One of the easiest things to lose while in the throes of addiction is your self-respect. As drug use pervades, boundaries and ethics rapidly degenerate. Over time often someone starts engaging in behaviors that a short while before they never would consider. Once you lose respect for what is legal and what is not, losing your personal self-respect follows immediately. Again, as the drug or alcohol addiction progresses lying and other unscrupulous behaviors drive away friends and family. Usually by the time one enters an addiction center for treatment they have zero self-respect. The risk of relapse is incredibly great if the addict does not correct their destructive patterns and act in a positive manner. Not respecting oneself will lead to a huge amount of stress in someone’s life. It leads to a feeling of “phoniness” about one’s self and general low-grade depression.
Risk of Relapse Is Incredibly Great
Respect is one of those unusual commodities, like love, that can only be gained by giving it away. Drug addiction counseling knows this. While you are in a drug addiction program you can achieve respect by giving it to everything you encounter. Other clients and staff members at the rehab center are obvious choices but there are several smaller ways to show respect. How clean you keep your room is a sign of respect. How you handle the program materials given to you in a rehab is about respect. Do you respect the people around you? Do you leave common areas cleaner than you found them? Good acts like this will build discipline. Over time discipline leads to self-respect. A huge degree of self-respect leads to a more organized and less stressful life. This is crucial to sobriety and the life you desired when you enrolling in a drug rehab program.