Recovery is never straight forward. In fact, anyone who has recovered from an addictive substance such as cocaine, heroin or cannabis will have gone through the detox, rehab in London and aftercare process knowing just how difficult it can be to recover.

Rehab is an essential part of anyone’s recovery. However, your daily habits are also key when it comes to recovering in the long term. When recovering, you should look at your day to day, ordinary habits and how they might be contributing to your addiction and negative thought processes.

If you’re in recovery right now, or supporting someone who is, here are five simple daily habits that can strengthen your journey and help you move forward in your recovery.

1. Habits and Rituals

Habits and rituals are great for anyone’s mindset and mental health. In fact, people say that you should set a morning habit or ritual every day. 

For someone in recovery, the first hour in the day can be crucial when it comes to whether or not today is going to be a good day. Whether you’ve just come out of rehab or your years into recovery, beginning the day with intention helps to anchor you in the moment.

According to a popular study into habits, humans crave habits and rituals for a number of different reasons. 

The first reason being that as children, we are taught to embrace habits such as reading a book before bedtime, leaving a carrot and mince pie out for Father Christmas and even going to and leaving school at the same time each day. Habits feel safe, and as humans we need them to survive.

The truth is that your habits do not need to be complicated. Some people create habits surrounding meditation, breathing exercises, daily walks or even cooking a healthy and balanced breakfast. These habits have been linked to an improved mental health, better sleep and all round improved quality of life.

Other people make a habit out of writing in a journal to focus their mind on what they’re feeling or any cravings they might be experiencing. Whatever your habits are, make sure that you or someone you can trust can hold you accountable for them.

During your detox or in the early days of recovery, mornings can be particularly difficult and may feel heavy. It is the mornings when you are most likely to experience a craving or relapse. This is why creating morning habits is so important.

2. Eat Healthy and Exercise Regularly

Suffering from an addiction often means that you neglect your overall health and body. When you attend drug and alcohol rehab, the importance of nutrition and a healthy, balanced diet is emphasised. 

However, when you leave the rehab facility, it’s easy to slip back into old patterns of skipping meals or relying on sugar, coffee or something stronger (such as drugs or alcohol) to keep going.

Eating three healthy, balanced meals a day is a great way of ensuring that you are prioritising your body and giving yourself the best chance possible of avoiding cravings and managing your aftercare correctly.

In addition to a healthy, balanced meal, you should also try to exercise on a regular basis. Exercising releases endorphins, which many people in recovery from an addiction crave. Not only are you looking after your body, but you are looking after your mind, too.

There are lots of different sports and exercises out there to try, some of which are listed below for you:

• Running
• Hiking
• Swimming
• Cycling
• Horse-riding
• Playing football
• Playing cricket
• Playing netball
• Playing tennis
• Playing padel ball
• Dance and Zumba
• Playing rugby
• Yoga and Pilates
• Martial arts
• Climbing

All of these sports allow you to get out of the house and encourage you to move your body, whilst meeting and socialising with other people, which is discussed below in this article. Put simply, the healthier you are, often the happier you are, too.

3. Journal and Reflect

As we mentioned further above in this article, your morning habits and rituals can be crucial when it comes to your recovery success. However, your evenings should not be neglected. Your evenings are also when you might start to struggle and experience cravings. This is particularly true in the winter months, when it’s cold and rainy outside and no one feels like socialising.

The evenings are a great opportunity to spend some time journaling and reflecting. Reflecting on how your day has gone will allow you to sit back and examine what went well, and what did not go so well. 

This will allow you to create better strategies and coping mechanisms and will also allow you a chance to reflect on what went well throughout your day.

4. Socialise on a Regular Basis

Loneliness and isolation are one of the leading causes of addiction. This is because humans are social beings, and it’s in our nature to crave socialisation. Addiction thrives when people are lonely, which is why it is important to socialise throughout your recovery.

During your recovery, it might be easy to shy away from socialising with friends or family. 

You might want to avoid any triggers, such as alcohol being present, or you might want to keep a low profile in embarrassment or out of fear of what other people might think about your struggles. However, isolating yourself even further will only ever make your addiction issues worse.

This is why you should prioritise spending time with loved ones during your recovery. You can also join a number of support groups and aftercare programmes, to socialise with likeminded people who understand how you feel and what you are going through.

Make it a habit to check in with someone every day. Whether it’s just a phone call, a quick message, going to the theatre or watching some music with a friend, or attending a local rehab recovery meeting. Once you do so, you will notice a complete shift in your mindset and in your mood. 

It is important to accept and understand that there will be days when you don’t feel like reaching out to loved ones or friends. 

However, it is important to still try to speak to someone about how you feel that way, your struggles to your achievements. Sharing your perspective and your situation with other people, even if they are strangers, will have a huge impact on the success of your recovery.

5. Take it Day by Day

Finally, you should try to take each day as it comes. This isn;t always easy to do, as life moves so fast these days. However, slowing down your days and trying to focus on the moment will really allow you to get the most out of your recovery.

There are a number of strategies you can put in place to try to take each day as it comes. 

Some people try to make one small act of kindness each day, whether that is helping a family or friend with an issue, helping a neighbour take the bins out, or simply learning something new.

By helping those around you, or doing something new for the first time, you will notice the world around you and learn to take each day as it comes. 

Over time, these small, positive acts will reframe the world around you and remind you that life has a lot more to offer you than your addiction has tricked you into believing.

Conclusion

To conclude, recovery is never straight forward and easy. Attending rehab treatment is only the start of your recovery journey and to truly recover, you must put healthy habits in place. 

These five habits are simply and yet effective ways of ensuring that you recover in a healthy and positive way, without the fear of relapsing.

If you or someone you know is trying to recover from a drug or alcohol addiction and is struggling to, then speak to a member of our team. 

Our team of advisers are on hand to provide you with the very best information and advice when it comes to inpatient and outpatient care, as well as NHS funded rehab treatment and private rehab treatment.