Tag Archives: Recovery Resources

Inpatient Rehab for Addiction

Has your addiction left you feeling helpless with no way out? Has your loved one’s addiction made them unrecognizable? We understand what you are experiencing and are here to help! Harmony Ridge Recovery Center’s inpatient rehab for addiction program provides comprehensive care for individuals who are seeking help for their substance dependency. Our remarkable highly structured residential rehab program provides attentive and supportive medical and emotional attention during care while maintaining a calm and serene environment. Inpatient rehab for addiction is perfectly designed for those wishing to overcome their addiction in a longer-term holistic treatment setting. Take a minute to read what you need to know about inpatient rehab for addiction with Harmony Ridge Recovery Center.

What does Inpatient Rehab Mean?

Inpatient rehab is also called residential rehab because you live at the rehab facility. Inpatient rehab can be effective for people with severe problems with drugs or alcohol, and especially people who are dealing with other mental health conditions. Living at the rehab program facility helps you avoid the temptations and influences in your daily life that trigger your substance use. Living in a healthy environment supports your recovery.

Inpatient rehab treatment programs offer a high level of care, which often includes:

24-hour supervision and support in a safe environment.
Time away from your home environment to concentrate on your well-being.
Behavioral therapies (e.g., individual, family, group).
Medication-assisted therapy.
Medically assisted detoxification (detox).
Services to address any significant social, vocational, and legal issues.
Access to medical and mental health care services, when needed.

When is Inpatient Rehab for Addiction Necessary?

Choosing to change your relationship with drugs or alcohol is an essential first step toward recovery. But recovery is a process. A process that drug and alcohol rehab programs can help you through.

There are many types of substance use treatments, including detox, therapy, and counseling. These fit into two categories: outpatient and inpatient rehab. Your needs and the severity of your substance use problem will help determine which type of rehab is best for you. Both outpatient and inpatient rehab will help you stop using drugs or alcohol and reduce the risk of using them again after your recovery. One type of rehab is not better or more effective than the other. What’s different about them is the setting and what works best for you and your personal situation.

Preparing For Inpatient Rehab

It’s important to properly prepare for rehab. There’s no set amount of time needed to prepare for treatment. It is important to set an entry date for rehab and to have affairs settled before that date.

Some of the things to take care of before entering rehab include:

Talking to your employer
Finding living arrangements for children or other family members
Planning how to get to and from the rehab center
Finding out what personal items are allowed

What to Pack for Inpatient Rehab for Addiction

One concern you might have is what to pack for your stay. A quick look at your chosen treatment center’s website can provide you with a basic list of what to bring and what to leave at home, but there are certain items you can bring to make your stay more like home.

Comfortable Clothes and Sneakers: This one might seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised by the number of people who treat rehab like a fashion show or a night out at the club. Tight, revealing clothes send out the wrong message and can be a major distraction, hindering your ability to get work done. Once you get settled in, chances are you’ll just want to rock sweatpants every day, anyway. Additionally, a lot of treatment centers take you to the gym, and it’s pretty difficult to work out in tight jeans and high heels.
Paper List of Important Phone Numbers: This is pretty self-explanatory. Odds are you aren’t going to have access to your personal phone to get any numbers out of it that you may need. Before you check in, take a few minutes to jot down your important contacts.
Alcohol-Free Toiletries:Believe it or not, things like hand sanitizer and hairspray are high on the contraband list. These prohibited items contain denatured alcohol, which is ethyl alcohol before it’s chemically altered.
More Cigarettes Than You Typically Smoke: If you smoke one pack per day in the outside world, chances are you’ll smoke more in rehab. Even though a large portion of your day will be taken up by group therapy, individual therapy, meetings, and recreational activities, there’s still plenty of downtime. People frequently find themselves outside socializing and smoking when there’s not much going on.

How Our Residential Treatment Program Works

Residential drug and alcohol rehab begins with a full evaluation of each patient’s needs in regards to their specific circumstances. After an evaluation is fully performed, an evidence-based and outcome-focused treatment plan is prepared for each individual. These plans are uniquely created and modified by our licensed and experienced clinical and medical staff. Our patients will receive care and treatment according to these plans throughout their time with us.

Operating under 24-hour medical and clinical supervision, our residential treatment program encompasses a daily schedule for our patients to follow. Each patient will begin their day within their specified living quarters and then be able to head out to our clinical building for their daily treatment to commence.

