How Will the Narcotics Anonymous 12 Steps Help Me Stay Clean?

For many people, staying drug-free after months or years of chronic drug abuse becomes an ongoing challenge that eventually drains their willpower over time. In the absence of some form of treatment or guidance, addiction’s effects will hound a person until he or she can’t take it any longer.

Narcotics Anonymous 12 Steps is designed to equip recovering addicts with the coping skills needed to overcome addiction’s effects in their daily lives.

For more information on 12 Step program treatment, call our toll-free helpline at 800-781-0748 (Who Answers?) .

The Mindset of Addiction

The NA 12 steps work to address and change the addiction mindset.

According to the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration, addictive substances, such as heroin, amphetamines and ketamine gradually change a person’s psychological makeup over time. In effect, these drugs alter areas of the brain that regulate thinking, emotions and motivations.

By the time addiction sets in, a person’s entire outlook and mindset centers on the drug’s effects to the point where he or she loses the ability to tell right from wrong. This same mindset remains intact, even after drug use stops.

How Narcotics Anonymous 12 Steps Can Help

Uncovering Addiction’s Influence in Your Daily Life

Since addiction’s influence lives inside a person’s thinking processes, it’s all but impossible to spot its presence unless it’s pointed out. Narcotics Anonymous 12 Steps focuses on helping you identify addiction’s destructive effects on your day-to-day thinking and behaviors.

The 12 Steps that makeup Narcotics Anonymous specifically address these influences and helps you develop the type of mindset that’s motivated to make right choices and overcome drug-using urges.

Being Honest with Yourself

When the urge to use drugs seems overwhelming, the ability to be honest about one’s real needs can go a long way towards overcoming the urge to use. Oftentimes, a person turns to drugs as means for avoiding difficult emotions, such as anger, grief or even boredom.

The Narcotics Anonymous 12 Steps approach teaches you how to work through the underlying issues and emotions that drive drug use and replace drug-using tendencies with healthy coping behaviors.

How 12 Steps Changed My Life

Developing a Willingness & Desire to Get Well

After so many failed attempts at abstinence, it’s not uncommon for a person to start to doubt a drug-free life is even possible. Ultimately, a willingness to let go of old drug-using friends, behaviors and routines paves the way for a drug-free lifestyle to take shape, according to the Journal of Addictive Disorders.

The 12 Step approach works to develop a willingness to get well by helping you realize that anyone can overcome the effects of addiction when he or she does what needs to be done.

Group Supports

The Narcotics Anonymous 12 Steps approach is based on the group support model. Group supports not only become a source of advice and guidance, but also provide much needed understanding of the types of struggles and challenges you face in recovery.

Another vital need filled by a support group has to do with the type of people you spend time with in recovery. Developing relationships with people who share the same problems and the same goals is essential to building a lifestyle that can support ongoing abstinence.

If you’re looking for a program to help you overcome addiction’s effects in your life, we can help. Call our helpline at 800-781-0748 (Who Answers?) to speak with one of our phone counselors.