Drug and Alcohol Detox Center

The decision to admit to an alcohol detox is one of the most critical, life-changing choices many people will ever make. Accepting the fact that you’ve lost the ability to control your drinking takes honesty. Believing that there is a happy life beyond alcohol for you takes open-mindedness. Calling our alcohol detox in Atlanta and checking yourself in for treatment takes willingness. Today let’s discuss “The HOW” of Alcohol Detox and Recovery.

Alcohol Detox Clears the Way for Healing to Occur

You might think of entering an alcohol detoxification program as clearing the land so you can lay your foundation. When we’re active in alcoholism, it can feel a lot like crashing through the wilderness with one shoe missing and no machete to clear the brush. So before we can establish any sort of recovery, we need to establish some order and peace for ourselves.

A comprehensive Atlanta alcohol detox center like ours can help you do that in several ways. First and foremost, abruptly stopping your alcohol consumption can be dangerous without medical supervision. This is very important to know. Alcohol is one of only three drugs that have potentially deadly withdrawal effects. The other two are benzodiazepines and barbituates. Detoxing from alcohol is generally quite safe, but it should always be done under medical supervision.

The HOW of Alcohol Detox and Recovery

The recovery community is chock full of handy acronyms and witty aphorisms, like “Progress, not perfection”. One of our favorite recovery acronyms is HOW, which stands for Honesty, Open-mindedness, and Willingness. In the intro, we gave just one example of the way these qualities are essential to begin your recovery journey by entering an Atlanta alcohol detox.

Metaphors are often helpful in recovery, for example, thinking of recovery as a journey. When recovery is just beginning, many people liken it to building a structure for protection. Building anything requires a bit of planning. It also means steps must be followed in a certain order to get the results you want. If you’ve never built something like this before, it just makes good sense to accept all the help you can get, right?

The HOW of recovery from Alcohol Use Disorder:

Honesty: Admitting the truth to yourself about your drinking to yourself and others.
Open-mindedness: Believing that you can have a happy life without alcohol.
Willingness: Finding the courage and gumption to accept help for your alcohol problem.

How Honesty Opens the Door to Recovery from Alcohol Addiction

Another one of those handy recovery aphorisms we mentioned is “We’re only as sick as our secrets”. Like many of the sayings in the rooms of recovery, this one is a reminder of the importance of honesty in recovery. The fact is, recovery can’t even hope to begin without some honesty.

When we’re caught up in the undertow of alcoholism, we rarely admit the truth of our predicament to ourselves or anyone else. We downplay our drinking. Make excuses for being hungover, late to work, or calling out sick. We explain away staggering bar tabs, blackouts, and even car accidents.

Recovery begins at that moment when we stop in our tracks and get honest with ourselves and someone else. Simply saying “I can’t stop drinking alone, I need help”. Those words unlock the door to a life beyond all that denial and pain.

A life we might scarcely be able to imagine in that moment. Where we can look ourselves in the eye every morning and feel good about ourselves and the day ahead. It all starts with admitting the truth and then preparing yourself to enter an alcohol detox to begin a new life.

Honesty:

Improves your self-esteem almost immediately.
Makes progress possible by clearing obstacles like denial.
Helps repair broken relationships.
Begins to reestablish trust with others.

Why Open-Mindedness is Essential to Beating Addiction

Honesty opens the door to recovery, but it’s still up to us to walk through it. So, we admitted that we couldn’t stop drinking on our own. God knows we’ve tried enough times. Tried cutting back. Tried switching to only beer or wine. Tried counting drinks or even telling bartenders not to serve us after a certain number. So what’s to make you even believe it’s possible to overcome this devil, alcohol?

That’s where open-mindedness enters the frame. A lot of people never go to an alcohol detox in Atlanta simply because they refuse to believe they can get sober and stay sober. They may say “Oh I know someone who went to AA and they’re still drinking” or come up with 1,001 other reasons not to try. That attitude has to be smashed. We mean it. Or else it just might keep you drinking for the rest of your life. Instead, why not find the courage to hope?

Open-mindedness, in this case, means daring to believe that you can get sober and stay sober by going to an alcohol detox and following a recovery lifestyle. We aren’t about to tell you that recovery from an alcohol use disorder is easy. It’s not. But, it’s more than possible. You can do it! It starts with being honest about the problem and having an open mind about the solution.

Open-Mindedness:

Means accepting that you don’t have all the answers.
Entails daring to hope and believe in a better future for yourself.
Involves ‘outside the box’ thinking and trying new things.
Makes progress possible by helping you see new ways forward.

Willingness During Alcohol Detox and Beyond

The final, and maybe most important component in our HOW of recovery is willingness. Because at the end of the day, honesty and an open mind can only take you so far. If you’re honest, then you’re admitting the truth about your relationship with alcohol to yourself and others. Honesty also means avoiding denial and excuses to continue drinking. Keeping an open mind will help lift your spirits, give you hope, and allow you to realize possibilities you hadn’t considered before.

But, as another one of those handy recovery aphorisms says, “Faith without works is dead”. In other words, being honest about your alcohol use and open-minded enough to believe there is a solution and that you can grab hold of it and find your way to sobriety isn’t enough to get you sober.

Recovery is an action, not just an idea. Thoughts and ideas don’t make things happen. Action does. And action doesn’t happen without willingness. So that willingness component is an absolute must here. That doesn’t mean you need to be a “glass is always half full” eternal optimist or a cheerleader. Few people are, especially in the beginning. It means you have to have just enough willingness to try and to keep trying. That’s it.

Willingness: