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HOW TO AVOID RELAPSE AND
QUIT DRINKING FOR GOOD
PATRICK MENINGA
www.spiritualriver.com
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Contents
Dry Drunk Syndrome .................................................................................................................................... 1
Identifying dry drunk syndrome ............................................................................................................... 1
Strategies for overcoming dry drunk syndrome ........................................................................................ 2
Action items – what you can do:............................................................................................................... 4
How to Stop Drinking ................................................................................................................................... 5
The perceived benefits of drinking ........................................................................................................... 9
Reasons to stop drinking ......................................................................................................................... 12
Quitting drinking and your lifespan .................................................................................................... 12
Quitting drinking and the quality of your life ..................................................................................... 14
Stop drinking too much alcohol, or quit entirely?................................................................................... 15
If you can’t stop drinking now ................................................................................................................ 15
Stop binge drinking ................................................................................................................................. 16
How to Live Without Drugs and Alcohol ................................................................................................... 19
Using a program of recovery as a guide for living.................................................................................. 20
The subjective program of recovery ....................................................................................................... 21
So back to the question: “How do I live without drugs and alcohol?” ................................................... 23
About the Author .................................................................................................................................... 24
Get Help for Addiction Now................................................................................................................... 25
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1
Dry Drunk Syndrome
Dry drunk syndrome is a term that refers to someone
who is not drinking or using drugs but they have already
relapsed emotionally.
If someone is a “dry drunk” it basically refers to the fact
that they are not actively working on their recovery, and
therefore they might just as well be drinking – although
they have not technically done so yet.
So basically:
Dry drunk = relapse mode.
It is often characterized as being “restless, irritable, and
discontent.” Anyone who is in this state of mind is headed
for trouble unless they can somehow pull themselves out
of it before they pick up a drink.
Identifying dry drunk syndrome
It all starts with self-awareness. This is critical because if
you simply storm through your life and your recovery
without paying close attention to your own emotional
state then chances are good that you will at some point be
knocked off balance and thus risk relapse. So we have to
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pay attention to our own emotional state and occasionally
take action to correct it.
How quickly do we always recognize when we are getting
restless, irritable, and discontent? You might think that we
can identify these states instantly but they can creep up on
us sometimes. Therefore we must make a conscious
decision to recognize these emotional states and “catch
ourselves” when we think we are going there. Now there
are some things you can do once you realize you are
sliding into this emotional state but if you never even
realize it in the first place then these things will do you no
good.
So you have to be aware of when things start sliding out
of control. How can you practice this? By simply paying
attention. Become aware of it and watch it happen in
yourself. Notice it. This is a huge part of the solution and
in fact it is almost the entire solution. Simply become
more self-aware and tune in to your own emotional state.
Recognize where you are at throughout the day.
Strategies for overcoming dry drunk syndrome
1) Self-awareness - Like I mentioned above, simply
increasing your self-awareness is a huge part of this
process and can work wonders. The more mindful you
can become of your own emotional state, the more
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protected you will become against becoming overly off
balance.
2) Networking - If you are restless, irritable, and
discontent, find someone who is even worse off than you
are and then help them through it. This might sound
ridiculous but it absolutely works. One of the best ways to
do this is to regularly work with newcomers in recovery.
When we reach out and help others we actually help
ourselves. When we reach out to others and calm them
down emotionally we are actually calming ourselves.
When we teach others the way to emotional balance we
teach ourselves.
When networking with others in recovery becomes a habit
then this creates a safety net. This is why 12 step
programs recommend daily meetings. If you are “plugged
in” to this type of networking every single day then it can
help protect you from becoming too far off in your
emotional balance.
3) Action based recovery – one of the worst ways to
fight dry drunk syndrome is to do nothing. If you don’t do
anything to try and actively correct your emotional state
then you run the risk of letting it progress into a true
relapse. Essentially a dry drunk has already relapsed
emotionally and is one step away from the bottle. So the
key is to pull yourself out of the emotional relapse. How
can this happen?
