  These two steps are not good.  They lead to unhappiness and more addiction.  This doen't only pertain to those people in a rehab center, they will lead to unhappiness for everyone.  We all veiw life's event through one type of filtering system or another.  The key is to have a system that supports where you want to go in life as well as one that brings happiness and joy into your life.

You can view the world in one of two ways.  You can look as life event as things the happen TO YOU.  By this I mean looking at life as you are "unlucky".  Other people get the breaks.  If only I had there smarts and good looks.  If you take this stance you will always be in judgement.  Here's how it looks.  You get up at rehab and go for breakfast.  As you are in line, somebody rushes by and gets in line before you.  They grab some food and rush off leaing a mess behind.  If you veiw the world as things that happen TO YOU, You most likely will say something like, "Why do all the jerks cut in front of me?"  Nobody in polite anymore.  People are so rude around here.  All are judgement type statements. 

If instead you are focused from a point of veiw that life happens WITH YOU, you will respond differently.  You will be a much more impartial observer of life.  Because you don't look at things as happening to you, at the food line in the rehab center, you can step back from the hurried individual.  With that little bit of distance you might comment, " Hmmm, I wonder want is happening in his life, that he is so distracted and hurried that he doesn't see other people in line.  I wonder if he needs some help with something?"  No judgement, much happier result.

The best part of all this is you stop judging yourself.  We can be such harsh and brutal critics to our own souls.  Drug and alcohol rehab is such a wonderful gift because it gives the chance to relearn.

At any drug and alcohol rehab center there will be things you are unhappy with.  This is true for your life as well.  Before you allow something to upset your day and especially before you open your mouth, there are a few things you should ask yourself.  The first question you might want to ask yourself is, " What exactly am I mad at?"  Once you answer that question follow up with, "Am I really upset with this, or am I upset at something else?"  The purpose of this is to prevent you from unloading on the wrong event or person with the strong intensity.  Often several things go wrong in a day, but it is the last one that we go after with the intent of evening out all the other things that went wrong. 

Once you are sure you know what exactly you are upset about, proceed with the next question.  What exactly would have to change for me to feel different about this?  Sometimes the most effective change is in ourselves.  It involves to stop the expectation of the world to be perfect.  No drug or alcohol rehab program is perfect.  If the change is outside our personal ability to change, and you feel you want to address the issue, you must move on to the third question.  Who is the person who has the power to change this situation?  There is no point complaining to the wrong person.  Often we like to vent on our friends or some poor person in an organization, that cannot possibly make any change in the problem.  If you do not know which person has the authority to make the change, the next step is, who might know who does have the authority?

Once you figure out who you are going to approach, you need to ask yourself the fianl question.  "What is the most effective way I can present my concern to achieve the result I desire?"  Spend some time going over this one.  Think about how you would like to aproached with someone else's concern.  The result of this series of questions is that you will remain in control of your emotions.  You will also have the greatest change for a successful outcome.  If you master this skill while you are in a drug rehab, it will serve you well when you leave.

In a drug and alcohol rehab center one the the things you would like to establish is a set of new habits that support totally where you want to go in life.  Many times the difference between success and failure in something is simply carrying on.  Learning new skills and mastering new habits always has some bumps along the trail to mastering them.  It is during the rocky times that success might be measured by simply carrying on.

Two elements that make a large difference to sobriety and and a quality life are exercise and meditation.  Both of these will have a very large impact on your health and state of mind.  Both of these create cumulative effects when practised regularily.  However there will be days when you really don't feel like doing either.  There will be days when your schedule doesn't seem to have room for either.  It is precisely because of those days, you want to place what's important first.  When you first get out of bed, do some exercise, or meditation.  If you really want to have it going for you do both.  Setting your alarm, and getting up and dedicating the first 30 or 40 minutes to you and your body is a wondrful habit to acquire.  Why not put in place while you are in a drug and alcohol rehab program?  By doing these first it will make sure you are able to carry on during those rocky moments of progress we all go through.

Always on the lookout for information about drug and alcohol rehab centers, I watched a show about a different type of rehab the other night.  The place was call Brookhaven and it is in New York.  It is one of the very few places that take and treat very, very obese.  In many ways a lot of the issues they face are the same as most other rehabs dealing with addictive behavior.