Each patient is given the opportunity to follow a highly structured individualized program designed to specifically treat the underlying causes that have fueled their addiction. This typically requires individuals to be open about their triggers, environmental stressors, coping mechanisms, or underlying dual diagnosis. By openly communicating and addressing these concerns in a place where safety and security are of the highest priority, the rehabilitation process begins to take shape.

During The Day Inpatient Rehab for Addiction

Throughout the day, during periods of downtime, patients are welcomed and encouraged to enjoy a variety of outdoor activities, take a swim in our indoor pool, or even take some private time to reflect upon the day’s activities, lessons, accomplishments, and words of encouragement.

Since rehabilitation is a unique journey, patients respond to sharing and learning during treatment in different ways. In some cases, patients will take time alone, appreciating the time to reflect silently. Other times, the comfort and support of their peers will be something to look forward to in between therapy or group sharing sessions.

What is the Difference Between Inpatient and Residential Treatment?

Though the concepts of inpatient and residential treatment often overlap, the term inpatient sometimes can reference a more clinically intensive treatment versus residential settings. Both require the person to stay overnight in the facility with monitoring and support, though inpatient efforts may focus more on medically managing detoxification, addressing certain medical issues, and providing services for emotional, behavioral, or mental health conditions.

With this distinction in mind, a period of inpatient detox and medical withdrawal management may be shorter than the full length of stay in ongoing residential treatment. Though treatment times will vary for each individual, such a period of relatively intensive inpatient treatment might be expected to last from a few days to a few weeks. On the other hand, residential care may more commonly last from a few weeks to several months depending on the needs of the individual.

Get the Right Mindset for Success

Early recovery is a time that involves many emotions for many reasons. Withdrawal symptoms, insomnia, major life changes, nutritional deficiencies, facing past traumas, and cravings make early recovery very difficult. The recovering addict is working hard to get sober, but the first couple of months are full of anxiety, fear, anger, sadness, and loss. Recovery is hard work, and it is a choice that must be made and worked toward every single day. Individuals often end up feeling exhausted both mentally and physically as they work toward getting sober and learning healthy ways to cope with negative emotions. However, it is possible to stay positive even on the hard days.

Even those who attend rehab of their own volition will sometimes develop toxic attitudes. They may believe that they’re different from the other patients, and that they don’t really need to bother with all of the counseling, group work, and other therapies. However, this kind of bad mindset leads to unsuccessful recoveries. It’s crucial that addicts approach their recoveries with open minds and positive attitudes.

Inpatient Rehab for Addiction with Harmony Ridge Recovery

Making the decision to incorporate Inpatient Rehab for Addiction on your road to recovery could be the best decision you make for yourself or a loved one today. Following and learning the methods used by so many patients who have achieved and maintained their life with sobriety can make all the difference in how you view your rehabilitation.

Being provided with the care you deserve in a facility like Harmony Ridge, surrounded by the encouragement of trained medical staff as well as a community of your peers, will only add to the quality of life that is on the road ahead. Don’t wait another minute to reach out and get the information you need to become a part of our rehabilitation and recovery community. We look forward to sharing in your recovery journey toward a life of sobriety, giving you the courage to leave addiction behind everyday moving forward. Contact us today.

Self-Care and Recovery

You’ve likely heard the phrase, “You can’t pour from an empty cup” before but how often do you apply this to your life? The only way to be at peace with yourself is by embracing the numerous responsibilities and taking some time to focus on what is essential. This includes self-care and recovery.

If you think you’ve been hearing more about self-care now, you’re right. One indicator: According to Google Trends, the number of searches for “self-care” has more than doubled since 2015. Although prioritizing self-care may sound like common sense, especially if you’re considering longevity, it’s often the first thing to go when we find ourselves in challenging situations, whether because of bad health, a financial crisis, job loss, divorce, or, in our current situation, the COVID-19 pandemic. This is why it is important to keep it top of mind and not an after-thought, especially when we find ourselves in challenging times during recovery.

Although most treatment programs provide aftercare services, such as referrals to community resources, individuals in recovery are ultimately responsible for their own lives. Support is important, but self-care is essential. In the end, we are responsible for our own happiness and sobriety. Today we will take a closer look at self-care and recovery, and what you can do to cultivate a self-care practice that works best for YOU!

