During this first year, you may struggle with roller-coaster emotions including many that are painful — sadness, shame and anger, a sense of loss as you separate yourself from the people, places and things associated with addiction,
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Will I Ever Sleep? Sleep In Year One
thesoberworld.com/2018/09/01/will-ever-sleep-sleep-year-one
The first year of sobriety is incredibly stressful, and if you are maintaining sobriety you
deserve all the self-praise you can muster.
During this first year, you may struggle with roller-coaster emotions including many that
are painful — sadness, shame and anger, a sense of loss as you separate yourself from the
people, places and things associated with addiction, fear of what the future will look like,
fear of sex without drugs, and frustration adjusting to new and different relationships
with family, friends and coworkers. Craving is common, expected, and learning to cope
with cravings without relapsing is an important and difficult goal. It is also typical for
people to want to rebel against instructions or suggestions given by others, such as
persistence in counseling and psychotherapy, or participating in 12-step or other recovery
self-help groups, and it is important to stick with recovery even if you resent people telling
you what they think is best for you. You try to remain sober in a world soaked in drugs
from beer commercials to friends or family who still use. In short, you, your body, your
mind, and your soul are working non-stop on Mission I: Staying Sober. Not only is
Mission I incredibly painful, it is exhausting. Regardless of how tired you are, you might
toss and turn in bed as your mind refuses to wind down. “Will I ever sleep?” wonder so
many people in the months after their last use.
When working this hard, it helps to eat and sleep well. You may have already learned the
acronym “HALT,” which is shorthand for the risks to sobriety of hunger, anger, loneliness,
and tiredness.
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Establishing the basic daily routines of life from rising, eating, working your body and
mind, resting, and sleeping becomes an important tool for health and recovery. When our
routines follow the natural cycles of dawn, daylight, nightfall, and night followed again by
dawn, this tool becomes sharper and more powerfu