Staying connected is extremely important while on your recovery journey. While connection is essential at the beginning of your journey, you will find it helpful throughout your lifetime. As you are thriving and growing in your recovery, you need to stay connected with your support system, peers, support groups, and other communities that contribute to your health and wellness. When you finish your treatment program, your recovery journey starts with a lifelong need for community and connection in order to stay healthy and sober.
Dimensions of Recovery
Several factors contribute to your success during recovery. When you started treatment, you restored your health and learned to manage your disease. You found hope and empowerment. Once you rejoined the world, the first step was finding a safe place to live that supported your sobriety. Finally, sobriety was a fact of your life. You determined your purpose in life, engaged in meaningful activities, and found a new community, which helped build permanent peer support and a life free of substances.
Exercise Supports Sobriety
Once you are maintaining your sobriety, exercise is a fabulous tool to keep in your toolbox. Exercise has numerous benefits, including:
- Physical and mental healing
- Healthy distraction to keep your mind busy
- Enhances your mood
- Keeps stress at bay
- Aids in community building
- Helps you sleep
- Aids in resisting cravings
Why We Need Community
Everyone needs community, humans need other human beings, and isolation is bad for your mental health. Humans are social animals and crave connection with other humans. When you surround yourself with like-minded peers, they support your journey and help you stay on track. Community also offers ways for you to give back and enhance your life along with other people’s lives.
Community can also support self-care. Self-care is essential to good mental and physical health. Remember that self-care is not selfish; it is vital to sobriety. Practicing self-care within a like-minded community provides you with peer support in a safe environment.
How to Find Community
Finding a new sober community can feel overwhelming when you are relatively new to a sober lifestyle. Some ideas to explore include the following:
- Develop new hobbies
- Seek out alumni care and join support groups
- Change environments and avoid the old ones
- Develop a recovery plan and stick to it
- Volunteer in your community
- Join a club that supports a sober activity
- Get creative — art or music is a great place to grow
- Become mindful – yoga and meditation are great ways to meet people
- Be grateful – an attitude of gratitude invites people into your life
- Take a class to learn something new
- Travel with sober peers and find new communities together
Keys for Successful Recovery
The following list of suggestions can help you to achieve your goal of long-term sobriety:
- Be honest with yourself and others
- Learn to relax naturally
- Practice gratitude
- Seek peer support
- Help others
- Avoid triggers — places and people who are actively using
- Exercise
- Attend group meetings and therapy
- Practice mindfulness and meditation
- Avoid being hungry, angry, lonely, or tired
What Does a Community of Peers Offer?
Peer support brings people into your life and makes all the difference in your success. By creating a community of peers, you can create a substance-free life with peers who understand and support what you are trying to do to improve your life. Peers who understand contribute to your overall health and well-being.
By being part of a community of people who have also embraced sobriety, you have people who contribute positively to lifestyle changes and who will hold you accountable. Being in a community also allows you to support others and prevents isolation.
Online Communities
Online support groups should not be discounted; these groups offer a way for people to fit a recovery community into their life without leaving home. Online groups can also help people avoid social anxiety. Some helpful online communities include:
- Self-Management and Recovery Training (SMART)
- Women for Sobriety (WFS)
- In The Rooms
- LifeRing Recovery
- Recovery Dharma
Recovery Apps
While apps do not replace treatment, they do support it. Apps can help by providing support 24/7 and can help people in recovery track being sober, create new habits, and manage cravings. The world is a digital place now, and these apps create support in this new age of recovery. You can find 12-Step meetings and meet people you may not have met otherwise. You may find the following apps helpful:
- Pear Therapeutics’ Pear reSET-O Recovery App
- I Am Sober Sobriety Tracking App
- SoberWorx Directory App
- Recovery Today Magazine
- Sober Grid Social Networking App
- Quitzilla Sobriety Tracker and Motivation Reminders
- SoberTool Manage Cravings Tool
- 12-Step AA Companion App
Finding Your Community
A community can help you develop trust in yourself and others, and having like-minded peers you trust provides an outlet for communication in new ways. New activities and experiences build new skills which continue to develop your success. Change is hard but worth the work. Recovery is a gift; it is a life of gratitude and peace.
Support during substance use disorder (SUD) recovery is vital to success. Support helps individuals in recovery to avoid isolation and facilitates wellness as well as connection to peers and mental health care providers. Support is vital during treatment but is also essential once someone leaves a treatment facility. Playing an active role in your community makes you stronger and supports others within your community. Your commitment to sobriety is strengthened by helping others and reaching out with compassion to people who are just beginning their own journeys of sobriety. When you help others, you are helping yourself by taking the focus off yourself and putting it on someone else who needs help. The Guest House has alumni services available that support your path to sobriety and good health. Call The Guest House today for more information on how we can support you in your recovery at (855) 483-7800.