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Nutrition and Recovery – The traditional programs of recovery tend to emphasize healing of the mind and the spirit. While there is always some measure of care taken to ensure that people get enough to eat It is not always the case that treatment programs and even individuals in recovery take particular care with the kind of nutrition they need as they recover. Active addiction in itself does horrendous damage to physical bodies. Alcohol inhibits the break-down of nutrients and does damage to all the organ systems, not just the liver. Opiates tend to case gastro-intestinal problems. Withdrawal for these drugs can cause severe stomach problems which lead to a loss of nutrients. Amphetamines suppress appetite and people who have been using cocaine, methamphetamine, and other similar drugs often come into treatment severely malnourished. What people eat during treatment and recovery can have everything to do with a healthy and full recovery. 

While vitamin regimens can be helpful, most doctors and other health care professionals agree that real food is the best way to re-establish the proper balance of nutrients in the body as one recovers form addiction. One of the difficulties in this is that people who are newly sober from any drug often crave fatty, processed foods with high sugar contents. These foods mimic the deficiencies they are experiencing. They provide immediate satisfaction without long-term benefit. And it is widely known that eating these kinds of foods is horrible for the body in the long run. But as one works to slay the demon of a life-threatening substance, it can be hard to say no to fatty sweet foods.

Nutrition and Recovery

Doctors recommend foods with less processed sugar. Natural food sugar levels actually stabilize moods for people in recovery. As they adjust to sobriety and the resulting mood swings that come with the depression and anxiety common in early recovery. A diet of low sugar foods will actually stabilize blood sugar levels, and reduce the craving for sugars. They will stabilize moods which lead to depression and anxiety. While it is tempting to indulge in donuts, they will actually complicate recovery over time.
Since so much a substance abuse causes break-down and damage to organ tissue, complex amino acids and proteins are the best prescription for recovery. These are often combined with supplements such a vitamin B-12 which stimulates tissue re-growth. Here again, this is not an invitation to pig-out on cheeseburgers. Healthy amounts of proteins in normal portions seem to work best. Vitamin B-12 will increase appetite but this is often a necessary part of early sobriety and recovery.

Nutrition and Recovery – All people in recovery, regardless of the substances they may have been using, are urged to cut down or eliminate processed and fatty foods. Junk food will actually impede recovery by causing harm to the body which is not all that different from substance abuse. Doctors generally agree on a program of “never hungry, never full.” This means to eat in moderation but never allow yourself to get hungry. It is a common-place that hunger itself can be a trigger for relapse. But over-indulging in food can become a road block to actual recovery. By maintaining a healthy balance of nutritious foods and guarding against over-indulgence in junk food, recovering addicts can aid their own recovery and help their bodies bounce back from years of abuse and neglect.

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Meditation and Recovery – During those years when we were drinking and/or using our minds become accustomed to dealing with both the outside world and our own inner world through a haze of chemical fog. We lose touch with how to feel and how to think. As we remove those chemical impairments we may find the rush of real life around us and the flood of inner thoughts and feelings to be overwhelming. This complex of emotion and confusion can be dangerous for our recovery. We need to learn new ways of processing the world around us. We need to find new ways to understand our own feelings. Working the steps, attending meetings and working with a sponsor will go a long way toward this transitional period. But there are a number of practices we can work with which will help us through this phase of recovery. Meditation has been proven to be an invaluable tool for drug and alcohol recovery.

Meditation comes in a number of forms but the overall goal of all meditation techniques is to focus on the mind-body connection and induce relaxation and relief form anxiety and other forms of destructive thinking. Guided meditation, which is actually part of many addiction recovery programs, involves slowing down our thoughts, learning focus on an abstract center rather than a specific source of trouble, and relaxation techniques. Meditation often involved learning to control breathing is specific ways and in this way thoughts and physical practices become wedded and the mind-body connection becomes central to the practice.

Meditation in all of its forms has been shown to decrease blood pressure even in those with hypertension and enhance the immune system. The benefits of meditation for anxiety management have also been shown to also assist in the management of depression. Anxiety and depression are major issues for people in recovery. We tend to come into recovery with a baseline of disruption in our lives and this inevitably leads to some measure of anxiety and depression. For some, clinical depression is one of the primary reasons they came to have difficulties with drugs and alcohol. The relaxation and stress management techniques learned in a guided meditation can help ease these severe forms of depression without the help of medication. Of course, anyone prescribed medication for clinical depression should work closely with a physician as they learn to regulate their stress, anxiety, and depression with meditation.

Meditation and Recovery – Drug and alcohol treatment programs will generally combine meditation with other forms of therapy during treatment. Group and individual counseling often complement meditation techniques so that individuals can focus on specific emotional needs as they learn to practice meditation. Counseling will help people to get in touch with those aspects of their lives which they have difficulty managing. Family strife, work conflicts, and interpersonal stress are revealed to the extent that a recovery addict feels challenged in these areas and specific forms of meditation will allow them to work through these difficulties in a program of relaxed and therapeutic meditation.

Meditation and Recovery – Certainly, the standard methods of therapy, counseling, group work and even medical intervention are necessary for most people to recovery from addiction. But meditation is gaining traction as one more tool in the system of treatment which helps people who have been debilitated by drugs and alcohol to find ways of managing their lives in the absence of substances.

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