Why is Self-Care Important?

Addiction negatively affects your mood, motivation, self-perception, and sense of well-being. Most people initially abuse drugs or alcohol to reduce stress, cope with negative emotions, escape boredom, or reward themselves. Once an addiction develops, stress, negative emotions, and boredom become major triggers for using. Burning the candle at both ends, so to speak, comes with significant consequences, which may include but are not limited to burnout, depression, anxiety, resentment, and a whole host of other negative implications.

On the other hand, a high level of self-care helps you maintain a stable mood, and it leads to more energy and motivation and better-coping abilities. Just one small act of self-care can snowball, leading to other healthy decisions that give you self-confidence and improve your sense of health and well-being.

H.A.L.T for Self-Care and Recovery

The very definition of halt means to stop. This halt acronym is often used in recovery to serve as a reminder to stop, take a minute and evaluate what you are feeling that could be triggering a craving or urge to use substances. Understanding your thoughts and emotions will help you to counteract an urge when it arises. Ask yourself, are you hungry, angry, lonely, or tired (H.A.L.T)?

The feelings of hunger, anger, loneliness, or tiredness are often common triggers that could lead to relapse. These are oftentimes the best places to start when considering how to provide yourself with the self-care you need during recovery. It seems simple enough, but we are susceptible to self-destructive behaviors when these basic needs are not met, including relapse. Fortunately, hunger, anger, loneliness, and tiredness are easy to address and serve as a warning system before things reach a breaking point.

Using “H.A.L.T.” in everyday life is one way everyone, recovering addicts and those who have never touched a drug, can get along better. By checking ourselves when we’re hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, we can step outside of ourselves for a moment and realize what we need to do to get ourselves into a positive frame of mind.

Granted, “H.A.L.T.” isn’t the answer to all of life’s situations, but you might be surprised to find out how well it works in your own life. It’s simple, but that’s OK — sometimes, it’s the simple things in life that keep addicts clean and all of us sane, just for today.

How to Create a Self-Care and Recovery Practice

Recovery is about so much more than just getting sober. Once we put down the drugs or alcohol, we must find a new way to live. We are undergoing a profound transformational process – one that largely centers on self-care. Also, taking care of your health helps to prevent a reoccurrence or relapse. One of the primary objectives of recovery is to celebrate ongoing, continuous abstinence from drugs and alcohol. You will greatly increase your chances of sobriety when you practice self-care.

Physical Self-Care

Get Up and Get Moving

You don’t have to weight train or run a marathon. A simple walk to the store or an occasional bicycle ride will create “feel-good” endorphins and relieve stress. And remember, exercise and fun are not mutually exclusive. Join a recreational sports league or try surfing. The possibilities are endless.

Get Enough Sleep

Sleep affects our mood and how we view each day. You’re much more inclined to keep a positive attitude during the day after a full night of restful sleep. Although life happens, even after 11 p.m., keeping a regular sleep pattern can be very beneficial, physically and emotionally.

Proper Eating Habits

In recovery, it may be tempting to swap old bad habits with new ones, such as eating junk food. However, eating well will give you more energy and promote a positive outlook on life.

Mental Self-Care

Practice Mindfulness

You hear a lot about mindfulness in recovery, but what does being mindful really mean? Mindfulness is the practice is being aware of physical and mental sensations. Staying in the present moment can be difficult, and even uncomfortable at times. Sticking with the thoughts and feelings you’re experiencing in the moment gives you a chance to get in touch with what’s really going on inside you, and allows you to explore emotions and thoughts that you avoided when you were in active addiction.

Practice Compassionate Self-Care and Recovery

When developing compassion, it’s typically easiest to start with yourself. Even if you don’t like yourself very much, at least you genuinely desire your own happiness. Many people struggle with guilt and shame as they try to recover from addiction and developing self-compassion will definitely help with that.

Practice Forgiveness

As you work to correct your wrongs, be gentle on yourself, and try to do good for others whom you may have hurt in the past. Sometimes all you have to do is ask for forgiveness. If you can speak with those who you hurt when actively addicted to drugs or alcohol, ask if they can forgive you. Be careful of your actions and only speak to those who would not be hurt more by your presence or communication.You should also continue to work on forgiving yourself – remember you are still learning and that patience is very important in the recovery journey. Be patient with yourself, allow yourself grace and forgiveness as you heal.

