This group is designed to help people that have a history of relapsing back into the active phase of their substance dependency or are struggling to maintain their programs of recovery and are ready to address the issues that are blocking them from moving beyond the old way of life and embracing a life of recovery.
This group is not a prevention group. We can not prevent what has already happened. This group will focus on two of the major reasons for relapse:
1. Unwillingness or disbelief that alcoholism and drug addiction is a disease or illness, and
2. Unresolved family of origin issues or unresolved wounds. Alcoholics and Drug Addicts drink and drug to avoid pain.
This program will meet one day per month for 12 months. Additional individual sessions may be scheduled to deal with issues beyond the group.
Individuals will know where they are in the process by the step they are working on. Each individual will be invited to address the 12 Steps of Recovery in order. Each person will start with step one and will know how many more groups they have by the step they are working on.
Each day - at this time it will be a weekend day, Saturday or Sunday - will focus on two topics. One is a list of relapse triggers and the other is related to the 12 gifts as seen in the movie "The Ultimate Gift" by Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Each group will meet for 7 - 9 hours per day and the cost will be $25 per hour. Payments will be receive at the end of the day in case we finish in less than the allotted time.
Each participant will have an individual treatment plan that will guide their personal experince in the process. We will be utilizing Action Therapy, Equine Therapy, Family System Models along with homework assignments between groups.
This group is intended to help individuals move beyond their barriers to accepting change and begin to improve their quality of recovery.
Family members of alcoholics and drug addicts that are ready to deal with their disease processes may attend with or without the person with the substance abuse disorder.
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Twelve Month Relapse Treatment Program Topics
"The Ultimate Gift"
- Work
- Friends
- Money
- Problems
- Family
- Giving
- Learning
- Laughter
- Gratitude
- Day
- Dreams
- Love
12 Relapse Triggers:
- Exhaustion: Allowing yourself to become overly tired. Not following through on self-care behaviors of adequate rest, good nutrition, and regular exercise. Good physical health is a component of emotional health. How you feel will be reflected in your thinking and judgment.
- Dishonesty: It begins with a pattern of small, unnecessary lies with those you interact with in family, social, and at work. This is soon followed by lying to yourself or rationalizing and making excuses for avoiding working your program.
- Impatience: Things are not happening fast enough for you. Or, others are not doing what you want them to do or what you think they should do.
- Argumentativeness: Arguing over small and insignificant points, indicating a need to always be right. This is sometimes seen as developing an excuse to drink.
- Depression: Overwhelming and unaccountable despair may occur in cycle. If it does, talk about it and deal with it. You are responsible for taking care of yourself.
- Frustration: With people and because things may not be going your way. Remind yourself intermittently that things are not always going to be the way that you want them.
- Self-Pity: Feeling like a victim, refusing to acknowledge that you have choices and are responsible for your own life and the quality of it.
- Cockiness: "Got it Made," compulsive behavior is no longer a problem. Start putting self in situations where there are temptations to prove to others that you don't have a problem.
- Complacency: Not working your program with the commitment that you started with. Having a little fear is a good thing. More relapses occur when things are going well than when not.
- Expecting Too Much From Others: "I've changed, why hasn't everyone else changed too?" You can only control yourself. It would be great if other people changed their self-destructive behaviors, but that is their problem. You have your own problems to monitor and deal with. You cannot expect others to change their lifestyle just because you have.
- Letting Up On Discipline: Daily inventory, positive affirmations, 12-Step meetings, therapy, meditation, prayer. This can come from complacency and boredom. Because you cannot afford to be bored with your program, take responsibility. Talk about it and problem solve it. The cost of relapse is too great. Sometimes you must accept that you have to do some things that are the routine for a clean and sober life.
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The Use of Mood-Altering Chemicals: You may feel the need or desire to get away from things by drinking, popping a few pills, etc., and your physician may participate in the thinking that you will be responsible and not abuse the medication. This is the most subtle way to enter relapse. Take responsibility for your life and the choices that you make.
Reference for Relapse Triggers: www.pyschpage.com/learning/library/assess/relapse.htm
The 12 Steps
- We admitted we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable.
- Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our will, and our lives, over to the care of God as we understood Him.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Reference: Alcoholics Anonymous
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