Don’t we all wish that it was just as easy to escape a drug addiction as it was to get addicted in the first place? How is it that the road to addiction is so effortless, beguiling, and easy, while the road away from addiction is so difficult? Just like it’s easy to run down a hill but tiring to run back up it, you can’t expect that walking away from your addiction will be a simple reversal of the steps you took to get there. However, there is help to be found for your drug or alcohol addiction. Eternal Awakenings is a Christian drug rehab center in Gonzales, TX, and we offer residential treatment for drug and alcohol addiction. Here are some of the stages that we’ve seen people pass through on the way to recovery.

1. Denial

When you don’t know you’re addicted, you won’t try to escape it. In the early stages of an addiction, it’s easy to be in denial about the fact that you’re addicted at all. However, if your friends and family are universally expressing concern, then you should be willing to pay attention and take a close look at whether you really might be addicted. A good test to figure this out? Move on to step 2, Personal Attempts, and see if you succeed or fail. If you fail, it’s a pretty sure sign you are addicted.

2. Personal Attempts

You go solo. You’re sure you’ve got this figured out. It can’t be that hard, you think. No one needs to bothered; in fact, they don’t even need to know. But you fall, and you fall again, and you come to a point where you’re pretty sure that you’re not going to be able to to do this alone.

3. Informal Accountability

After your personal attempts have failed to get you anywhere, you decide to bite the bullet and seek help. So you confess to a friend, family member, or mentor. “Hey. I’m struggling with this. I need help. Every time I feel like using, I’m going to send you a text. I’m going to need you to talk me down from the edge of the cliff. I don’t want to use, but left to myself, I’m too prone to do it. Will you be there for me?” That person agrees, and you start to enlist their help, and it works… sort of.

The problem with this stage is that your friend is not trained on how to guide a person through the addiction recovery journey. Your addiction may be too big for them, too. There’s a real danger here: When you discover that your friend or accountability partner isn’t big enough to give you the support you need, you may revert back to step 2. “So much for their help. Guess I’m left to my own devices.” This is a dangerous place to go, because it can leave you in defeat and cause you not to think it’s even worth trying to escape your addiction any more. Don’t go backwards from stage 3—go forwards!

4. Outpatient Professional Help

When your friends don’t have answers for you, it’s time for you to seek professional help. Perhaps you get counseling or enroll in a 12-step program. A trained counselor or support group can be a huge help on the road to recovery, and many people can stop here and never get to any of the other stages. However, addiction is strong, and the program or counselor you choose has to be stronger.

5. Onsite Rehab

When you really want to meet your addiction head-on, you can choose residential treatment, which may be long-term or short-term, in order to have the committed support that you need to detox, reframe your thinking, establish new healthy patterns in your life, and emerge with a stable, confident outlook. When your goal is to get sober and stay sober, even after you’ve left the rehab, an onsite program like the one at Eternal Awakenings can be a great way to achieve the results you’re looking for.

6. Hospitalization

We wouldn’t wish this on anyone, but sometimes you get to the place where your body just can’t take it any more, requiring acute medical care to save your life. Please don’t let yourself get to this point. And if you do, please make it a point to enter rehab so that you can get your life back on track.