Emotional and Social Self-Care

Social Situations

Relationships are important and social self-care means taking time to nurture the relationships you have. You may practice social self-care by spending quality time with individuals who uplift and support you. These people can be your friends, family or even your sponsor. If you’re trying to escape negative social circles that don’t support your sobriety and recovery, social self-care might mean looking outwards to create new, meaningful friendships and connections. A few ways to do this may be to join a 12 step recovery group, volunteer at special events or sign up for new activities.

Emotional

Emotional self-care is important for both your internal and external health. You can take care of your emotional well-being by processing and verbalizing feelings with trusted confidants. You can also release negative emotions through an expressive art form, such as listening to music, singing, drawing or dancing. It also helps to avoid situations and people that cause you undue emotional distress, practice setting boundaries, and learn to be in touch with your thoughts and feelings. Release your emotions rather than bottling them in. You can move through painful experiences that may otherwise cause you to suffer.

Self Care and recovery Boundaries

Before getting sober, you probably had a group of people you spent a lot of time with that either encouraged your drug and alcohol use or used with you. When you make the decision to get sober, it can affect the relationships you have with those people. As difficult as it is, cutting off communication with these people is going to help you resist the temptation to go back to using your drug of choice. Self-care is about protecting yourself and your sobriety.

Being open about the fact that you’re living a sober lifestyle is important because it lets people around you know that you aren’t going to be drinking or using drugs with them anymore. Setting boundaries regarding who you spend time with, where you go, and what you do will help you avoid situations that could set you up for a relapse. In sobriety, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to form new relationships with people who are also in recovery!

We Are in This Together – Self-Care and Recovery

Addiction is isolating, but you are not alone. Do not be afraid to ask for help. Recovery is a lifelong process, and there will be challenges throughout your recovery. Take the first step toward freeing yourself from the chains of addiction, and contact us at Harmony Recovery Center.

Mindfulness in Recovery

You may be wondering how mindfulness can help therapeutically. You are not alone — the reaction of many people, when introduced to mindfulness, is “Is that it? How is that going to help me quit or make me feel better?” How does mindfulness in recovery help? Is mindfulness necessary for a successful recovery? Mindfulness is a state of mental awareness and focus that has been traditionally used in meditation practices, and has recently become popular as an element of certain types of cognitive-behavioral therapy, such as the therapy found during and after drug and alcohol addiction treatment.

Although mindfulness is not difficult in itself, it requires a certain amount of self-discipline to focus only on the present moment, and not to get caught up in thoughts about the past and the future. For this reason, exercises in mindfulness can be helpful in giving a focus to mindfulness.

Examples of mindfulness exercises are the raisin exercise, in which you take your time looking at, smelling, listening to, and eventually eating a raisin, and the body scan, in which you work through your entire body, just feeling the sensations of each body part. Read on to learn some helpful steps to achieve mindfulness in recovery.

“My mind is full. Does this mean I’m mindful?”

We all have a lot going on inside our minds at any given moment. Thoughts about money, family, work, traffic, what to make for dinner. The list is never ending. But this isn’t ‘mindfulness’ In understanding what mindfulness is, it helps to practice mindfulness yourself. When you are mindful, you are aware of both your external surroundings and your inner experience, including your own responses to what is going on around you, in the present moment. The goal of mindfulness is to become aware without becoming attached to anything you are experiencing. Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, through a gentle, nurturing lens. During a mindfulness practice, the goal isn’t to remove all unwanted thoughts. Rather the goal is to acknowledge the thoughts for what they are, and allow them to come and go freely.

How Mindfulness in Recovery Helps With Addiction

One of the most basic ways it makes people feel better is by slowing things down, so you aren’t rushing from one activity to another, or even one thought to another. By quieting the mental chatter, you can achieve a sense of tranquility that is often the reason people choose to use drugs such as alcohol, marijuana, and opiates.

Another way that mindfulness in recovery can make you feel better is by allowing you to start to notice many wonderful sensory experiences that occur in everyday life that we often don’t notice. When you allow the beauty of the world around you to fill your consciousness, the world doesn’t seem like such a bad place to be.

