Call 888-647-0579 to speak with an alcohol or drug abuse counselor.

Who Answers?

Tips for Staying Sober After Alcohol Treatment

Once you complete treatment at an alcohol treatment center you will be faced with the next challenge—staying sober after alcohol treatment. While you may think it will be easy to stay sober after alcohol treatment, for many, staying sober is a difficult and long road. It’s not that you are still physically addicted, just that when you are faced with the challenge of maintaining sobriety outside of the alcohol treatment center environment it can be difficult to stay on track. Here’s a look at some tips that will make staying sober after alcohol treatment a little bit easier to maintain.

Honest After Alcohol Treatment

If you aren’t honest with yourself then you can’t be honest with anyone—after all, who can you trust if you don’t trust yourself? The most important thing you can do after alcohol treatment is to remain honest with yourself. If you are thinking about using, don’t just mask those feelings, call someone and talk about the struggles you are having. Staying honest and true to yourself and to others about your addiction will help you to remember where you once were and how far you have come since then.

Avoid Triggers When Possible

Success after alcohol treatment is possible!

You won’t always be able to avoid potential triggers that could cause you to drink but in many cases you can. For instance, don’t go to the bar with your friends and expect to just hang out and have a drink. Just one drink leads to another and another. If you were once addicted to alcohol so badly that you had to go into alcohol treatment to recover then it’s not a good idea to drink at all after you finish alcohol treatment—even if it is just one.

Rest and Relax

You can’t let your guard down too much in some situations but when you are at home and in a situation where there’s really nothing triggering you to potentially drink, rest and relax. In alcohol treatment you are given ample opportunity to rest, relax and to reflect on your current situation and the things you have learned. Employing these same routines outside of alcohol treatment will help you to stay sober.

Keep End Goals in Mind

When you started alcohol treatment the common goal was probably just to stop drinking. Then you set small goals that will help you to work toward a larger overall goal such as stay sober for 90 days and rebuild my relationship with my child or spouse. Even after alcohol treatment it’s important that you continue to work toward your goals and continue to set goals as you go. You should have already developed a list of goals that you would like to accomplish when you were working with your counselor in alcohol treatment, now that you are out of treatment keep working toward those same goals and also toward new ones. If you fall off track, do the best you can to pick up the pieces and keep moving forward with your recovery.

More Treatment & Detox Articles

Why should we care about cannabis?

Approximately 4 per cent of the world’s adults – some 162 million people – use cannabis every year, making it the world’s most widely used illicit drug. In some countries, more than half of all young people have tried it. In spite of this high rate of usage, many basic facts about cannabis remain obscure…..

New Path For Cocaine Addiction Research

Cocaine is one of the oldest drugs known to humans, and its abuse has become widespread since the end of the 19th century. At the same time, we know rather little about its effects on the human brain or the mechanisms that lead to cocaine addiction. The latest article by Dr. Marco Leyton, of the….

Quit alcohol to lead a better life

Drinking alcohol has time and again proven to be hazardous for all. Several tragedies and unpleasant incidents can be credited to heavy drinking habits. Though it may seem difficult, the habit can be given up by following some simple and smart steps. Every Year, thousands die in alcohol-related tragedies – acute alcohol poisonings, car accidents,….

Just what is a binge drinker and how to get through to them

Just as governments in Australia and Britain are on the brink of introducing new measures to combat alcohol abuse and binge drinking, new research says that campaigns warning about the harmful effect of excessive alcohol consumption don’t work. The researchers say they fail to work because they are widely ignored, in particular by young people….

Extreme Drinking

Spring means a lot of things to thousands of students. For many high school and college students it means travel and extreme drinking. You don’t have to go far to see pictures of hard-partying teens and young adults on the internet. For them, binge drinking has become a dangerous badge of honor. But it comes….