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Action. It is purposeful action that will make a difference
in this case. Don’t think that you can sit around and wait
for the solution to come to you. It won’t. You have to get
out there and create your recovery.
Remember that it is our natural state for addicts and
alcoholics to be using drugs and alcohol. This is our
“normal” behavior and we will return to it eventually
unless we take action to do something else.
For me, that “something else” that we need to do in
recovery is to create a meaningful and purposeful life of
sobriety. This doesn’t happen while sitting on a couch.
You have to have vision and you have to chase your goals
and you have to get out there and do stuff.
Find your passion and take action.
Action items – what you can do:
1) Tune in to your emotional state – so that you are aware
if you are acquiring dry drunk syndrome.
2) Make a habit - of helping others in recovery as
protection against relapse.
3) Focus on action in recovery – don’t do nothing.
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How to Stop Drinking
Far too often, the traditional wisdom for how to stop
drinking is plagued with useless relapse prevention tactics
that try to pinpoint our problems and triggers in helping
us to prevent relapse. My experience has shown this to be
ineffective.
Better than tactics for recovery are strategies. Strategy is
more useful because it is more encompassing and can
affect larger areas of our lives, in such a way that we can
affect massive change. Using tactics is more short term
and leads to smaller, more incremental changes. In
addiction recovery, we need massive change. We need to
change everything. Strategies are the way to do that,
because they give a broader sense of guidance for all of
our actions and decisions.
Strategy #1: Take massive action
If nothing changes, nothing changes. The scope of what
you are trying to do (quitting drinking) is truly massive.
You are trying to change your whole life. This takes a
huge effort. Do not underestimate it. Go big or go home.
Strategy #2: Blast through your denial
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See your drinking for the crutch that it really is. Honestly
see how it controls you and dominates you, even though
you “enjoy” it. Measure your time spent being “happy”
while drinking, and notice that you are almost always
miserable, but hanging on to happy memories of drinking.
Strategy #3: Seek professional help
Alcohol detox can be dangerous. There are huge benefits
to inpatient treatment. Seeing a counselor or therapist can
be a turning a point. Getting any form of help is action,
which is always good.
Strategy #4: Build real self-esteem
This is the strongest form of relapse prevention: if you
truly value your life, you will not throw it away on a
relapse. Take care of yourself. Push yourself to grow.
Help others.
Strategy #5: Pursue holistic health
Recovery is about living healthier. Extend this in new
directions to enhance your recovery from addiction. Quit
smoking, start exercising, make nutritional changes, seek
emotional balance, etc.
Strategy #6: Create a new life
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You have surplus time and energy now that you are in
recovery. How will you use this surplus? Find outlets that
match your talents and strengths, while allowing you to
help others and create real value in life. Experience
growth.
Strategy #7: Seek balance as you progress
Watch out for extremism. Recovery is about living, not
about recovery. Balance growth and acceptance. Stay
active in pursuing new things. Stay open to growth
opportunities.
Strategy #8: Push yourself to grow
Do not get lazy in recovery. Do not justify laziness with
self- acceptance. Do not close the door on selfexamination. If you stop growing, you relapse.
Strategy #9: Get physical
Fitness is huge in recovery. Most people disregard fitness
due to inherent laziness. Push yourself to exercise
regularly and reap huge benefits. Some recovery
programs are based on exercise alone–that is how
powerful it is.
Strategy #10: Embrace gratitude
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If you are truly grateful, relapse is impossible. Gratitude
is the mindset for learning and growth experiences.
Practicing gratitude enhances recovery and leads to more
learning and thus more growth.
Strategy #11: Avoid complacency
Our natural state is to be drinking. Therefore, we have to
keep pushing in order to avoid reverting to our natural
state. We can only do this through the push for personal
growth. Seeking holistic health gives us a broad platform
for growth experiences.
