HOW TO STOP: A DRUG-BY-DRUG GUIDE TO WITHDRAWAL-HOW TO COPE WITH WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS
Withdrawal symptoms are extremely unpleasant. Indeed, this is often why people stay on drugs in the first place – to avoid withdrawal pain. Addicts are particularly bad at living through pain, because they have used their drugs to escape unpleasant reality.
Yet if you want to get well, you will have to learn to cope with the first few days of withdrawal. You have probably done it before. Thousands of recovering addicts have discovered the fundamental principles of coping with withdrawal. If they can do it, you can do it too.
1. A craving for the drug does not mean you have to take the drug. Live through the craving. It is possible to live through persistent, even continuous, craving for days or weeks. In the next chapter we will give you some mental tricks that will carry you through.
2. Live through the feelings of discomfort. Addicts who are using drugs are often very bad indeed at enduring pain, whether it is physical or emotional pain. They are used to blotting it out with drugs. So the trick of coming off drugs is to learn to live through the pain – literally to endure it. This is why it is important to keep busy going to NA or AA meetings in the first few weeks. It helps distract the mind from the pain. Comfort yourself with the thought of how this discomfort will last only a few days.
3. Talk about what you are going through. This is another reason for going to NA and AA meetings. The illness of chemical dependence can partially be talked out of the system in these meetings. Share your pain with others, and you will find that it has diminished in its intensity.
4. Withdrawal symptoms are a sign of recovery. This is the good news. The drug-using addict doesn’t suffer from withdrawal – only the recovering addict has these discomforts. They are the first signs of the body, mind and heart coming out of the illness. Keep remembering this. Remember too that there is a lot of happiness awaiting you.
5. You only have to do it once. You will never have to go through this withdrawal pain again, if you put your heart and soul into recovery. Unlike all the bad times on drugs, this bad time when you are getting clean and sober is a once-and-for-all experience.
*75\116\2*
