Leading up to the start of the new year, one of the most meaningful resolutions to make is recovery from drug addiction. This is a resolution that can positively impact not only the new year but also have lasting benefits for your life beyond 2026.
Making and following through on a drug addiction recovery resolution is possible, and having a solid plan and formal support in place are key elements to success.
Drug Addiction Recovery Resolution
A drug addiction is characterized by ongoing substance use despite the accompanying harmful effects. With a drug addiction, the brain’s reward system is compromised, leading to heightened tolerance, intense cravings, and substance dependence. Drug addiction can negatively impact your mental and physical health, relationships, and goals.
While the decision to stop drug use is a positive resolution, drug addiction recovery goes beyond just stopping substance use. Recovery efforts include incorporating skills and tools for lasting wellness while creating effective frameworks for ongoing freedom from drug dependence.
Supporting Your Resolution
There are many ways to support a recovery resolution, safeguarding against risks of relapse and remaining committed to sobriety despite challenges such as stressful situations, cravings for the substance, and social pressure.
Strategies to support addiction recovery include writing down your resolution and reasons for change, identifying triggers and ways to avoid them, and utilizing the strength of friends and family members. Setting realistic goals and taking the process one day at a time are also recognized as aligned with successful recovery from drug addiction. Each of these and other personal changes and tools can support recovery, but formal support provided through professional services is often key to long-term addiction recovery.
Intensive Outpatient Programs (IOPs)
Professional support for addiction recovery is often provided through intensive outpatient programs (IOPs).
These programs are designed to provide healthcare support without the structure of a residential treatment program or inpatient hospitalization, allowing individuals to receive professional addiction recovery services without staying overnight at a treatment facility during program participation. Accordingly, an intensive outpatient program can be an effective option for an individual with school or work commitments that overlap with the timeframe of addiction recovery treatment.
IOPs can also help those who have completed inpatient treatment services and who can benefit from the structured care that outpatient programs provide. Another way IOPs can make a difference is with preventative care, providing treatment to prevent the escalation of a behavioral health issue.
Factors of Success
Among the factors that can help those within IOP recovery care successfully regain sobriety is personal commitment, exercising self-motivation and self-discipline while participating in and acting according to the program treatments
Success with an intensive outpatient program is also supported by a client’s environmental factors aligning with outpatient care, such as home and social contexts favorable to recovery. Having support networks in place is also important. Family and friends who support you in treatment can make positive impact on recovery success.
Intensive Outpatient Treatment from API
Alvarado Parkway Institute (API) offers professional IOP services that incorporate evidence-based therapies, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Seeking Safety treatment. These services are delivered in an intensive, structured outpatient setting that allows clients to return home each evening while still receiving a high level of clinical support.
Our IOP services also include Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills, medication management, psychoeducation, and individual and family counseling to help patients build coping skills, manage symptoms, and maintain long-term recovery.
IOP treatment is available from API for those dealing with addiction to:
- Alcohol
- Opioids (including prescription pain medications)
- Benzodiazepines and other sedatives
- Stimulants (such as cocaine and methamphetamine)
- Cannabis
- Other substances
We also offer IOP treatment for individuals with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders who need structured support but do not require 24-hour inpatient care.
Partnering with API
Provided by a trained team of professionals, our IOPs are a powerful and effective support for those with a New Year’s resolution to overcome substance addiction. Partnering with API means access to personalized treatment and the expertise of caring healthcare personnel.
Staying on Track
A New Year’s resolution to overcome a drug addiction can benefit from a solid start, but continuing through to lasting sobriety requires staying on track. There are multiple ways to stay close to your resolution as you move forward in drug addiction recovery:
- Celebrating small wins and milestones: Recognize progress as you work through a stressful situation without turning to substance use or when you reach a time-related sobriety goal. Each success in recovery is important.
- Imagining a healthier future self: Consider what you will be able to do with the enhanced mental and physical capabilities that come with recovery. Allow pictures of your healthier life after drug addiction to motivate staying on track through difficulties that may be present during treatment.
- Creating routines that reinforce sobriety: How you go about your day-to-day life impacts your recovery efforts. Create routines that help you avoid triggers and that keep you in a healthy cadence aligned to your recovery resolution.
- Reframing setbacks as learning opportunities: Recovery may involve resetting and moving forward, even multiple times. If you slip during recovery, identify what you can learn and make adjustments accordingly. Using a step backward as a stepping stone forward can help with keeping a positive perspective on recovery.
- Keeping connected with support systems: Seek out and keep in touch with trusted family and friends who are invested in and supportive of your recovery. Also, attend support group meetings made available through IOP treatment, drawing on the strength available in those forums.
Seek Drug Addiction Treatment from API
Recovery from drug addiction is possible, and the start of a new year is a good time for resolving to move forward in sobriety. In your recovery process, incorporate effective supports to aid your progress, including structured, professional treatment.
IOP addiction recovery services from API include a personalized care plan for each client and evidence-based care from healthcare professionals. We offer IOP addiction recovery treatment from three locations in Southern California: San Diego, El Cajon, and La Mesa.
We invite you to contact API to learn more about our IOP treatment options and how we can support your resolution for drug addiction recovery.
