Amber Hollingsworth shares concrete tools for staying sober in early recovery: find accountability through sponsors or counselors, use technology like continuous breathalyzers and sweat patches, and consider medication like Antabuse. These aren't cheating. They're protection when willpower is weakest.
Chapters
Creating some accountability for yourself is the absolute key that is going to get you through those first few days, weeks, and even months when it's really hard. There are lots of ways to create accountability for yourself. You can talk to your support people like your sponsor or your recovery coach or your family or your friends or your counselor, and you can say, hey, if you hear me saying X, Y or Z or these things, or if you know I'm going around these people or these places, call me out, because that is not a good sign. Or if you see me get in this sort of mood or start talking about this sort of thing is not a good sign. You got to go ahead and put those secrets out there when you're in a really good place about it, because you're not always going to be so strong. You may feel really strong about it right now, but there are going to be a lot of days that you're not so strong. One of the things that we do here at Hope for Families is we have some really cool technology that we.
Use to help actually do drug and alcohol monitoring 24. 7.
One of those things is a really.
Cool advanced technology breathalyzer that basically breathalyzes you throughout the day. And the other one is what we.
Call a drug patch.
And we put it on you and it collects your sweat. You can wear it for several days at a time, then we take it off, send it to the lab.
In the past, when I've had this.
Conversation with some clients about maybe you.
Need the sober link or the drug patch, they'll say, well, isn't that cheating? And I've even heard that before when clients have thought about taking Antabuse, if you don't know what Antabuse is, it's.
A medicine that you can take that does not mix with alcohol.
So if your problem is alcohol, if you're on Anabuse, you will not drink because it's gonna make you super sick.
Doesn't really do anything else. It's just that it doesn't mix with the chemicals in alcohol, and you get.
A very not good reaction. So it helps keep you accountable for not drinking.
There are lots of ways to set.
This accountability, but sometimes people think that's cheating. They think, well, that must mean I.
Really don't want it.
No. In my mind, when you make the decision up front to hold yourself accountable.
In whatever way you do that, that.
Tells me that you really, really do want it and that you really understand exactly what you're dealing with. Because choosing.
Choosing to hold yourself accountable is doing this for yourself.
You know, there are going to be days and times ahead where your willpower.
Is just not so strong and you.
Have a bad day. Those accountability checks and balances systems that.
You put in place is what's going to get you through the tough times.
