If you’re struggling with thoughts of suicide, PLEASE call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
We use our addictions in many different ways, often as coping mechanisms for our difficult life issues and as our means of self-medicating from our mental and emotional pain. Our drugs of choice can become our go-to remedies for our depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and other mental health issues. We use them to numb ourselves to the worry and fear we experience on a daily basis. We use them as our remedies from our stress at work, the unresolved issues in our relationships, and the contentious family dynamics we have a hard time dealing with. They become our instinctive, default personal remedies, but as we discover, they don’t remedy our problems, they only compound and worsen them over time.
Avoidance Tactics
When we’re using our drugs of choice to remedy the issues in our lives, we’re not actively addressing them. We’re avoiding them and distracting ourselves from them. We’re suppressing how we really feel about them. The more we do this, the more disconnected we become from ourselves, and the more our pain intensifies. We’re taking ourselves away from the work we’ll inevitably have to do to actually solve our problems. We’re not going to therapy. We’re not working on our relationship issues. We’re not considering rehab. We’re simply creating routines of avoidance with our drugs of choice being the default remedies we use to self-medicate.
Developing Our Consciousness
Over time we often become unaware of what it is we’re doing. Our addictive patterns become second nature, and we don’t even give them any thought or reflect on how harmful they’ve become. They become deeply ingrained in our consciousness as our way of life, as who we are. They become the routines and lifestyles we’re most familiar and comfortable with. They become our comfort zone, and it takes a great deal of consciousness to push ourselves out of that. It takes observing ourselves on a regular basis, becoming more mindful of our habits, and looking at the reasons why we’ve been using our drugs of choice as our go-to remedies. We have to ask ourselves why we’ve been self-medicating, what we’re numbing ourselves to, what wounds and pain we’re trying to escape. When we increase our awareness around ourselves and our addictions in these ways, we loosen the grip our drugs of choice have had over us. We stop unconsciously reaching for them without exploring the reasons why. We stop blinding ourselves to how self-destructive we’ve become, and we start asking ourselves why we’re doing this to ourselves.
At The Guest House Ocala, our experience with addiction and recovery makes us uniquely equipped to be able to understand the struggles you’re experiencing.
We’re here to help.
Call 855-483-7800 today for more information on our treatment programs.
theguesthouseocala.com
3230 Northeast 55th Avenue Silver Springs, FL 34488