Strategy #12: Explore a new vision
Take action first, then reflect on how it has helped your
recovery. Seek growth based on your strengths. See how
you can use this to help others. Start becoming the person
you were always meant to be.
Strategy #13: Discover your purpose
Your vision made real. Helping others in a profound way
based on the personal growth you have experienced.
Achieving dreams that you once thought were blocked
forever by your drinking. True contentment and joy.
Stop drinking today….how many reasons do you need?
As a recovering alcoholic, I know that this is a difficult
decision. Even though there were a million reasons for me
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to stop drinking, I had a million reasons why I should
continue. These reasons of mine to continue drinking
were because of something called perceived benefits.
The tricky thing is that there are some real benefits to
drinking alcohol for most of the adult population. But for
the true alcoholic, those benefits are largely illusory, and
become less and less valid as their disease progresses.
In other words, an alcoholic might cling to the “benefits”
of drinking, rationalizing that these are important reasons
for them to continue to self-medicate, but in reality those
reasons are no longer valid, and they are just fooling
themselves. This is called denial.
The perceived benefits of drinking
The perceived benefits of drinking will be a bit different
for different people. Just to give you an idea, here is what
I thought alcohol was doing for me:
1) Fixed my shyness – Before I started drinking, I was
naturally shy and found it difficult to speak in groups
larger than 2 or 3 people without any anxiety. Alcohol
fixed this. The problem is that, even though alcohol fixed
this, it was not a viable long-term solution to the anxiety
problem. This is because my tolerance increased and I had
to drink more and more in order to overcome my shyness.
Eventually it stopped working altogether, and I would
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remain shy even in a complete blackout. But I stubbornly
clung to the idea that I had to drink in order for this
personality flaw to be corrected.
2) Celebration and passion for living - I believed that
life was a party, and that you were not celebrating life
unless you were living it up and getting wasted every day.
Somehow I believed that the only way to live passionately
was to drink heavily. These ideas were obviously from the
“good old days” when drinking was still fun, and hanging
onto this illusion was just another part of my denial.
3) Drinking = happy – I truly believed that the only way
that I could be happy in this life was to be drunk. This
was a twisted mindset. I really looked down on other
people who didn’t drink and pitied them that they were
not able to “get happy” like I was. The truth of the matter
was that I was miserable for 99% of the time, and it was a
rare moment when I could find the right level of toxicity
where I could even claim to be “happy” in my drunken
stupor.
So these were my main “benefits” of drinking. I call them
perceived benefits because this is what I truly believed,
but looking back we can see that I was in denial about my
drinking and therefore I was only fooling myself. These
benefits were illusions that I clung to; they were actually
false 99 percent of the time.
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The denial exists because alcohol used to work as
described. At one time, these perceived benefits were
real, and my life was not screwed up yet from excessive
drinking. In other words, there were some good times that
I had with drinking, and my mind stubbornly clung to
those ideas. This is just one mechanism of denial. All of
these perceived benefits became false as my alcoholism
continued to progress, but my denial kept me from seeing
the truth.
When you really analyze the perceived benefits of
drinking, it almost looks like a belief system. I had
established the idea firmly in my head that alcohol was
wonderful and those who did not drink it were missing
out in life in a big way. I really believed this. Not only
that, but I believed it at a very deep level and it had
become part of who I was.
So in spite of these perceived benefits, eventually we have
to see the illusions for what they are and break through
our denial. It is only then that we can have any hope at
even caring about a reason to stop drinking in the first
place.
But once we become the slightest bit open to the idea, the
tide can turn, and we can start to get excited about a sober
life again:
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Reasons to stop drinking
We can separate the logical reasons to stop drinking into
these broad categories:
1) Longevity of life
2) Quality of life
Pretty basic, right? Alcoholism can affect how long you
live, and also the quality of your life. So let’s take them
one at a time:
Quitting drinking and your lifespan
Obviously, if you are an alcoholic, then quitting drinking
will greatly increase your potential lifespan. But by how
much?
