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Who Answers?5 Good Reasons to Consider 12 Step Program Treatment
Overcoming an addiction problem will likely be one of the most difficult life challenges you’ll ever face. The nature of addiction works to stay front and center in your awareness, influencing your emotions as well as the choices you make throughout the day.
Without some type of plan in place, it becomes all but impossible to overcome the effects of addiction in your daily life. The 12 Step program provides a step-by-step roadmap for building a new lifestyle while helping you work through the emotional issues that fuel the addiction problem.
For anyone struggling in addiction recovery, here are five good reasons to consider 12 Step program treatment.
If you need help finding a 12 Step program that meets your needs, call our toll-free helpline at 800-781-0748 (Who Answers?) .
5 Reasons to Consider 12 Step Program Treatment
12 Step program treatment helps you develop a healthy, drug-free lifestyle.
1. Breaking the Addiction Cycle
Unlike the agony of drug withdrawal and drug cravings, not being able to “see” the aftereffects of addiction in your day-to-day life makes it difficult to take addiction’s effects seriously. According to the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, the fact that addiction lives inside the mind and not the body also makes it that much harder to stop it from influencing your thinking and behaviors.
In this respect, 12 Step program treatment directly addresses addiction’s effects in your daily life, while uprooting the mental patterns that drive drug-using behaviors.
2. Emotional Support
Addiction’s effects can wreak havoc on a person’s emotions, regardless of whether he or she is actively using drugs. Since the “high” effects of drug use played a big role in soothing emotional distress, feelings of emotional turmoil become even more so pronounced when drug use ends.
The 12 Step approach incorporates a group component where individuals can gain much needed emotional support from people who’ve gone through or are going through the same experiences.
3. Sponsorship
Having someone to talk to when the urge to use drugs seems overwhelming can mean the difference between continued success in recovery and untimely relapse episodes. According to the journal of Social Work in Public Health, the role of the sponsor in a 12 Step program works to provide you someone who can help you overcome when the urge to use drugs is strongest.
4. Guidance
Perhaps the most promising thing about the 12 Step program approach is that it provides those in recovery with a proven plan for maintaining abstinence on a day-to-day basis. Each step of the program helps you undo the effects of addiction on your mind and emotions while helping you develop the types of behaviors and attitudes that make it easier to “choose” abstinence as a way of life.
5. Developing a Healthy Lifestyle
While it’s important to eliminate addiction-based thinking and behavior, it’s just as important to replace that way of life with a lifestyle that promotes a drug-free existence. Ultimately, developing a healthy lifestyle becomes the overall goal of the 12 Step program process.
If you’re considering 12 Step program treatment but don’t know where to turn, please feel free to call our helpline at 800-781-0748 (Who Answers?) to speak with one of our addiction specialists.