The first thirty days of recovery are known to be the most strenuous and difficult of all. This is because you are at the infancy of sobriety and the addict does not yet have the experience and know how to change the path of their energy away from their addiction towards more positive and sober life. There is a form of obsession which is created over the urge to use, and those who are able to survive the first thirty days are generally able to go further. When trying to get through the first month the key is to take it step by step, for the addict to think about getting through a whole month can be somewhat overwhelming, thus whether its hour by hour, day by day, or week by week, it is important to break down the time period into manageable chunks for the brain to process.


It is possible to get through it if you have the motivation and you maintain the reason for why you are going through the pain for. Every time you think about relapsing you uphold the image of yoiur family friends and whatever else you need to get you through it. When addicts stop taking the drugs and alcohol their bodies make sharp reactions to the sudden stop of poison which they are used to. thus the body can often come up with a sharp reaction of withdrawal symptoms including vomiting headaches and even seizures. A process of detox can be incredibly helpful during this process in order to ease the physical ailments of abstinence. Thus the body can slowly get used to reducing the amount of drugs which they are taking.


The mind will feel cloudy and the body weak for the first few weeks while the body is slowly getting used to life without drugs. Many people new to recovery are shocked by these symptoms however it is a normal part of the process, and hopefully it should subside in the near future. At this point it is important to focus on the basic human needs, eating sleeping and doing whatever is necessary to continue with your life i.e. work. Although it may sound somewhat trivial eating three meals a day and developing a normal sleeping pattern is incredibly important.


The addict often attempts to replace their yearning for the substance with cigarettes and alcohol, although this isn’t exactly positive for one’s body, the focus is the other addiction and thus once that has become somewhat under control ones focus can then shift to reducing the consumption of these secondary focuses.


One of the most important things to do once the fog has lifted so to speak is to do something important with the start of your day, many have found this to be reading literature to do with the path of abstinence, thus there are specific meditations and processes that one reads in the morning that they can focus upon later in the day and it helps the addict to continue with their life and focus upon the psoitives of sobriety rather than the temptation of relapse.