​An addiction problem can turn an entire life upside down, damaging career prospects, academics, relationships, health, and one’s day-to-day world. Recovery is always possible, but one of the hardest parts about recovery is learning how to celebrate living in the shadow of a past substance or behavioural abuse problem. A person does not recover from addiction by simply stopping using. Recovery starts when you start living a new life without drugs. If you don’t change your lifestyle, then all the things that lead to your abuse may catch up with you sooner or later. Until you learn to let go of your old behaviours, they will continue to lead you back to abuse.
 
It’s not enough to tear down the dysfunction in your life, though — you must rebuild something in its place. You can make your life exactly what you always wanted it to be, long before it started spinning out of control.
 
Using your natural ability to form habits is a good way to rebuild your life after an addiction.
Develop a routine. The best way to be sure you’re doing things that will result in a healthy, happy life is to do them regularly.
Use exercise to move you. Honouring your physical health and protecting it with daily exercise is an important part of self-care. Simply pick a physical activity you enjoy and practice it every day.
Learn something new. Decide what you want to learn and how to get that information. You may choose to read a book or take a course. Be sure you’re always pursuing new knowledge in your life.
Continue your recovery practice. Recovery is an ongoing status. When you think you’re finished and don’t need to practice recovery anymore, that’s when you’re most likely to relapse. Get in the habit of checking in with your counsellor or group on a regular basis.
Maintain social connections. It’s too easy to isolate yourself and start spending more time in your head than is healthy. Make a habit of getting together with friends on a regular basis. You can start small with just one or two close friends, mentors or family members. When you’re ready, expand your circle.
 
Use these good habits as a goal, add appropriate activities to your schedule and repeat your routine every day and every week. Good habits will help you build a healthy, happy life after addiction.
 
Know that I am here to help you work through your challenge! Help is one phone call away! 084 779 4889.
 
Nadine van Rensburg counselling therapist
 
Credit: Synergy Recovery Services and Hawaii Island Recovery

The early stages of addiction can place a lot of stress on other members of a family, resulting in unhealthy coping skills. But soon, this can become the new normal for a family. When the individual seeks treatment or successfully completes treatment, families can fight to maintain that homeostasis, and dysfunctional behaviours can remain.
 
Family members can experience common issues and fill similar roles to cope with addiction. Two of the most common problems are co-dependency and enabling.
Co-dependency occurs when a family member is controlled by the addict’s behaviour. Family members often feel compelled to take care of the addict to the detriment of their own wants and needs. The co-dependent is excessively compliant, wants to avoid rejection, is oversensitive and remains loyal.
 
Enabling takes place when someone helps or encourages the addict, either directly or indirectly. An enabler might also lie for the addict or hide the addict’s behaviour from loved ones.
 
To cope with the addict’s behaviour, family members can develop, to some degree, certain co-dependent roles.
 
The more well-known roles are:
 
The Hero: The hero tries to make the family look good, often by overachieving and being successful. This person seems balanced, but often feels isolated and unable to express his or her feelings.
The Mascot: The mascot tells jokes and keeps things on a superficial level to turn the focus away from the painful truth of the situation. Although this can distract others, the mascot is often fearful, embarrassed and angry.
The Scapegoat: The scapegoat engages in negative behaviour to turn attention away from the addict or to react to positive attention that the hero receives. The scapegoat often turns to high-risk behaviours.
The Lost Child: The lost child is the family member who withdraws from the situation. He or she cares deeply, but emotionally checks out to avoid trouble and drama.
The Caretaker: The caretaker wants to make everyone happy and feels responsible for keeping the family going. As a result, the caretaker enables the addict by taking over the person’s problems and duties.
 
Family members play a critical role in the treatment process and are strongly encouraged to attend meetings at a support group, which can help them address their loved one’s addiction while also giving them the opportunity to interact with other families going through the recovery process.
 
Realise your addiction now and save yourself – let me help you and your family. Contact me on [email protected] or on 084 779 4889. Visit my website on www.nadinetherapy.co.za
Credit: www.rehabs.com
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​No addict takes their first drug - whether that is a substance or a behaviour - believing that they will become addicted. All addicts start out believing that they could give up drugs any time they wanted to. Every addict is sad proof of how wrong that belief is.

