Topic: maintaining sobriety

Once the support of the treatment program no longer surrounds you, dealing with life’s challenges can be overwhelming. That’s when tools for recovery count.

Relapse doesn’t mean failure, but it does mean a great deal of pain and effort.

Motivation springs from external as well as internal sources. Our internal desire for change is rarely enough to get us all the way through to our stated goals.

“But what if…?” Coming to terms with the reality of lifelong abstinence is one of the difficult tasks of early recovery.

You can be firm and still leave room for someone in authority to make an exception.

Some clients are so cooperative they’ll do just about anything… except stop drinking.

The trick is to find another reward to replace the one that’s no longer available. For instance, if we’re no longer going to have a cigarette with coffee after dinner, what other reward could we substitute in its place?

He still isn’t willing to talk about me or my feelings. The kids and I went through three years of pain waiting for him to reach the point where he admitted he needed help