To answer that question, we have to look at some
statistics. I’ll spare you the charts and data and summarize
it for you: most alcoholics die about 15 to 20 years earlier
than their peers.
Now the question is: “How much is 15 to 20 years of your
life worth to you?” This question is actually fairly deep
and complicated, because the answer can change so
drastically depending on your state of mind.
For example, a miserable drunk will usually brush the
question off entirely, waving his hand and saying
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“whatever. Take me right now if you want!” That is the
miserable desperation of addiction talking. Now if we
manage to sober this person up and get them involved
with a creative new life in recovery, their answer will
likely change quite a bit (I know mine did!). Life
becomes precious in recovery.
And of course we are just talking about numbers and
percentages here–you might be able to continue to drink
and still live a very long time. But the odds are against
you. It’s not just the direct effects of drinking that can kill
you. For example, guess what the number one killer of
recovering alcoholics is? Lung cancer. In other words, it’s
not just the booze that will kill you….it’s the lifestyle
that gets us in the end. Not to mention drunk drivings,
accidents, slip-and-falls, alcohol poisoning, liver damage,
and so on.
With alcoholic drinking, there are a million ways to die.
Problems compound as the lifestyle becomes increasingly
more dangerous. It’s a progressive disease, so the risks
increase for both the direct effects of alcohol, as well as
for “lifestyle deterioration.” In other words, as time goes
on, our drinking takes us to new lows and to do things we
said we would never do. All of this steadily increases the
odds of our untimely demise. Luckily, there are a million
ways to stop drinking as well.
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Quitting drinking and the quality of your life
The discussion so far as focused on how long we will live
if we drink alcoholically. But lets take a look at what it
does to the quality of our life.
There are a number of ways that drinking impacts the
quality of your life:
1) Overall health – Not only will heavy drinking reduce
your lifespan, but it also has the potential to bring on any
number of diseases, disorders, and ailments.
2) Alcoholics are more susceptible to other drugs –
which can have devastating effects on your life as well.
Many people pick up “new habits” while they are drunk.
3) Alcoholics are several times more likely to be
cigarette smokers - which, combined with drinking, can
really have devastating health consequences.
4) Risk of suicide – is determined by studies to be over
5,000 times greater in alcoholics than in that of the
general public.
5) Social effects – Alcoholism negatively impacts divorce
rates, domestic violence, job stability, and so on.
6) Mental effects – Alcoholism contributes to depression,
anxiety, and in the long run can result in ever more
serious mental conditions, some of which might
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eventually be permanent
Is there a Stop drinking pill?
There is a medication called Campral that can help with
cravings, but it is by no means a magic bullet. People who
rely on the pill to “fix” their alcoholism are going to be
very disappointed. There is no magic cure and you have
to put forth a tremendous effort in order to get sober aside
from simply taking a pill like this. But, it can be helpful,
and so any alcoholic should consider talking with their
doctor about medications like Campral that might be one
piece of their recovery journey.
Stop drinking too much alcohol, or quit entirely?
Some people think that they might be able to regulate
their drinking instead of quitting entirely. If this works for
you, then that is great! Moderate your drinking. But an
alcoholic is defined by their inability to do so. Eventually
you may have to get honest with yourself and realize that
you cannot control your drinking consistently.
Denial is the trap that you can control your drinking some
of the time. If you hang on to those successes, but ignore
the train wreck that is your life, then you are in denial.
If you can’t stop drinking now
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If you try to stop drinking now but find that you cannot do
it on your own, then ask for help. Call up a local treatment
center and ask them what you need to do in order to get
into treatment. They will lay out your options for you and
help you to get funding so that you can get the help you
need. Pretty much anyone who is persistent can find some
resources to help them with their problem, it is just a
matter of putting in the effort and the footwork that is
necessary to get the ball rolling.
