- Hello, and welcome to the "Roadmap for Recovery,"
a family education video produced by the Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Services Administration.
Treatment helps with both physical withdrawal
and the emotional mood swings.
It provides structure that can help a person not use.
People in treatment programs using the Matrix model
are taught to make schedules to create structure.
Scheduling one's time every day helps reduce boredom,
impulsive decision making, and falling back
on old behaviors that can lead to relapse.
One of the best ways to prevent relapse
is by scheduling each hour of the day.
This helps put the rational brain back in control.
Self-designed daily schedules help people avoid triggers,
reduce anxiety, and allow recovery to be achieved
"one day at a time."
Keeping a schedule helps people in recovery
stay on track,
counters the drug-using lifestyle,
and provides a recovery foundation.
- In the beginning, I needed to not
have a lot of diversity in my life.
I needed to know what was going to come every day.
When I got out of treatment, I needed to know that, okay,
I have to go to class from here to here.
Um, at that time, I can go home.
I can be safe in my house for a while.
And then I go to that meeting that night.
That person's going to meet me there.
Or I'll get a ride, and then I go home.
But I did eventually, you know, pick up the phone
and call people and say I feel like crap.
"What do I do now?" and they'd say,
"Okay, what did you do today?" and I told them,
they said, "Okay, get up and do it again tomorrow."
So I would do, in the beginning, the same things, you know,
a lot of the same things.
- In Early Recovery Skills and Relapse Prevention groups,
people in treatment learn how to build structure.
They learn what kinds of activities
they can use as building blocks
and practice putting schedules together for each day.
People who deviate from their schedules risk relapsing.
Those who stick to the schedule created by their rational brain
stay drug free.
Counselors, people in recovery,
and family members can draw up a schedule together.
A schedule that doesn't involve family members might not work;
neither will a schedule imposed by the family.
Plan for disruptions in a schedule,
like holidays, birthdays, or illness.
In the withdrawal stage,
when getting through each day without using
is a huge challenge, the schedule can be a lifeline.
Attending support meetings is one activity many people do
to fill their time.
Research shows that people who participate
in a treatment program like Matrix,
and in other support group meetings,
do better than those who do not do both.
- I was very uncomfortable in my recovery,
which is normal for a new person in recovery.
I was very uncomfortable, it felt very unnatural for me.
I didn't know what to do with myself.
Initially I was very low on energy,
and suddenly I had all this time on my hands.
What do I do now?
Support groups and the meetings
helped me to acquire tools to apply toward those dilemmas.
I could fill in that time and develop some structure
in my life to become comfortable being clean and sober.
- But I remember in my early days
I was going to a lot of meetings,
and I still go to a lot of meetings,
but I was going to a lot of meetings in my early days
and I was just overwhelmed with how much support
there was out there for people that had addiction issues.
- In just one meeting,
I found so many people just within one hour
and I got to hear some of these individuals talk.
I was like, "Man, that person is just like me."
He's saying the same thing that relates to my brain
and my way of thinking.
And that attracted me,
and these people welcomed me with open arms.
They were there to help me
and they did not want anything from me.
And that was the gift,
that I look back and see what it was.