I throughly enjoy the show, it comes on weekly.  It is hard not to get drawn in by the effort of the people who work there as well as the struggles of the clients.  There was one thing which I found puzzling though.  I know you cannot draw any direct correlation between the issues of the obese and drug and alcohol rehab but still I couldn't figure out why they did not lock the door.  They showed repeatedly on closed circuit T.V. clients ordering in fast food and having it delivered.  This allowed some of the clients to drift futher into a crisis situation.

Rehabs should be safe from the temptation of why someone is in rehab.  Once things are under some control then maybe halfway house situation would allow the doors to be unlocked and have free movement.  At a rehab though, the doors should be locked and everything going in needs to be inspected.  I'm sure they have good reasons for what they do at Brookhaven, but it just seemed stopping the importation of junk food into the place would help some people.  A real interesting show though, and my hat goes off to the staff and clients who let us peek in their lives and learn from their experience.

One reason why drug and alcohol rehab centers are so much more successful than trying to quit on your own has purely to do with availability.  I think everyone who has an e-mail address has been spamed with stuff offering to sell you drugs.  I have deleted these by the hour before the wonderful advent of spam filters.  However recently I saw an offering fror a drug that many of our clients have trouble with.  It is a prescription med with a high degree of addictiveness. 

I couldn't actually believe that it would be easy to procure this drug without at least seeing a physician.  I was wrong.  A Visa card number and a few dollars and days later this medication was actually delivered to the door.  No wonder it is getting more and more difficult to stop taking drugs or alcohol.  Availibility of drugs and alcohol is just too easy.  You would have to have nerves of steel and a ton of willpower to get through the first few days.  That is why rehabs with their drug and alcohol free zones are so important.  I guess there is no sense complaining about the "companies" that provide this stuff through the mail.  We just have to learn to deal with it and protect ourselves.

We get referral request for drug and alcohol rehab centers everyday.  Many requests.  At least 50% of the calls get start out like do you know of a good rehab in San Antonio?  Or do you know of a good rehab in Billings?  Do you know of a good rehab in Tampa?  You get the idea.  Most clients who phone are looking for something in their own neighborhood.  I know it is nice to be close to home.  The travel cost is small.

There is another factor to consider is what you want to accomplish.  The point of going to an alcohol or drug rehab is to get off of drugs for good.  While this is achieved every day by countless people, one thing for sure it that it is not neccessarily easy.  If it were easy you would have quit already.  If it were easy you could just read something and do it at home.  Most clients going to rehab have had a significant addiction for an extended period of time.  The patterns for the drug and alcohol abuse are well defined.  To break these patterns it is best to get away from your normal enviroment.  The further you go the better.  The more distance between you and your drug using friends, the safer you are in the first few months.  So if you live in Tampa, the question you might want to ask is, where is a great rehab a long, long way from Tampa?  Just a suggestion.

Most drug and alcohol rehab programs have a time to get up.  The most simple method to prevent relapse is to have structure in your day.  The key to structure is that is has to be automatic.  The axiom is that if you have to think about it…….it is not structure.  So how do you get a day rolling with structure?  The same method that is used in most drug rehab centers.

Have a set time to get up.  Honor it and stick to it.  Get out of bed and immediately make your bed. Do it every day, no exceptions. Accomplishing a task within the first minute of getting up really sets the tone for the day.  Shower and get dressed and have a healthy breakfast.  Clean up and put your dishes away as soon as you finish.   Follow a routine that gets you going right into the day.  Have healthy rituals to provide some stucture at the beginnning of the day.  While you are enjoying your breakfast take out your daytimer and look at what your plan for today and the following two days.  Make absolutely sure you have something planned to start your day no matter what.  If your first real task is going to work that is great.  If it is a day off or you work later in the day, have something planned to start the day that involves other people.  It will make sure you start the day with action.

Using  the tasks of getting ready for the morning while cleaning up immediately after your self will make a large difference in your life.  Do it without exception.  Make your bed, have breakfast and clean up after your self.  It is done universally in drug and alcohol rehab centers, and keep it up when you leave.

Everyone knows going into a drug and alcohol rehab center that they need to make changes in their life.  Most of us know where a lot of changes have to be made.  Sometimes we cannot see everything that needs improvement.  So many times is it easy to see the mistakes of others and difficult to see our own.  Outside eyes of those at a drug rehab program can give us great suggestions that we might not have seen.  Taking those suggestions however is never easy.

