What Happens in SMART Recovery in Florida?

Recovery from drug or alcohol addiction is already a smart choice, but SMART Recovery is something different and it is available in Florida drug rehab.

What is SMART? Self-Management and Recovery Training.

It is flexible to help people suffering from a wide range of substance abuse disorders, and it is focused to teach strategies for managing different stages of recovery.

Here is what you need to know about the program.

SMART Is Not a 12-Step Program

Most Florida rehab centers help connect recovering addicts with the classic 12-step program, which is usually a lifelong commitment. The 12-step program uses a spiritual approach that works through the steps that support abstinence.

SMART Recovery is a four-point program. The program overview explains that it helps recovering addicts meet these and other goals:

• Strengthening the sense of empowerment and self-reliance
• Encouraging people to move into a healthy, fulfilling life
• Teaching strategies for “self-directed change”
• Fostering open, educational meetings and discussions
• Advocating for medication in recovery for people who need it
• Evolving as the science of substance abuse and addiction evolve

Here is how SMART Recovery can work for you.

Developing Coping Mechanisms for Cravings

For a recovering addict, drug or alcohol cravings can spell disaster, especially in the earliest stages. That is one reason why medically-assisted detox is such a helpful alternative to going it alone.

At few other times are cravings as strong as in withdrawal, which makes it a high-risk time for relapse. SMART Recovery focuses on the coping mechanisms that you need to get through cravings and urges without giving into them.

This strategy helps you understand how relapse happens so that you can spot the signs more objectively and know how to deal with them. You will learn you are ultimately in control of whether or not you give into cravings. With that knowledge, you can talk yourself out of relapse instead of into it.

Encouraging and Strengthening Motivation

If you have ever wanted to wear a size smaller jeans but fell off the wagon a week after resolving to diet, you know exactly why authentic motivation matters. It is not enough to want to go into treatment and recovery. You have to want it more than you want anything else.

Not everyone is motivated to be in treatment or recovery, at least not with their whole heart. That is why part of the SMART Recovery program deals with motivation.

Your core values will drive you toward recovery as long as those values are aligned with it. If your values are out of whack—if you truly want drugs over sobriety—then you have identified a deeper problem that needs sorting. Motivation building tactics help you reshape your own values so that your motivation will grow in the right direction.

Controlling Behaviors, Feelings, and Thoughts

You can learn virtually anything. New skills are acquired all the time. Did you know that you can learn to control your behaviors, your feelings, and even your thoughts?

In an addicts life, the addictive substance is the boss. You might choose to abuse the substance, but that is because it is controlling you. Self-control is one of the most difficult skills to learn, which is why SMART Recovery tackles it head-on.

In this program, you will learn how to train your mind to respond to urges in a more positive way. If you think of the part of your brain that wins as a muscle, you can consider resisting an urge as pumping iron at the gym. The more you practice, the more control you will have over actions and reactions that might feel beyond your control right now.

Striving for a Healthy, Balanced Life

Do you imagine sobriety as boring? It is not, and you will learn why a balanced life is so much more interesting (not to mention healthy) while you are in the program and carry it with you through aftercare and beyond.

The SMART Recovery program will guide you through creating a type of pie chart. Each slice of the pie represents something in your life, from your family and friends to your health, work, and the things that you do for fun.

In each slice, you will rate how happy you are with your current situation. If you are happy with every slice, your pie will be round. If not, you will have shortages that make the pie unbalanced and crooked. In recovery, you will learn how to balance every slice to improve how happy you are with each one.

Florida drug rehab is not a one-dimensional program that merely takes away drugs and makes you live without them. Real treatment and recovery help you learn how to fill in those voids that drugs leave behind with healthy, positive thoughts and habits.  That is how you gain a well-rounded life that gets better the longer you are in recovery, and that is why we can help connect you with the SMART Recovery program.

If you or any of your loved ones are suffering from addiction, make today the day you take action.
Contact us to learn more about admissions, the facility, and the types of treatment options available to you.