Rebuilding: Taking One Step at a Time to Heal From Addiction
When you are struggling with addiction, the path to healing can look unattainable. It seems like it is an impossible task for you to live your life free from addiction and all of the issues that it brings into your life. Tony Hoffman was in a similar situation; he was imprisoned and on a continual path of struggling with addiction. However, taking one step at a time gives you the chance to heal from addiction, building skills that will support you in recovery. When you are embarking on your recovery, remember that taking one step at a time is enough and will take you down the path toward a better life.
Tony Hoffman's Path to Recovery
In December 2008, Tony Hoffman was paroled in California. While in prison, Tony set goals for himself that included:
Racing BMX professionally
Go to the Olympics
Start a non-profit
Become a public speaker regarding addiction and mental health
These goals were very important for Tony. They gave him a clear picture of where he wanted to be after prison and the path he wanted to take. However, these goals were big. Tony would be required to make significant changes internally and externally in his life. He needed to work every day on changing. Therefore, he began to make small changes that would have a big impact on his life and ultimately lead him to meet every single one of the goals that he set that day.
To meet this list of goals, Tony began his work while he was incarcerated. You may wonder what Tony could have done while in prison to ensure that he had met these goals when he left prison. The answer is to make the changes that were available to him. Small changes such as brushing his teeth every day, making his bed, and exercising were all things that he could do while in prison. While these actions are small, they were the pebbles that started a rockfall of change that helped Tony to be where he is today.
Heal From Addiction: Step by Step
Every step of change is important. While Tony knew he needed to change, he didn't always know the next step. However, step by step, Tony continued to put in effort. He knew that if he left prison as a different man, he would be able to live his life in a manner that would help him stay out of prison in the future. The steps that helped Tony heal from addiction included practicing self-care and pursuing self-improvement in every way that was available to him. These steps continued after he left prison and helped him to meet his goals.
Addiction and self-care do not generally go hand in hand. If you struggle with addiction, it is likely that you also find self-care difficult. However, good physical and mental health are important for staying sober in the long term. Self-care means that you consider your own needs and work to meet these needs. This includes simple actions like brushing your teeth and more complex steps like addressing your mental health. Tony worked every day to do these tasks habitually and to the best of his ability. Therefore, while in prison, he built powerful and helpful habits of caring for his needs.
In addition to self-care, Tony also took steps to improve himself. Tony considered what knowledge he needed to have to meet his goals, and when available, he took steps to gain this knowledge. Learning anything new often seems daunting. There are so many layers of new skills. However, when they are broken down into small and digestible pieces, you can go through each and come out the other end with significant self-improvement that you didn't know was possible.
The Path to Heal From Addiction
When you are struggling with addiction, you are faced with many stigmas that surround addiction. This is especially true when you struggle with mental health challenges. The misunderstanding surrounding addiction and mental health issues can impact your ability to heal from addiction. However, understanding the myth of willpower and the misconceptions surrounding addiction as a choice can help. When you break down these stigmas, it can help you to see that while addiction is not a choice, you can change in ways that will support your needs in staying sober long-term.
The Myth of Will Power
One of the most common stigmas surrounding addiction is one regarding willpower. Many individuals believe that addiction is a result of an individual's lack of willpower. You may have been told to just stop using drugs or alcohol. Likely, you may have even told yourself to just stop. This is a common thread in the way that addiction is spoken about.
The concept of addiction being a lack of willpower is quite toxic for you. For example, if addiction is a lack of willpower, and you cannot quit or stop being addicted, you may wonder what that says about you as a person. This leads to a lack of confidence and leads you down the road of continually trying to “just quit.” While it is beneficial to want to stop using drugs or alcohol, the willpower method is unlikely to be successful.
Lack of willpower is not the underlying issue with addiction. Addiction is a disease in the brain that impacts your feelings, thoughts, and actions. In order to change, you must take steps that consider this understanding of addiction. To heal from addiction, a step-by-step approach that helps you to learn coping skills and change is important. However, it is difficult to take these steps when you believe that your challenges with addiction are simply a result of your failure to have willpower, which is completely false.
Addiction Is Not a Choice
Another common stigma that surrounds addiction is that you have or are continuing to choose to be an addicted to drugs or alcohol. This belief makes others discriminate against you and blame you for the challenges that you are facing. It can ostracize you from society and make you think that you are the sole cause of your struggles with addiction.
The truth is that many risk factors make you more likely to struggle with addiction. These include:
History of trauma
Family history of drug use or addiction
Peer pressure
Abuse
Genetics
Stress
Early exposure to drugs or alcohol
Your challenges with addiction are not a choice. However, this does not mean that you do not have choices now. When you choose to take steps forward and go through each step continually, you can make changes. However, it starts with understanding what you can and cannot control. The risk factors that have played a role in your developing addiction are often not under your control. Many other aspects of your life are. Reaching out for support, getting help, and making changes are all possible and will help you to heal from addiction.
How to Heal from Addiction Step by Step
You may look at Tony Hoffman and wonder how he did it. The answer is that he put all of his effort into every task each day, and since making his four goals, he has continued to work towards his recovery every day. To heal from addiction, you need to take each step and work at it. It requires continual effort, consistent small changes, rebuilding, and making adjustments after mistakes.
