How To Fill the Void Left After Addiction Recovery
By Richard Overmyer
The initial days, weeks, and months of recovery are the most difficult. The life an addict once knew is no more, and a road of uncertainty awaits. Drugs and alcohol give the illusion of fulfillment, but they’re incapable of bringing true meaning to a person’s life. However, giving up addictions leaves a large void, and the standard escape mechanisms aren’t valid anymore. The enemy of recovery is boredom, and yet the period immediately after rehab can be full of emptiness.
Addictions are made up of many components. The people addicts use, the places they go, the time invested in finding their drug, the excuses made to cover up or defend their behavior; every addiction has smaller components that create and sustain it. Sobriety frees addicts from the prison that drugs and alcohol created, but the newfound freedom can be terrifying. Addiction was a full-time job before, but life after recovery often feels like something entirely foreign.
The key is for addicts to use their newfound freedom to create the life they want to have. This life entails activities, relationships, and mindsets that offer true meaning, not the lies their addictions once promised. The old feelings that addicts covered up with substances don’t disappear in rehab. These feelings exist after recovery and still need to be addressed. The only difference now is figuring out how to confront those feelings in healthy, fulfilling ways.
Dealing with boredom
Boredom after recovery is a double-edged sword for addicts. Whereas it’s necessary to accept and be okay with feeling bored, it can also be the breeding ground for old feelings to arise. Addicts are used to “solving” these feelings with substances. Even if they have a firm resolve to never partake in drugs and alcohol, the more these feelings persist, the harder it can be to resist them.
Like any other feeling, boredom needs to be simultaneously accepted and addressed. Acceptance doesn’t mean complacency, however. Just because we recognize the feeling of boredom doesn’t mean we have to stay bored. Accepting boredom means we’re okay with feeling that way and that we acknowledge it as a part of the recovery process.
It’s common to dive headfirst into’ an activity after recovery. The “90 meetings in 90 days” mentality is useful as a way to fill the void, but it can also be a crutch. The attitude shouldn’t be about replacing one addiction with another, as can easily be the case. Approaching any activity as a way to replace an old addiction can cause anxiety when you’re not indulging in it. Instead, use new activities to enrich the overall quality of your life.
Accepting grief
It’s essential, however, to know that boredom isn’t inherently wrong. However, boredom tends to enhance feelings of grief and ignoring or avoiding it with something else only represses it. Emotions don’t go away just because you ignore them, however. Repression doesn’t solve anything and only prolongs the grieving process. No matter how hard a person tries to hide from their grieving, it will persist.
It’s important to understand that grieving is a normal part of the recovery process. Quitting an addiction means removing the primary source of comfort around which your life previously revolved. It’s okay for an addict to grieve over this loss. Accepting feelings of grief is a healthy and vital step in the recovery process.
Fitness to fill the void
There are nearly countless ways of filling the void through physical activities. The key to finding what’s right for you is understanding that whatever you do isn’t just about killing time, but also improving your overall sense of well-being. A new fitness regimen can directly address the feelings of low self-esteem and self-image that substances used to dull.
“Fitness” here can mean almost anything that gets a person’s heart pumping and their body moving. There’s a tendency to put too much on your plate, but successful exercise programs are those that gradually increase in intensity. Easing into running, yoga, strength training, swimming, and fitness classes can help make exercise a cornerstone of your new life.
Eating well can also be a useful step in the recovery process. Not only does a proper diet aid in overall physical health, but it also contributes to better moods. Learning to cook healthy meals also takes some time, and this helps focus the mind onto something new.
Spiritual ways to fill the void
Using spirituality to fill the void can mean something different for each person. Many people find the acknowledgment of a higher power that’s part of twelve-step programs to be beneficial. These programs also provide a network of people who are also going through the recovery process. Just as these people can help you, you can, in turn, help them. Giving back gives the recovery process a purpose bigger than yourself. It shows that your actions can positively affect others in need and that you can help someone just as you once were helped.
Religion is another way of filling the spiritual void. There seems to be a fundamental need in human beings to ponder and seek out some higher force, whether it be a specific deity or abstract energy. For some people, religions offer answers to difficult questions. For others, however, religion can serve as a guiding force, something that can inform and help your life rather than solve it outright.
Of course, religion isn’t for everybody, and spirituality doesn’t necessarily mean religious. Meditation can be an excellent tool for any recovering addict, as it can help them build self-love. According to Emily Mullennax, a therapist with Freedom Counseling and Addiction Recovery, self-love can be thought of as “a practice, like a new muscle you’re building.” She recommends you “take time to notice what thoughts and feelings you have about yourself, (and) try reframing a judgmental thought as a more compassionate one” through processes like meditation. Decades of scientific research have also shown meditation to be an effective way of alleviating stress, depression, and anxiety, as well as providing a method of finding internal fulfillment.
Putting it all together
Filling the void can be a challenging process, but it doesn’t have to be a scary one. It’s essential to have a balanced life after recovery, one that allows you to live a healthy life on multiple levels. Everything you do after recovery is about embracing and enjoying your life, not avoiding it. Where addiction once made a prison, you now have the option to choose how you want to live. The more you fill each day with fulfilling and healthy activities, the easier the recovery becomes, and the void slowly disappears until one day it’s gone entirely.
Author Bio
Richard Overmyer is an Outreach Specialist with Red Olive in Sandy, Utah
The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect all or some of our beliefs and policy. Any links on this page do not necessarily mean they have been endorsed by Defying Mental Illness.
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