Take a moment to recognize the things in your life that are causing you stress; those things that are contributing to a number of difficulties across numerous areas of life. Consider what it might be like to be proactive, to feel in control of those things rather than always existing in a reactive state, and letting them control you. While stress is not necessarily always a bad thing, chronic stress impacts your health and can get in the way of creating the life you want for yourself.

When addiction is a part of your life, it can be tempting to seek to “numb out” rather than learn positive alternatives to coping with your stress. However, addressing your stress in positive ways can serve two purposes: if you can decrease your emotional distress, the desire and need for substance use will also decrease, and you will have learned better ways to handle the difficulty of whatever you may be facing.

Why is every day so hard? Why do I always feel stressed out? Will it ever change? We all have bad days. We have times in our lives where we may feel more anxious or depressed than normal. This is not a sign that we are broken, or that there is something wrong with us. As humans we are meant to experience all the emotions, as this is part of living: we experience the good, the bad, the heartbreaking, and the frustrating. There is no joy without pain.

The holidays can be a very difficult time, especially for those struggling with substances and who are in early recovery. Entering the holidays can bring on a lot of anxiety and fear around having to survive these events sober and having opportunities to still have a good time.

Truly, you do not need substances to enjoy the holiday season but you do need to be mentally and emotionally prepared.

Harm reduction treatment is a set of strategies that are aimed at reducing the negative consequences associated with the use of drugs. Harm reduction strategies were implemented in opposition to the hundred-year “war on drugs”, where the pervasive idea about treatment for addiction centered on the idea that in order to create incentives for change, we need to make individuals in recovery suffer. In a compelling Ted talk called “Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong”, Johann Hari spells out his understanding of current American society regarding our treatment of individuals in recovery: “We punish them, we shame them, we put barriers between them reconnecting… if you wanted to design a system that would make addiction worse, you would design that system.” Later in the talk he goes on to add, “the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection”.