In The News
Ever find your mind racing down a path you don’t want to travel?
Ever find your mind racing down a path you don’t want to travel? Catastrophizing about the future? Engaging mental gymnastics inside your head to debate points or events now irrelevant? Why do we torment ourselves so? My experience indicates the answer is this: automatic thinking. Sure, part of this emotional turmoil is related to post-acute withdrawal. But even for many of us with years of...
Metaphors of Recovery – 2/15/2015
So many principles of recovery....and life...cross my mind when I'm out hiking. Helps me maintain perspective. It's not just about the exercise and the fresh air and sunshine. Patience, nurture, faith, acceptance, healing - rebirth. The tree reminds me that the scars from a life of addiction can be channeled into something beautiful and enduring. The petroglyphs remind me that others have come...
Fitness Tips – Getting Started – 2/10/15
The best exercise is the one you want to do! While I want to encourage readers to get active in recovery, there are some important things to consider first, especially if you've recently stopped drugging and drinking. In early recovery we are more prone health and injury problems. This is because we been sedentary, malnourished, and (probably) smoking; and the drugs/alcohol caused damage to our...
Developing the Exercise Habit!
How can we develop new, productive exercise habits? We know that our old, drug-taking habits produced instantaneous, abundant neurotransmitter-cascade “rewards.” In fact, drugs provide approximately 10 times the neurochemical reward that “normal” healthy or desirable activities do (4). This was why it was so easy to get hooked. Those addiction-oriented pathways will be with us forever. But the...
Healthy Recovery Eating Tips
Remember, in early recovery, your body cannot tell the difference between drug/alcohol cravings and food cravings! Follow the following tips for success: Eat regularly. Do not skip breakfast or any other meal. Have five or six small meals per day. Example: breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner. Manage your cravings for sweets with fresh fruits such as apples, grapes,...
Some Days I Don’t Feel Like It, But I Go Anyway!
A real-life success story from a reader. This is a perfect example of how to get it done, keep it fresh and feel GREAT! ----- While I was in the military, I had to stay in shape or lose my job, so I worked exercise into my lifestyle. I tried to get a minimum 2 mile walk in Monday through Friday, by getting off the bus 2 miles before my house, and walking home. By religiously doing this I was...