Continual Effort
You likely know that change requires effort. As a human, you are a habitual creature. Therefore, you tend to buy the same brand of laundry detergent and drive the same roads to the grocery store. This is due to habits helping you to decrease your energy output. When something is a habit, you do not have to think about it or put effort into paying as much attention.
However, when you want to change, you have to continue to work at it to be successful. Otherwise, you are likely to fall back into old habits that do not support your long-term goals. For Tony, while he was in prison, this meant taking steps to put effort in every day. Tony worked to ensure that he built positive habits like self-care and self-growth habits. This meant practicing these habits and behaviors even when he didn't feel like it, and this takes continual effort.
Continual effort is difficult, and making changes requires that you focus on making this effort regularly. This is why finding a very strong reason to make these changes is helpful. Then, when you feel your efforts fade, you can look at these reasons and remind yourself why you are choosing to put the effort in every day.
Consistent Small Changes
When you think about your path to addiction, it likely started with something small. For Tony Hoffman, it was trying drugs once. This small action led Tony to take other actions, which all added up and resulted in him ultimately living on the street, struggling with addiction, and being incarcerated. The path of small changes is likely true for you as well; it was not a one-step action that led you to struggle with addiction.
While this can be unpleasant to think about, it is helpful in understanding that to heal from addiction, you need to do the process in reverse. Taking small steps and achieving small, consistent changes adds up a lot. It can take you from being imprisoned, like Tony, to achieving a dream like going to the Olympics.
Another way to think about consistent small steps is to put your process on a timeline. If you build one skill every month, you end the year with 12 new skills. While you are working on each skill, you are unlikely to see the cumulative result. However, at the end of the year, the comparison will be significant.
Rebuilding Every Block
Addiction is a disease that impacts every aspect of your life and is affected by each piece of your life. Your mental health, physical health, community connections, and more all influence you, and the choices you make influence them. Therefore, when you are in the process of learning how to live without addiction in your life, it is important that you rebuild every block of your life.
When Tony Hoffman was taking a hard look at his life after incarceration and setting goals, he had to consider what pieces of his life he needed to change. He chose to take steps that were available to him while incarcerated. However, after being released, he was able to explore other pieces that he needed to address. This included getting back involved with the BMX community, getting back in shape for biking, and more.
Looking at all of the pieces of your life that you need to change can feel overwhelming. It is important to know that you cannot address all of them simultaneously. Remember, change and recovery is a step-by-step process. When you put your effort into each step, you can rebuild your life.
Adjusting After Mistakes While You Heal From Addiction
Part of the process of learning and changing is mistakes. Mistakes, however, are difficult. They can make you feel like you have failed, especially when you already have shame and embarrassment surrounding your challenges with addiction. You may be prone to internally beating yourself up or have others in your life who have or do point out your mistakes in a manner that is not helpful.
It helps to reframe mistakes, for without mistakes, you cannot learn. This is because the process of learning means doing something different. When you do something different and new, you do not completely understand it, and you cannot until you actually do it. Therefore, you are bound to make mistakes in the process, and when you do, they can help you learn and improve.
The goal is not to avoid mistakes but to embrace them as part of the change process. While Tony was on the path to healing from addiction, he made plenty of mistakes. However, with persistence, he learned from these mistakes. He adjusted and moved forward, continuing on after he realized he had made a mistake. While this is difficult, this is a skill that will help you to stay on the path of recovery and truly rebuild your life.
New Habits Help You Heal From Addiction
As a human, your life is full of habits. You are aware of some of them while others are present, but they may pass by without notice. These habits outline how you live your life. This includes the way that you connect with others, communicate, and build relationships. However, habits also govern how you react to emotions, the places you tend to go to, and your choices regarding your mental health and addiction.
Building new habits is difficult. It means that you need to first try a new thought, feeling, or action. For example, building a habit of exercising when you first wake up starts with trying it one time. Then, you continue to follow this pattern. At first, it takes a lot of effort to do. However, over time, it becomes normal for you, and it is just a part of your daily life. This is when it becomes a true habit, and you no longer have to put effort into maintaining it.
The habits of your life with addiction are often not helpful for you when you are aiming to change your life. Instead, you need to assess your habits and find new patterns that will benefit your health and recovery. Fortunately, knowing how to form new habits helps. When you feel the effort it takes to you, you know that it is only short-term and that as it becomes a normal part of your life, it will become easier. Ultimately, building new habits is the way that you rebuild the pieces of your life and achieve your goals after addiction.
Addiction is a disease that Tony Hoffman understands well. He knows how it can disrupt your life, derail your plans, and step by step take your life in a direction that you never wanted. However, while you may be struggling, you can make changes. Tony took small steps to rebuild his life and, with continued effort, met the goals that he set for himself while incarcerated. You, too, can make changes in your life, healing from addiction and setting yourself free to be a different person. If you are interested in learning more about how Tony can help or are interested in booking Tony call and speak with us today at (559) 392-8897.
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