Had a big lesson about this myself recently.  We are writing a book.  We worked on it very hard.  Re-wrote many parts several times over.  When we finished it looked great and felt like it was ready to go.  Then we sent it to the editor.  Were we shocked to see the transcript come back with lots and lots of changes.  I have to admit for the first few minutes I looked at it, I got really defensive and started to attack all the "suggestions".  All the usual excuses came up…. like didn't they know how hard we worked on this.  They probably don't know anything about drug rehab and relapse.  I won't bore you with all the ones that came up. 

The really funny part is that even though were writing a book about change and flexibility, we didn't show much towards the editors helpful suggestions.  Of course once we remembered the purpose was to help people, not prove what great writers we were, the suggestions were a lot easier to take.  A lot of them made sense.

So while you are in a drug rehab program, have a listen to the suggestions of others.  Will they help you towards your purpose while you are there?  Just be open.  You do not have to take them.  If you are honest, some of them might really help.

Much is made in business of the 80/20 rule.  If you haven't heard of it before, this rule brings out the concept that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers.  Interestly enough 80% of your problems come from 20% of your customers as well.  If you are lucky and good it won't be the same 20% that provides most of your business.

If it applies in business, and it most certainly does, why might it not apply in your own life?  When you are in a drug and alcohol rehab center it is the perfect time to look at the behaviors that do not support you.  More to the point you really want to elimenate or change the ones that bring the most chaos and pain to your life.  Stop and think about all the things you do in a day.  Why not jot down a list of the things you do in a day.  Start with getting out of bed.  Showering and brushing your teeth.  Eating breakfast, getting dressed.  Also put down the amount of time it would take you on an average day.  Include reading the newspaper, phoning friends, work, study, housecleaning, watching T.V. and absolutlely everything else you do.

Also put down the amount of time actually spent consuming drugs and alcohol.  Keep track of the actual time you drink or take drugs.  Include the time spent finding and covering up your drug and alcohol use.  For a lot of people something interesting might appear.  If you list all the things we do in a week this list would be quite long.  Then take a red pen or pencil.  Circle the behaviors that are ruining your life and bringing you and your family the most pain and discomfort.  I am willing to hazard a guess that the 80/20 rule would apply.  80% of our problems stress and grief come from only 20% of the negative things we do.

What this really means is that we don't have to change everything about us.  We are not totally screwed up.  Change your worst 20% and you will have profound effects on your life.  Anybody in a good alcohol and drug rehab program can change 20% can't they? Even if you just change 10% of your behaviors you will most likely remove hailf of the problems in your life.  You are telling me you can't change just 10% of the things you do?  Small changes in behavior done with consistentcy will give you a whole new life.  Why not put the 80/20 rule on your side.

What is the main reason people refuse to enter a drug and alcohol rehab center?  Once they are at a rehab center what is the main reason clients leave and do not succeed?  More often than not it is fear.  Before coming to a rehab the fear of the discomfort of withdrawl and drug detox looms large in their minds.  Because they have tried to stop drug and alcohol abuse many times in the past, the fear of failure one more time can become a very large roadblock.  There are many fears that play havoc with the chances of success. 

Fear that they will become a boring person often will keep people from treatment.  After using drugs and alcohol for many years sometimes people can't imagine what they would do for fun without these.  Fear of lose of their last few friends may also keep people back.  Addiction isolates people and any remaining friends usually use as well.  This leads to another fear of not being understood.  If you go back to having non-using friends will they understand all the things you have been through and have to cope with.

Fear of not being forgiven is another.  If you start feel like your family will never forgive you for some of the behaviors you have had in the past, it is easy to rationalize that you should never change.  The list of fears in a drug and alcohol rehab center is endless.  Dealing with and breaking through fear has to occur to move ahead in drug rehab.  For fear to hold you back two things have to occur.  Number one is letting the fear lead to failure through predicting the future.  If when you feel fear, your mind always see's a picture of you not being successful, it will block you.  The way to cope with this is to remember we all are really bad at predicting the future.  Every expert in every field makes bad predictions sooner or later.  So why would your predictions be 100% right?  The other is that fear is a feeling that involves "rules".  When you were young you were told to be afraid of strangers.  If you want to feel fear less often, simply write rules that are harder to meet.  You could make a rule to only be afraid of strangers, if you are lost, have no money and it is between 10 and 11 p.m. on the 3 third sunday of the month.  If you don't meet all of the above rules , maybe you will be only concerned instead of feeling fear.  If you think this idea of rules doesn't make sense, check out any of Tony Robbin's books, and you might think otherwise.  Fear blocks change.  Fear blocks change in drug rehab.  Deal with fear and move on.