Finding Motivation for Addiction Recovery Motivational Enhancement

Also take care to ensure that you continue to meet with a counselor, or are taking time to speak with someone about recovery and your mental health. Having been on both sides of active addition, both the person using, and the person affected by a loved one using drugs and alcohol, Lucas has been involved in recovery since 2009. Using his personal experience and wealth of knowledge learned from professional development and immersion in the recovery field, he has spoken with thousands of families and helped hundreds of people attain long-term sobriety. In 2020, the opportunity presented to join in and start Illuminate Recovery. Understanding the importance of personalized treatment plans and the complex nature between substance abuse and co-occurring disorders, has helped Illuminate Recovery build a strong curriculum and a phenomenal staff.

A structured routine will help you achieve other goals in your life, whether they are short-term (like being on time for work) or long-term (like going back to school and changing careers). Some definitions of sobriety call for complete lifelong abstinence while others focus on developing coping mechanisms that can reduce harm with the understanding that setbacks are common. This article discusses what sobriety means and describes strategies that can support your long-term recovery.

Practice Healthy Living

Do not be discouraged by statistics or the negative comments/judgment made by society. Instead, focus on yourself and always remember that you are unique and special in your own way. You have the motivation inside of yourself to steer your life in a new and better direction, but in order to get there, you must believe that change is possible through your own individual strength. Participants felt that residents’ motivation was positively influenced by drug testing and the recovery residence zero-tolerance substance use policies. On average, residents stayed in the recovery residences for about 5 months. Treatment approaches designed to enhance patients’ intrinsic motivation include brief intervention, motivational interviewing, and motivational enhancement therapy (MET).

Motivation levels often fade when one has unfulfilled expectations or unrealistic goals. Remember that addiction recovery is a personal journey, where you have to confront difficult emotions, traumatic memories, and behavioral issues. So take as much time as you need, and take it slow; set your own small recovery goals and build healthy habits. No matter how serious the condition, lifelong recovery from addiction is possible for everyone. However, finding motivation for change can be tough, especially when overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, and real-life obligations. So, if you or a loved one is struggling with finding motivation for addiction recovery, San Antonio Recovery Center’s motivational enhancement therapy can work wonders for your mental and physical health.

Recovery Motivation

Participants were not able to explain potential reasons for factors that moderated benefits (size of the social network and level of involvement in 12-step groups). However, there were general comments about how the size of one’s social network changed over time. They felt early in recovery a large number persons in 12-step recovery meetings were considered to be part of one’s social network.

• The same variations in motivation have been found in other treatment-seeking populations, including inpatient substance abusers (Isenhart 1994) and polydrug users in methadone maintenance treatment (Belding et al. 1995).
• Individuals seeking treatment must ultimately be convinced not only of the dire threat their substance abuse presents to their health and livelihood, but also to the benefits of living a sober life.
• From the JourneyPure team where we get to explore a wide variety of substance abuse- and mental health-related topics.
• Keeping yourself going even when you feel exhausted or frustrated is no easy task.

Our study findings suggest that understanding motivation in SLHs requires a broader conceptualization. First, motivation exists at different levels, including individual, interpersonal, and household. One way to increase motivation is to facilitate self-reflection among individuals about reasons to maintain sobriety. However, residents of SLHs also enhance motivation in other ways, including ways they reach out to residents to help them avoid relapse.

Set Achievable Recovery Goals

Portions of the brain that were directly affected by drug use begin to return to their former self. Some aspects of drug addiction are never truly remedied – some argue that the urge to use never goes away, but simply grows weaker. Yet inspirational stories of sobriety in order to withstand the effect that addiction has on the mind, a person must continuously fight their own instincts to use again – they have to go against their own wishes and seek motivation from places outside of their own mind.

• The feedback is designed to increase patient motivation to reduce or stop drinking.
• Several managers noted that financial pressures from families can increase motivation.
• This peer dynamic may be even more prevalent for recovering persons who live together in one household.
• The best way forward for your recovery from alcohol or substance use is to incorporate a wide variety of strategies that will help foster success.

Our mission is to watch all of our clients become completely free from the bondage of substance abuse. Contact us today to get started on the path to a life filled with happiness, serenity, and sobriety. Focus groups like those conducted in this study, and the rich qualitative data they provide, may increase knowledge and lead to more effective ways of addressing low motivation for abstinence and recovery. Although support specifically from family and friends was part of the initial list of questions, responses pertaining to this question were either not reported in the findings or not discussed in focus groups. There are many factors that research has shown are important to achieving and sustaining recovery. Among the most important factors is motivation to quit alcohol and other drugs.

Motivation in Sobriety

No treatment matching effects with MET were found for aftercare clients (Project MATCH Research Group 1998). A third notable variable affecting the outcome evaluation of brief-intervention studies is the rate of attrition. Edwards and Rollnick (1997), for instance, reviewed all published studies of brief interventions conducted in primary care settings. Unfortunately, researchers rarely publish analyses that examine how participants who dropped out of the study or who were lost during followup differ from the participants who completed the study.

Learning to bring these feelings of doubt to trusted friends or therapists allows them to encourage you and keep the fire going. Your core values may include good health, sobriety, and the importance of family. For example, you can keep pictures of your family around, so whenever you feel frustrated or lose motivation, these images can be the jump start you need.

People can do hard things if they have a good reason and a strong desire to get through to the other side. Recovering from addiction is a test of strength of determination, but also surrender.