Substance/Sex Addiction: Essential Tasks in Early Recovery – Self-Care
Dr. David Fawcett
If you engage in sexualized drug use, it is important to address and stabilize any acute situations you may be experiencing. You must make sure you are safe and that your health and life are not at risk. This may mean going to the doctor for a physical or the ER if you are having a medical emergency. It might also mean getting into residential or intensive outpatient treatment if you can’t stop using or acting out. If your substance of choice is a stimulant drug, you may experience paranoia and other psychotic symptoms that require assessment and stabilization.
In addition to the obvious and immediate measures, you should:
- Engage in self-care.
- Learn to manage triggers and cravings.
- Learn to regulate your emotions without engaging in your addiction.
- Build a support network.
In this post, I will discuss the first step in overcoming paired substance/sex addiction: engaging in self-care.
Physical well-being entails caring for your physical body and making sure your needs for water, food, shelter, safety, rest, and exercise are met. As you move forward in recovery, you need to eat healthfully and regularly, stay hydrated throughout the day, get some daily exercise, and get seven to eight hours of sleep every night. These basic interventions increase emotional resilience, improve mental functioning and focus, improve impulse control, and promote a general sense of well-being.
Many people in early recovery report difficulties with sleep. The most effective way to optimize the quality and quantity of one’s sleep is by engaging in good sleep hygiene. This includes going to bed and waking up around the same time every day, including weekends, turning off any screens at least an hour before bed, and taking a hot shower and cooling down the room—both of which lower your body temperature, which sends signals to your brain to prepare for sleep. That said, in early recovery you should be prepared for sleep disruptions. I recall my own frustrations with sleep through my entire first year of abstinence. I also recall how frustrating it was when my sponsor told me that no one ever died from lack of sleep.
In my next posts, I will discuss regulating triggers and cravings, regulating emotions in healthy ways, and building a support network for recovery.
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If you or a loved one are struggling with sex, porn, or substance/sex addiction, Seeking Integrity can help. In addition to residential rehab, we offer low-cost online workgroups for male sex addicts and male porn addicts new to recovery. Click HERE for information on our Sex Addiction Workgroup. Click HERE for information on our Porn Addiction workgroup.