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About a substance abuse programmes
Let’s face it. In the 12 steps, especially step ten we focus on self-discipline, honesty and integrity. These are foreign terms to many caught up in the web of drug and alcohol addiction. Good substance abuse programmes teach integrity and honesty in place of these old behaviors. But to do so they need to be able to connect to their clients on a personal and emotional level.
So when you or a loved one is overwhelmed by alcohol and drug abuse, we know that you want help-fast. You’re in an emotional tailspin, and need people and a place you can trust. You want assurance that the substance abuse program you choose will offer the best chance of success. You want compassionate experts and a hassle-free process to help make one of the hardest decisions a whole lot easier. That’s what we do with our various substance abuse programmes. We don’t only teach people about addiction. We teach them the art of living and of loving. We connect to higher order principles like integrity, honor and hope. This is the journey we provide at Pathways Plett Rehab Centre in South Africa. It matters not if you suffer from depression, weigh issues, or an array of addictions. It is healing you need and healing you will get! It is also a process. There is no quick fix! Take a quick look at some of the foundations that we go through at Pathways Plett Rehab Centre. These foundations underlie our client’s individual treatment programmes.
Growing and healing in recovery
Self-discipline is essential to our recovery through our substance abuse programmes. When we were using, we were self-seeking and self-absorbed. We always took the easy way out, giving in to our impulses, ignoring any opportunity for personal growth. If there was anything in our lives that required a regular commitment, chances are that we only followed through if it wasn’t too hard, if it didn’t get in the way of our self-indulgence, or if we happened to feel like it.
The self-discipline of recovery taught in substance abuse programmes calls on us to do certain things regardless of how we feel. We need to go to meetings regularly even if we’re tired, busy at work, having fun, or filled with despair; we need to go regularly even when – especially when -we re feeling hostile toward the demands that recovery makes on us. We go to meetings, call our sponsor, and work with others because we have decided we want recovery in NA, and those things are the actions that will help assure our continued recovery. Sometimes we’re enthusiastic about these activities. Sometimes it takes every bit of willingness we possess to continue with them. Sometimes they become so woven into our daily existence, we’re hardly aware that we’re doing them.
The principle of integrity
The principle of honesty is one of the first things taught in our substance abuse programmes. It originates in Step One, and is brought to fruition in Step Ten. We are usually nothing less than amazed at the range and depth of our honesty by this point in our recovery. Where before we may have had honest hindsight, able to see our true motives long after a situation was over, we are now able to be honest with ourselves, about ourselves, while the situation is still occurring.
Hearing about he principle of integrity in our substance abuse programmes for the first time can be quite complex, but it is integrity, more than anything else, that commands our ability to practice other principles. In fact, integrity is knowing which principles we need to practice in a given situation, and in what measure. For instance, we’re standing outside a meeting one night, and happen to be part of a group that begins gossiping about someone else in the program. Let’s say they’re discussing the affair our best friend’s spouse is having, and we know it to be true because we heard it from our best friend the previous night.
Learning through our substance abuse programmes about knowing what to do in this situation will probably take every ounce of integrity we possess. So which spiritual principles do we need in this situation? Honesty? Tolerance? Respect? Restraint? It’s probably our first impulse to rush in, condemning the gossip because we know how much it would hurt our friend to have such private matters discussed publicly. But by doing so, we may confirm the gossip’s truth and so hurt our friend more, or we may end up self-righteously humiliating the people involved in the gossip. Most of the time, it isn’t necessary to prove we have integrity by confronting a situation we don’t approve of. There are a couple of things we could do in this situation. We could either change the subject, or we could excuse ourselves and walk away. Either of these choices would send a subtle message about our feelings, and at the same time, allow us to be true to our own principles and spare our friend as much as possible.
One of the most wonderful things about substance abuse programmes is that the more we work them, the less we find ourselves in the wrong as often. When we come to a substance abuse programme, most of us have never been able to have any kind of long-term relationship, certainly not any in which we resolved our conflicts in a healthy and mutually respectful way. Some of us had raging fights with people and, once they were over, never spoke of the underlying problems that caused the fights. Some of us went to another extreme, never disagreeing at all with the people who were supposed to be our closest friends and relatives. It seemed easier to keep our distance than to risk creating a conflict that we may then have had to deal with.
Through the journey of learning higher or spiritual principles in our substance abuse programmes, one learns a freedom that is unlike any we’ve ever experienced before. It becomes so much more natural for us to admit when we are wrong that we wonder why we ever found it so terrifying.