Another word for addiction is ‘dependence’. The two kinds of dependence we speak of are psychological dependence and physical dependence. Psychological dependence occurs when a person feels he or she needs drugs, alcohol or any other crutch to function or feel comfortable (e.g., needing to drink alcohol to feel relaxed in social situations, or needing to be high to enjoy sex). Some people eventually feel they need a substance just to be able to cope with daily life.

Physical dependence occurs when a person’s body has adapted to the presence of a substance. Tolerance has developed, which means that the person needs to use more of that particular substance to get the same effect. When substance or behavioural use stops, symptoms of withdrawal occur, both psychologically and physically.

You can never anticipate the effect that drugs will have on you. You could experience a very pleasant response to one drug, yet another drug could have a very frightening reaction - it could even kill you. It is a mistake to think that experience increases your tolerance levels or that nothing will happen to you if you take a drug that you have used before. It is a well-known fact that seasoned drug addicts often die of an overdose.

No matter how good you may feel when using drugs, your body suffers. Drugs are dangerous. If you take drugs, you are at great risk of becoming addicted. Addiction comes with a big price tag. The more drugs you want, the more money you need to feed the habit. It is not weak people who become drug addicts, its drug addicts who become weak people.

However tempting it may be, using drugs to take a break from reality will not make your problems disappear or make life better. When the drug wears off, reality will still be there with all the problems from which you were trying to escape.

If you feel that things are spiralling out of control and you are overwhelmed by problems, seek real help from someone who cares.

Realise your addiction now and save yourself – let me help you. Contact me on [email protected] or on 084 779 4889. Visit my website on www.nadinetherapy.co.za.

You are likely on this page because you find yourself in a difficult place in your life that is perhaps not working, and is perhaps not sustainable. Although this feels like a time of great crisis, but may also just be an accumulation of unfulfilling circumstances, a crossroad in your relationship or career, or a bad mood that has gone on too long please remember that you are not alone! Whatever the situation feel free to contact me so that we can find a way forward to help you overcome your circumstances.

​Contact me on [email protected] or on 084 779 4889. Visit my website on www.nadinetherapy.co.za.

​How can you save yourself from an addiction to drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography, shopping or any other destructive behaviour? How can you pull yourself out of complete depression and desperation, when you are so miserable that the only thing that appeals to you any longer is to self-medicate with your drug of choice?

Addiction is a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry. Dysfunction in these circuits leads to characteristic biological, psychological, social and spiritual manifestations. This is reflected in an individual pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief by substance use and other behaviours.

This very desperation that is making you so miserable is, in fact, the key to your new life in recovery. What you must do is to embrace the misery, embrace the chaos of your addiction, and accept it fully. Denial is when we try to cover it up, try to mask the misery, try to deny that our addiction is ruining our life, all while trying to minimise the negative effects of our disease. We try to justify anything and everything to ourselves to save face, to appear “normal,” to convince ourselves that we are not really that messed up. We lie to others, but mainly we lie to ourselves. “I’ll only have two drinks”, “I’ll only watch one more porn movie”…on and on we can go for years until our lives and those around us are destroyed because of our destructive behaviour.

This is denial. The more we try to mask our disease, the deeper in we get. Our addiction spirals more and more out of control as the negative consequences continue to pile up on us. We become even more miserable, and therefore have even more excuses to self-medicate. 
What one needs do is surrender – as odd as that sounds. Can an addict simply decide that it is time to surrender to their disease? I think that surrender is a process that has to be worked through. We pay for our desperation with misery and chaos.

You haven’t had enough misery until you have had enough misery. When you are in enough pain, you want out and then you can surrender to the disease and seek help. Unfortunately, for many, this is often too late.

Realise your addiction now and save yourself – let me help you. Contact me on [email protected] or on 084 779 4889. Visit my website on www.nadinetherapy.co.za.

​Credit: Ocean Breeze Recovery; Spiritual River.