Early Recovery From Addiction (Avoid These 3 Major Pitfalls!)
Sep 27, 2021
Early recovery is a super vulnerable period for everybody involved. For the person who's in early recovery and for the family who's in early recovery. We're going to share some experiences about the major pitfalls that can happen especially during times of
transition and what to look for to what's a reasonable expectation and how to navigate that without everything falling apart. I do think that going through transitions is where people fall through the cracks.
The number one first big pitfall that can happen in early recovery is not understanding each other's perspective.
With the family, it's a very fearful time when we think of the transition out of rehab. We finally got to relax for a few months or weeks however long they were in rehab and got a break because the facility was handling it.
Then you start thinking of the transition coming up and your fears go up because you don't know how it's going to go and so what happens is we relapse as parents. All of a sudden the transition happens and we want to get back
on the roller coaster of the craziness.
Depending on the rehab, they may have the addict read their recovery plan to the family and in some cases may give the recovery plan to the family so you see it in writing. I think sometimes the family thinks, okay I'm going to be the monitor of this recovery plan and I'm going to make sure that you follow it to a T. That usually doesn't work. What the rehab is telling them is that they have to own their recovery
We can certainly be supportive and loving and kind and nice, but if we start trying to manage and monitor that, it's not going to be good I've found that recovery plans expectations are usually a little too high on both sides which can cause problems.
Amber Hollingsworth
