How to Maintain Your Sobriety and Avoid Relapse

How to Maintain Your Sobriety and Avoid Relapse

It's time to put as much emphasis on staying clean and sober after graduating from a rehabilitation center as it is for getting clean and sober while being an in-house patient.

Light and sound technology has the ability to help control addictive behaviors, to help lay the foundations for a positive mental and emotional attitude, and for giving the recovering addict instant access for overcoming that stinking thinking thought pattern that strikes at any time, anywhere. 

 

If rehabilitation programs put stronger emphasis on relapse prevention you would see less failure rates among rehab graduates, which in turn would improve the credibility of their rehab programs. After all, maintaining your sobriety is a lifelong endeavor.

Here is an example of why I personally believe a stronger emphasis should be placed on post-rehab relapse prevention: When I went through rehab, twelve of us were going to graduate within days of each other. We felt a common bond, a camaraderie that we all wanted to have continue past our stay at the rehab center. Within a year, ten of those graduates stopped communicating with Terri and me. Two had died and eight reverted to their old ways. They forgot one of the basic rules for staying sober: change your daily routine. Soon after, Terri disappeared, having kept her return to alcohol a secret. I was the only remaining sober graduate. What enabled me to maintain my sobriety? What caused me to succeed when all my beloved rehab companions failed? Once I was home I began a daily routine of enjoying an alpha or theta brainwave frequency session on my light and sound instrument. None of the other graduates used light and sound stimulation after leaving rehab. 

 

I firmly believe that having a light and sound instrument at my immediate disposal to use when those ‘stinking thoughts' started infiltrating my mind, my thought processes, and my mental and emotional disposition made all the difference in the world. I was the only one to use a light and sound unit out of our graduating class of twelve, and I am the only one still sober, still alive. I don't care how rehab administrators or therapists feel about that statement, because I know it, firmly believe it to be the one variable that helped me maintain my sobriety whereas my rehab friends, who did not have access to light and sound instruments - failed.

Word of my successful stint at rehab made its way through my social network with several confiding in me of their addictions. Besides those with drinking problems, some were trying to kick pain pills, others had cocaine problems and others were mired in gambling debts. Some thankfully entered rehab while others still have rock bottom to hit. And the ones that knew they had a problem and wanted to be proactive purchased light and sound machines to help them relax, cope with their anxieties, and focus on overcoming their addictive behaviors.

As beneficial as the treatment patients receive while staying at a rehab center is, most rehabs tend to turn their patients loose after fulfilling their time at the center, telling them good luck and to call if they feel setbacks approaching. In addition, shouldn't rehab graduates have the option to be given tools to take home with them for maintaining their sobriety and avoiding relapse?