Stop binge drinking
If you are a binge drinker then you may be fooling
yourself that you do not have a problem, when in reality
you need to stop just as bad as anyone else. The binge
drinker is a special kind of alcoholic, but they are still an
alcoholic. They may go for long periods of time without
drinking any alcohol at all, but when they do drink, they
go on long binges and usually spin out of control
completely. Just a different flavor of alcoholic, but one
that still needs help in order to change their life.
Problem: an active alcoholic does not care about
this stuff
So here is the real challenge: even when posed with a vast
list such as this as to why a person should stop drinking,
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most active alcoholics could care less. The problem is
that they are depressed, suffer low self-esteem, and cannot
bring themselves to care much about their own wellbeing.
In other words, you could promise them the world if they
would just quit drinking, and they will politely decline
and go back to the bottle. They just don’t care.
Now I know this because I have been there before. And
eventually I got to a place where I wanted to care, but I
still could not bring myself to do it. I was stuck as a
miserable drunk. I could not figure out how to stop
drinking alcohol.
The breakthrough for me came when I decided to give
sobriety a chance. Perhaps this was divine intervention. I
had tried to achieve sobriety in the past but it had not
worked, so I was extremely skeptical. But for some
reason I was miserable and tired enough to give it another
shot.
This is the balancing point. This is that tricky area of
surrender that a drunk has to find their way to. It is a fine
line. You are just miserable enough to want to stop
drinking, but at the same time you are 2 seconds away
from saying “screw it” and going to get another bottle.
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This is why I think surrender to the disease of addiction
might be divinely inspired. It almost seems impossible for
an individual to find their way out of the alcoholic trap.
If you want to know how to stop drinking, here is my
number one suggestion to you:
Ask for help.
Really. That’s it. Start with that, and things should start
falling into place. It is possible to learn how to stop
drinking on your own, but it is pretty tough
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How to Live Without Drugs and Alcohol
A struggling addict or alcoholic might ask: “How do I
live without drugs and alcohol?” The proposition can be
mind-boggling for someone who is still caught in the grip
of addiction. Typically, the addict or alcoholic cannot
even picture their life and what it would be like without
self-medicating with drugs and alcohol.
Furthermore, even if they could imagine such a life
without chemicals, most of us do not want such a fairy
tale existence. The idea of sobriety repels us, because we
imagine that we will be miserable without our drug of
choice. I know this because I once stood at this very
jumping-off point: baffled by how I had become so
dependent and miserable using drugs, but unable to
picture a positive life for myself in the future.
So how do we strip away the drugs and alcohol, how to
we manage a life with this apparent “emptiness” that is
sobriety?
First of all, that emptiness that is so dreaded by the
newcomer is nothing but a huge mountain of fear (one
that is paper-thin, to borrow a great quote). It is only by
walking through this fear and giving your new life in
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recovery a chance that you can begin to understand how
that “emptiness” without drugs and alcohol was nothing
more than an illusion, and anyone who stays the course in
recovery will reap the rewards of a rich and full life.
Understand, however, that you probably cannot convince
a struggling addict or alcoholic of this. They must accept
it on blind faith that their life will get better….just as I
did.
Using a program of recovery as a guide for living
They say that recovery is an action program. This is
absolutely the truth. You can see evidence that any
recovery must be an action-based program when you start
looking at the success stories and comparing them to the
countless people who tend to relapse over and over again.
The main difference can always be measured in terms of
action and follow-through. The people who relapse often
talk a good game. But that doesn’t keep anyone sober.
Living without drugs and alcohol requires action on a
daily basis, and that means discipline. Why discipline?
Because the actions that carry you through each day sober
have to be repeated, over and over again. That means you
need to find and carefully evaluate what works for you in
maintaining sobriety.
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A program of recovery (such as the 12 step program) is
supposed to be an objective set of guidelines to instruct
recovering addicts and alcoholics on how to live their life
on a day-to-day basis. Now this is all well and good, and
can certainly help many people to live without drugs and
alcohol. But remember that a program of recovery is
nothing by itself, it only becomes useful after an
individual interprets it. And after it is interpreted, it is no
longer objective. It has now become part of that person’s
direct experience.
