Making sure that each of our guests at Royal life is attending 12 step meetings and/or receiving the appropriate clinical help (including talk therapy and psychiatric help) is essential. However, other overlooked things are just as important to staying sober and recovering. These are the “small things”, things people often overlook in their level of importance, but are still critical to recovery. These often overlooked things vital to recovery include: ensuring all of our guests are receiving the appropriate medical treatment, sleeping right, getting exercise, managing stress levels, and eating right.
Many of our guests come in with a slew of medical problems (besides addiction) that need to be addressed. This can include respiratory, circulatory, and kidney or liver problems that are a direct result of their drug abuse. These health problems can affect the guest’s mental state and hinder their will to recover, not to mention the obvious health repercussions. Each of our guests receives health checkups, and medical intervention when necessary, to alleviate the symptoms and medical problems they are having during treatment.
Other aspects of their recovery are equally as important, including making sure each of our clients gets enough sleep and is getting enough vitamins and nutrients out of their diets in treatment. While we understand that getting a perfect night’s sleep is out of the question for many of our guests. We still do our best to ensure that each of our guests is getting enough sleep to be healthy, have enough energy, and have a positive outlook on their recovery. Getting too little sleep is bad for anyone, but especially those in early recovery. When guests are in treatment trying to work out their emotional problems with group therapy and an individual therapist, they need to have had adequate rest to be able to get the most out of their treatment.
Sometimes non-narcotic medications in low doses are necessary to ensure each of our guests is getting enough sleep (such as atypical antipsychotics like Seroquel or Risperdal). While these medications may sound concerning due to their labeling, they are very safe medications that have many off-label uses. Also, Royal Life Centers encourages each guest to make healthy decisions when it comes to eating, or at the very least get enough vitamins and minerals from their diet to be healthy. While we don’t expect each of our guests to be able to overcome the plethora of health issues they have had simply by eating more vegetables and fewer junk foods, healthy eating will impact their mood and therefore benefit their recovery.
It has been proven many times over by objective research studies, that eating healthy foods is essential for maintaining emotional healthiness and cognitive functioning. Many times when perfectly healthy non-addicted people eat nothing but junk for many days, they can set themselves up to feel depressed, or have anxiety, and a lack of energy. Now imagine the impact very unhealthy eating has on a withdrawing, depressed, and anxious guests in treatment. This is why we encourage our guests to make healthier eating decisions.
While we understand that each of our guests will be dealing with a pretty sizeable amount of stress, the stress still needs to be at a manageable level. When a person in recovery is not managing their stress appropriately, they may find it difficult to focus. Being able to focus helps guests when it comes to the activities and groups, which are going to help them stay sober. From our personal experience exercise is one of the best ways to combat stress levels, in the healthiest way possible. This is why we encourage exercise. Royal Life Centers has regularly scheduled yoga classes that our guests can take advantage of, to exercise and get some of their stress out. Even as much as 30 minutes of exercise can alleviate a substantial amount of stress.
We are not insisting that each of our guests adopt a CrossFit workout routine and a diet with 8 servings of vegetables a day. Small improvements in diet and exercise still translate into substantial results for the recovery of our guests. We also understand that gradual changes in diet and exercise routines make for more sustainable lifestyle changes, so we encourage our guests to not “overdo it” on the first day of any new health routine. Take a look at some of the activity therapy programs we offer at Royal Life Centers, and learn how we can help you or your loved one recover from their addiction.
