Steps 6-15 continued….
6. Keep a record of your drinking
Now you have set your ultimate goals, good. The process is in full swing and you are making progress. If you had reason to have a taste of your favorite brews it will do you well to keep a record of how much, when, why and who you drink with, noting if u had desires to take more or not and generally how you reacted to your new lifestyle and methods. This will help you know what instances or people to avoid for the benefit of the overall success of the recovery process. It will also help to know how to control your desires to cross certain thresholds.
7. Write down your experiences
Document how you feel after drinking. People feel different ways after drinking. Most people have hangovers for long hours. It makes them feel anxiety or a sense of guilt coupled with illness, headaches and dizziness. Hangovers naturally wear off with time but can be aided by proper eating, getting enough sleep, drinking lots of water. By documenting your experiences it could help your resolve in your whole process.
8. Calculate how much you spend on alcohol
You need to keep a well detailed record of how much money leaves your pockets every time you visit the bar. Run an estimate of your spending over a particular period, maybe a week or month and get the total amount. Think of better ways you can spend that money in that period. Ponder on the possibilities of starting a short project with that money or go on vacation or something of sorts. You can cut down the expensive drinks and go for cheaper ones and over time build your abstinence level.
9. Maintain a good diet
Proper eating is very essential in the fight against alcohol addiction. Malnutrition causes so many problems in heavy drinkers. Treat yourself to something healthy that you like. Eat well before you consider opening a drink, then the alcohol will be absorbed more slowly. Take a lot of water and fruits with vitamins and vegetables too. Generally eating right will help the recovery process and make you healthier.
10. Give yourself treats
You should give yourself rewards for your efforts to quit drinking, surely there is a form of healthy drinks that you crave at various times that you feel are not easily accessible like fruit juices. How about mango juice right? Reward yourself, maybe buy yourself a good juice maker machine from all the money you have saved from your reduced drinking until this moment. And maybe a popcorn maker too .just try to feel like you are winning. He who puts in great effort should be rewarded.
11. Engage in exercises
Routine exercises is very important to everyone’s mental and physical health. Exercises improves physical fitness, burns out built calories, frees up your muscles, improves heart functions, uses up amounts of energy to reduce obesity and the problems that comes with it like arthritis, bones and joint problems like osteoporosis. Generally, it gives you something to do because the more you sit around at your less busy periods, the more your cravings take hold. Research have shown that in the recovery process, sitting around and watching movies or television most of the time is a bad idea. Because at a sitting position there is less movement of your muscles in any exercising manner unlike going out for a morning walk or evening jogging. Hiring the services of private fitness trainer too can help as you will engage in beneficial calisthenics and aerobics.
12. Improve your sleep patterns
Getting enough rest and sleeping well in essential for a healthy living as it is the best cure for hyper stress levels. Many people drink to relive stress, creating more of a problems under the disguise of solving one. Others also believe alcohol itself helps them sleep well, this is a dangerous belief. It does put one to sleep quickly but the whole essence of sleep and rest in defeated because you do not wake up refreshed, rather you wake up feeling more anxious, nausea and other related feelings associated with hangover. Aside disturbing your breathing you also have interrupted sleep, because you tend to wake up at intervals to pee as your bowels are filled with liquids as your kidney tends to perform its function of osmoregulation. Work on your sleep patterns and sleep well. It is expected for a person to have at least 8hours of sleep.
13. Engage in meditations
Meditations help build your resolve and your sub conscious mind and helps to be generally more alert and relaxed. This is also a substitute way of reliving stress. Meditation gives almost same feeling being drunk gives which is an altered state of awareness or consciousness only that it is healthier. Engage in yoga sessions if possible, it helps your nerves relax and aids your transition process while getting in touch with your inner self.
14. Try not to feel helpless or powerless
As earlier pointed out, some people drink to feel some sense of power. You have to tell yourself that you are the boss. You can actually enter superman mode without drinking. It is very hard at first but having a clear mind about the fact that you are not helpless and powerless without a visit to the bar will help your recovery process.
15. Do not keep alcohol at home
This is very important as it can be a draw back in the recovery process. It is often said that “out of sight is out of mind” you have to start conditioning your mind to the current state of events. It is a life with reduced or virtually no presence of alcohol. It further reduces the temptation to undo your work thus far and helps to achieved structured goals that you have set based on limits and duration.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Follow this post for more tips (16-25)
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