Dealing with grief is a part of life that recovering addicts can learn to overcome while working their 12-step recovery program.
Grief can make recovery more difficult, but it doesn’t mean you have to give up on changing your life for the better. It’s important to know that grief is only temporary and that it affects recovery, requiring you to adjust your 12-step program. With extra support, you can deal with grief in a positive, healthy way.
Grief Is Temporary
Sober living requires focus and positivity, but the untimely death of a loved one or some other unfortunate event can cause a flood of negative emotions to wash over you. While the pain may seem unbearable, it’s only temporary. Sharp emotional pains will fade away to dull aches and, eventually, distant memories. However, addiction recovery is an emotionally challenging time, especially toward the middle and later stages when withdrawals set in. This makes it important to adjust your routine for grieving periods.
Grief’s Impact on Recovery
Addiction recovery is a healing process that consists of physical and psychological therapy. Grief can affect your energy levels, making it difficult to get motivated to work out. It can also make it difficult to focus on your triggers and enablers, causing you to lose your ability to change your habits. The negative, painful emotions associated with grief can be overcome, though, and you can make it through recovery.
Getting Extra Support
You can supplement your 12-step recovery program with extra support in the form of family, faith and friends. You can also have additional one-on-one sessions with counselors and medical experts. Your addiction recovery and sober living goals can be fulfilled; you just need extra support to deal with the grief.
If you’re in recovery or are thinking about entering a program, do not let grief get in your way. Remember that life is full of ups and downs and that sticking with a 12-step recovery program will make things better, even if your grief seems unbearable.
Yeah, I do agree. When I was clean for a few 24 hours, my father died. With the help of the program and my higher power I could conciously feel through my time of grief. Unpleasant feeling, lots of tears and regrets, but I managed to stay clean during this hard time.