There’s this fear when you get sober, this overwhelming fear of losing your freedom. It’s easy to romanticize the lifestyle as being free, an experience of rebellion coated with substances abound. I get it.
There’s not a lot of other obligations to uphold when your priority is always to get high again. The vulnerability of asking for help, the locked treatment facilities, the burned bridges and lost trust- that part of getting clean can make the lifestyle of drug use feel more like freedom.
But I’m here to tell you that is not freedom.
Freedom is Not-
Relying on substances to connect with people in your life
Requiring a high to experience joy and pleasure
Waking up in a sweaty sickness needing to use
Spending your waking hours in progress to your next high
Freedom is: an experience of love and connection. It is making strong decisions, and being accountable for them. Freedom is staying in integrity with yourself, who you are and what you want.
Freedom is honoring your body, so it may take you where you decide to go.
Recovery should feel like freedom.
While you are giving up the thing that binds you, you are releasing it’s mental, emotional, physical and spiritual hold on you. When you get clean, you are being freed.
Hayley Mathews LLC 