Drug abuse can drastically change an individual’s life for the worse. It can be difficult or impossible to change this behavior on your own, so it’s best to seek professional psychiatric help for your addiction.
Therefore, it is critical to engage in drug rehabilitation counseling to learn the necessary skills to build a productive life again. Drug rehab can help you on your journey toward a full recovery.
Let’s talk about some of the key ways in which counseling by an experienced psychiatrist can help you reach your goals of a clean, drug-free lifestyle:
Increasing Your Motivation
During early recovery, one of the biggest challenges drug rehab participants face is in finding the proper motivation to quit using drugs. Many drug users are in denial – they don’t think that they are really an addict, and that they therefore do not need to go to rehab.
Counseling offers a motivational perspective. Through this, your doctor will serve as your coach, always encouraging you to pinpoint the ways in which your life will get better when you stop using drugs. Your motivations are what will drive you to overcome your denial and fear of becoming clean, healthy, and drug-free.
Changing Self-Loathing Behaviors
Reliance on drugs might have made you commit to or build a lot of self-destructive behaviors. These could have compromised your health or negatively affected most of your relationships.
Through counseling, you will be taught how to identify the thoughts and habits your drug use built and how you can change these behaviors and repetitive thoughts. You will finally be able to replace them with healthier approaches.
Avoiding Relapse
Relapse is one of the most common things every recovering drug addict fears. After some time being clean, you may feel the urge to try using drugs again.
The triggers of this urge to relapse can include emotional pressures, external stress, or personal hardships that seem to put all of your hard work toward recovery to waste. Counseling can help you avoid this through the following:
- Helping you be aware of the warning signs of a potential relapse
- Helping you build healthy coping strategies in dealing with stress or other emotions
- Helping you build lasting support systems
- Providing you with appropriate resources to prevent falling into a relapse
The urge to go back to using drugs can differ from person to person, but there are warning signs. Some of these are a degrading sense of self-confidence, depression, anxiety, or isolation. Through counseling, you will learn how to identify these and take control of your life.
Building and Maintaining Stronger Relationships
Drug addiction can cause relationships – with your spouse, family, or friends – to end or become very strained. Counseling can offer you one of the most important benefits you can gain while recovering: learning how to repair broken relationships.
Building New Habits
People with a history of drug use often develop poor self-care habits and minimal discipline. During recovery, patients will realize the necessity of self-care and re-learn the ability to set and accomplish personal goals.
Some drug users initially believe that a few small changes to their routine will help them stop using drugs altogether. However, they don’t realize that addiction runs on a compulsive nature and bad habits that have been firmly established in their life, so they must learn how to change these habits once and for all.
Drug rehab counseling can help you set achievable goals and assist you in accomplishing them. These goals can include repairing your physical and emotional health, relationships, career, and even spiritual renewal.
Learning About Addiction
Once officially drug-free, you are now in a healthier and more rational state of mind. You can now educate yourself more about addiction from an outsider’s perspective. Analyzing your addiction can help you gain insight into your triggers. Drug rehab counseling explores these triggers as you and your doctor construct deliberate efforts to manage your transition to a healthy, regular life.
Pinpointing the Underlying Issues
There are several reasons why drug addiction happens. On a personal level, it’s important to gain insight into what draws you to use drugs. Can it be a way to cope with stress? To help you emotionally? To ease the pain? It is imperative that you slowly peel back all the layers of your drug behavior and understand what drove you into your drug habit in the first place, so you can avoid repeating it.
Drug Addiction Treatment in Connecticut
The role of drug rehab counselors in recovery is key. They play an active and personal role by showing you concrete ways to change your attitudes and behaviors concerning drug use. They focus on reframing your understanding of a healthy lifestyle to help you make better decisions for your present and future situation.
The journey of recovering from drug addiction is much easier if you have a trusted counselor by your side. Board-certified Dr. Mark Stracks of Psy-Visions is here for you.
If you would like to learn more about drug rehab counseling or know someone who needs it, contact us today by calling us at (203) 405-1745 or request an appointment online. We look forward to partnering with you for a bright future.