The subjective program of recovery
Each program of recovery, regardless of who is working
the program or what steps they are following or what
book they are reading, is subjective. Any program of
recovery must be first interpreted by an individual and
then implemented in that person’s daily life in order to be
effective.
In the beginning, we have to be told what to do, and how
to stay clean. There are a number of programs out there,
and an infinite number of interpretations of those
programs. But we come into recovery in a sad state, out of
control and afraid to even make decisions about our own
lives. We know that we are beaten and that we need help.
As we grow in recovery, we start to see that the program
that we have been following all along has several
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interpretations. There are many winners in recovery:
people who have achieved a meaningful, long term
sobriety. And among these winners, we see that their
exact implementation of recovery varies by quite a bit.
For example, there are winners in recovery who never
meditate. Some of them have never even tried. They
might pray to a higher power, or find meaning within a
spiritual group, or do other things that they consider to be
spiritual exercises, but they never meditate. This is not
good or bad, it simply is.
On the other hand, there are winners in recovery who base
their entire lifestyle around meditation. They are
meditation fanatics, and this becomes their core spiritual
practice. It becomes a lifestyle for them. Is this good or
bad? Of course not….it simply is. The point is to illustrate
that recovery programs are truly subjective. They are not
etched in stone and only open to a single interpretation.
Just look at the wide variety of success stories in
recovery…so many different people, achieving
meaningful sobriety in so many different ways! Don’t shy
away or be afraid of this diversity, as it is cause to
celebrate. This brings hope for the addict or alcoholic that
thinks they will never fit in to a recovery program.
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So back to the question: “How do I live without
drugs and alcohol?”
There is a great saying around the tables of AA: “Take
what you need and leave the rest.” This is to be taken
literally as sound advice. You have to find your own path
in recovery. No one can show you the exact way, because
so much of the journey is about introspection and finding
out who you are and who you are supposed to be
becoming (i.e. what God’s real work for you is).
Yes, you are on a journey, and you’re going to have to
navigate at least some of it on your own. Others can help
you with much of it, but in the end, you will find your
own path. Everyone eventually finds their own path–this
means that they can look back at their recovery
“program” and say “yes, I can see now how I tailored
these ideas to fit in to my life. And it worked for me!”
Good luck to everyone out there who is working a
program of recovery. Don’t be afraid to find your own
path.
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About the Author
Patrick Meninga is the Editor-in-Chief
of Spiritual River and an Intake
Specialist at a Drug Rehab in Michigan.
He has over five years of experience
working directly with recovering addicts
and alcoholics and has been sober
himself for over a decade. Patrick actively writes on the
web about addiction and has contributed over one million
words to try and help others find a path in recovery. His
main focus is on “personal growth as a strategy for
relapse prevention.” He believes that staying clean and
sober can be done without a formal “program” of
recovery, but rather through personal motivation and the
push to grow in a holistic manner. He has published
several ebooks available for free download on the web at
http://www.spiritualriver.com/.
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Get Help for Addiction Now
Addiction is a disease that takes many forms. Studies
show that one in every ten Americans is affected by
addiction to substances. Addiction can be extremely
dangerous and potentially life-threatening if not treated
immediately.
The road to addiction recovery takes immense strength,
courage, support and guidance and should not be
undergone alone. Getting help for addiction is crucial and
should be done with patience, encouragement, and
support.
Spiritual River partners with Transformations Treatment
to assist readers through live chat and phone help. The
caring, professional Transformation staff use a variety of
approaches based on individualized treatment plans.
Counselors are dedicated to helping clients understand the
roots of their addiction. Experienced, licensed and
credentialed professionals are dedicated to obtaining the
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Transformations Treatment follows up treatment with a
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If you or a loved one is struggling with addiction, call
(888) 724-3186 to learn about how you can begin your
journey to recovery.
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