Effectively Structure Your Time To Prevent Relaspe In Early Addiction Recovery



Posted: Sunday, November 08, 2009

by Peggy Ferguson
Peggy L. Ferguson, Ph.D.

Addiction usually brings with it a loss of daily structure and organization. An addict's lifestyle often becomes chaotic and haphazard, with the loss of work and other personal and family routines. Addicts often have eating and sleeping patterns that are outside of the mainstream, that also tend to help create the lifestyle of chaos and disorganization.

Many people go to inpatient treatment at the beginning of their recovery journey. Although there are many benefits of inpatient treatment, an important benefit, that is often underrated, is one of structure and organization. With its regimented wakeup time, limitations of when food will be served, daily treatment schedules that patients are expected to be engaged in, the treatment program creates structure and organization that addicts need in early recovery. Once the newly sober addict leaves treatment, they must re-create a similar level of structure and organization for their own daily life.

Having your time closely scheduled helps to reduce the obsessive thoughts about drinking/using. It is also difficult to become bored while tight scheduled in highly engaging activities. Boredom is correlated with thoughts about drinking/using. While in active addiction, the addict's life becomes prioritized by drug seeking, the actual use of the drug, and then getting over the use of the drug. Suddenly faced with the absence of these behaviors, the newly recovering person can struggle to try to figure out how to replace those old lifestyle behaviors with new, recovery enhancing behavior.

A new lifestyle must be developed that encourages and nurtures recovery. That often means a complete restructuring of a person's time, activities, and attention. It involves a massive change in routine.

A recovery lifestyle can be developed more easily by using a day planner, appointment book, or other similar tools to build a daily schedule of recovery enhancing activities. In this schedule should be counseling and sponsor appointments, planned personal and family events like parent/teacher conferences, date night, lunch with the girls, etc. Self-care activities, such as daily physical exercise, meditation time, personal relaxation routines, should also be scheduled in.

A highly structured daily routine can be very helpful in early recovery. It can help prevent relapse by reducing excessive free time which leaves a person's mind to wander. Reducing the free time can help to eliminate cravings and triggers. It can also reduce the opportunity to dwell on negative thoughts about self, others, and the world that feeds depression and anxiety.

Keeping a daily schedule also helps with prioritizing tasks and activities that recovering people are called upon to participate in. Sometimes people in recovery feel as if they are pulled in too many directions and are scheduled too tightly. In this case, a schedule that is too densely scheduled, serves to increase rather than decrease their stress. A schedule that is too densely committed, may serve as an indicator of the need to learn and practice assertiveness. It is important to learn to set and maintain appropriate boundaries in early recovery. Learning to say "no" to a request for your time, can be difficult, but with practice, can build or reinforce positive self esteem and self-confidence. Knowing that you are engaged in too many activities can also help you to improve your ability to prioritize. Without this ability, it is easy to become frustrated and overwhelmed, thereby increasing your stress.

Increased stress, whether from too much or too little structure can increase the probability of relapse if it is not appropriately managed. Balance is a skill not easily acquired in early recovery. Yet, people in early recovery must learn to effectively manage all the daily living tasks and recovery tasks that they have to do, one day at a time,

Copyright (c) 2009 Peggy L. Ferguson, Ph.D.

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The website of Peggy L. Ferguson, Ph.D., has a number of resources available for those seeking recovery from addictions, http://www.peggyferguson.com Ebooks on preventing relapse are also available for purchase and download at http://www.peggyferguson.com/ServicesProvided.en.htmlPeggy L. Ferguson, Ph.D., LADC, LMFT is a private practice marriage/family therapist and alcohol/drug counselor in Stillwater OK, and a writer, consultant, and trainer.
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