Holiday season, for so many of us, comes with warm memories of lights, comfort food, and family group hugs. Yeah, the gifts were fun too:)
So, if I would tell you that now is the optimal time to check in to a residential addiction treatment center, you might look at me funny. I hear you protesting, “Now is the time to be together on the homestead, to laugh and love with the people who care about you most!”
But as crazy as it may sound, there's no better time to embrace a chance at a brighter future. Procrastination is a basic part of the human condition. We are sort of programmed to push off the difficult things in our lives and tell ourselves well get to it at specific round moment of time, a checkpoint if you will.
But there are so many real and valid points to considering addiction treatment during the holidays. The top ones are:
- Give yourself the gift of YOU this holiday season - the most precious gift of all.
- A beautiful, festive and cheery holiday atmosphere.
- A Christmas dinner with your new recovery family.
- A new lease on life for many happy holiday seasons to come. (It's giving up one holiday with family for so many more to come...)
Make your moment now.
Anyone who struggles with the snooze button on an alarm clock knows that you never get out of bed at 7:57. You have a shot at 8 o’clock. If that passes by, no one is seeing you before 8:30. And so the battle goes.
Christmas, New Year’s and the feelings of hope and renewal that come with it can be a similar checkpoint. It’s when people are in touch with what they are missing, what they might have lost, and more importantly, with reflecting on how they can find it again. Take today and make it build all the tomorrows you so desperately wish for. Take advantage of the clarity given to you by a calendar turning another page and make it a holiday season you will remember forever.
Don’t push the snooze button! The moment is now.
Find a place in a thriving community.
Drugs can make you feel as if you are on an island. Nobody understands you, the thoughts racing in your head, or why reliance on the substance of your choice is the only thing that makes you feel alive. Or makes life worth living. Loneliness, when the world around you seems to be bursting with joy, is a dagger that doesn’t stop stabbing.
Joining a community like the one you'll find at Avenues Recovery Center puts you in a place where there are others just like you. They identify with your challenges, understand the hole in your heart. It is precisely here where the work on filling those holes happens.
Tap into the season of joy by sitting side by side and sharing the fight. The joy of a man on an abandoned island watching a stream of boats finding his shore is the joy of knowing that the pathway home has emerged.
The social scene on the outside can be full of triggers.
At times when people gather, the atmosphere can be loose. Alcohol flows, and people let their guard down. At Avenues Recovery Center, you'll celebrate the holidays in a safe, fully supportive environment. We will show you how to take part in the joy and blessing around you while standing strong from triggers and substance abuse. Holidays can be celebrated to their fullest without drugs or alcohol, and we can show you how!
Make this holiday season one you'll remember, one that will define you forever.
This year can be the holiday season you look back on for years to come: The holiday season that gave you the ultimate gift. The one you will be thinking about in 5 or ten years from now, when you are sitting in the joy and light of being surrounded by family, and your head is clear and free to internalize all the things that those blessings mean. It will be the year you found the strength to give every holiday season in your future the wholeness and beauty of addiction recovery!
Looking for more? Read on: How to stay sober through the holidays.