Happy New Year!
Happy New Year. Let’s all hope it will be a good one – happy, healthy and fulfilling. Failing that, let us trust that we are able to cope well with whatever life throws at us this year.
How was your Christmas / New Year?
Has your new year got off to a good start? Was Christmas the happy occasion you hoped for, spent in the company of family and friends? Or was it a chaotic and sad event marred by drink and drugs?
Not always a merry time!
Whether you are the drinker / user or are intimately involved with a problem drinker or addict, this time of year can be challenging and traumatic. There is little room for love and warmth if you are sick with worry about or angry with someone you love because they are often drunk or off their head on drugs. Similarly if you are the person doing the drinking or using, you are probably feeling miserable, defensive, sad, lacking in self worth and worried for the future.
Busy, Busy, Busy…
It is no surprise that once Christmas is over, addiction treatment centres usually experience an increase in enquiries and admissions. These tend to come from 3 groups of people.
The First Group
The first are those who have been clean and sober up until recently but have been unable to sustain their sobriety over the period when it seems that everyone else is drinking and letting their hair down. They have decided to drink or use against their better judgement, either thinking they would get away with it or that they could control it. They have subsequently found that they cannot and the whole addictive cycle has been set off again – and they are probably feeling worse than when they stopped the previous time. Alcoholism and addiction are so called progressive illnesses therefore they never get better, only worse. Once an addict or alcoholic, always an addict / alcoholic. One drink or drug and we are off.
The Second
The second group of people who contact us at this time of year are those who have been in trouble in the period leading up to Christmas but think that they will put off seeking treatment and ‘have a nice family Christmas’ first. These people are, frankly, delusional. If you have an alcoholic or addict in your midst who needs treatment, they are unlikely to add to your sense of joy and happiness at Christmas. They will probably over indulge, misbehave and cause family tensions and troubles. By this stage, at the end of the Christmas period, their need for professional treatment is all the more apparent.
The Third and Final Group
The final group of people are those whose over indulgence has finally tipped them over the edge and they now realise they must get help. Christmas and New Year has been a disastrous and difficult experience and they know they need to change.
Hope
For all these people who come into treatment, there is great hope. They can all get well if they want to – there is almost no one who cannot get clean and sober and stay that way. There are none of us who cannot change if we really want to.
Make the New Year a better one than the last!
So however challenging your Christmas and New Year experience has been, make the new year the start of a new period of sobriety, health and happiness. As a treatment centre, we are here at the Haynes Clinic to help.
Learn more about addictions in general.
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