1. Be Present

“Be where you are; otherwise you will miss your life.” The Buddha

Is it possible to be somewhere without actually being there? Of course it is. It’s the way most of us live every day. We’re talking to our kids or watching TV or sitting in a meeting, but our mind’s a million miles away. Usually, we’re feeling stressed about something that happened in the past or feeling anxiety about what might happen in the future. Or we’re distracted by our phones, our attention splintered by the relentless urge to type, tap, or swipe.

Only rarely do we focus on the present moment. Yet when our attention is continually somewhere else, we go through life on auto-pilot, never really seeing the richness of life or fully realizing our own potential. It’s like living with blinders on.

Mindfulness in recovery is about being present, increasing our awareness, and opening our eyes to the reality of now. This moment.

2. Recognize Your Thoughts as Thoughts

“Don’t believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that—thoughts.” Allan Lokos

Most of us give little attention to the thoughts that fill our head. They’re just sort of there, like background noise we’ve learned to tune out. But whether we notice them or not, our thoughts are the driving force behind our feelings and actions. What we think about ourselves and others determines how we carry ourselves in the world, how we interact with people around us, and how effective we are at managing our life.

It’s easy to confuse our thoughts with reality—to believe that what we think is always true. In fact, we’re all prone to false assumptions, misconceptions, and unfounded beliefs.

Mindfulness in recovery teaches us to become aware of our thoughts, empowering us to let go of harmful ideas that work against us.

3. Focus on your breath.

This is the easiest, and one of the most effective ways to practice mindfulness. Your breath is ever-present, and ALWAYS available to you. You can choose to focus on your breath each time you feel yourself getting upset, or you can choose to take a moment each day (typically morning) to set a time for a few minutes, close your eyes, and count your breath. Notice the sensation of the air entering your lungs, and leaving your lungs. Notice how your body starts to ease and soften as you take each breath in and out. Focusing on our breath allows us to return to the present moment and recognize everything is okay right here and now.

4. Practice gratitude.

“Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more.” Melody Beattie

Gratitude has been known to completely shift the lives of those in long term recovery. Oftentimes, when first getting sober, mentors will suggest writing a daily gratitude list, and for good reason. Gratitude is one of the most overlooked tools we have in long term recovery, but its a key component for mindfulness in recovery. It doesn’t cost any money to be grateful and the benefits of practicing gratitude are exponential. According to studies, writing a daily gratitude list not only helps with physical health, but dramatically improves our emotional and spiritual health as well, which are key factors in living a well-rounded, full life clean and sober. Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D., a leading gratitude researcher, has conducted multiple studies on the link between gratitude and overall well being.

Gratitude effectively increases happiness and reduces depression. In order to practice gratitude, simply write a list each day of 5-10 things you are truly grateful for. This list could start out with simple things like “health, family, recovery”.

5. Forgiveness of self and others for mindfulness in recovery.

“Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it.” Maya Angelou

Let’s face it, every single person has been presented with difficult life challenges that cause us to hold on to resentment towards ourselves and others. In recovery, forgiveness is not an option. We inevitably find that if we cannot find a way to forgive, we will face a moment where we will want to pick up that first drink or drug to ease our pain of the past. Letting go of hard feelings is one of the most important mindfulness skills we can learn in recovery. If we want to sustain long term recovery and our relationships we built, we must learn to let go of the past hurts. Forgiveness allows us to reframe our experience to find the gift in any situation.

Forgiveness is a process where we choose, in each moment, to let go of the past. It is not an overnight process, but one that can take weeks, months or even years to fully let go of hurt. To conquer mindfulness in recovery, you can practice forgiveness by writing a letter to the person you feel harmed you and choosing to read it to a third party, preferably a therapist or licensed substance abuse counselor. We do not advocate writing a forgiveness letter and sending it to the person who you feel harmed you but instead process your emotion safely with someone who is emotionally unattached to the situation.

Mindfulness in Recovery with Harmony Ridge Recovery Center

The more you practice being mindful, the more beneficial it will be for your mental health, and it does take time to see the full benefits. Science has proven that our brains can habitually implement any behavior that we practice frequently for eight consecutive weeks. So what may take concerted effort to start with can soon become a natural part of your daily routine. To learn more about mindfulness in recovery, or any step of the addiction and recovery process contact our team at Harmony Ridge Recovery Center.