Category: Sobriety

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Sobriety

What is California Sober?

What is California Sober?

The term “California Sober” means that a person is abstinent from alcohol, addictive prescriptions, and hard drugs.

In contrast with the ordinary understanding of the term “sober”, someone who is California Sober may still use marijuana. In some instances, the person may also use psychedelics, such as shrooms, ayahuasca, or acid.

California Sober is, in its essence, a harm-reduction approach to managing addiction. It has gained popularity in recent years, largely due to endorsement by some celebrities.

Does California Sober work?

California Sober may work for some people as a temporary measure, but it is unlikely to last as a solution for most people who struggle with addiction. Since marijuana and psychedelics are generally less harmful and addictive, especially when compared to serious narcotics like opioids, California Sober may still be explored as a potentially beneficial approach, especially if someone is not yet ready to embrace full abstinence.

The concept of being California Sober was probably seeded by singer Demi Lovato, who went so far as to release a song with the same title in 2021.

At the time of the song’s release, Demi Lovato was of the mind that the approach helped them (Lovato uses they/them pronouns) to recover from the use of opioids. After a near-fatal opioid overdose, Lovato felt that being California Sober helped them stay away from more dangerous substances.

Since then, Lovato has changed their stance, clarifying that full sobriety is the only kind of sobriety that they support, after California Sober did not protect them from relapse.

So the answer to whether or not California Sober works may be answered by Demi’s own example: it probably does not work for anyone with a substance addiction.

Does California Sober work for everyone?

California Sober may work for some women, but it does not seem to work for women who qualify for a substance use disorder. Once addiction has taken root within a woman’s body and nervous system, it is unlikely she will be able to stay sober from her more serious drugs of choice by pursuing partial sobriety while still using marijuana and psychedelics.

This is because to recover from underlying physiological and emotional conditions that feed into a pattern of using substances to cope, it’s necessary to abstain entirely from any kind of chemically induced mood alteration.

What this means is that while in the short term, California Sober may reduce the harm compared with continuing to use more dangerous substances like opioids, cocaine, or alcohol, being California Sober is not a permanent solution. It will eventually lead back to relapse in those more serious substances.

What are the benefits of being California Sober?

Compared to more toxic substances like prescription pills, alcohol, and cocaine, marijuana and psychedelics are less harmful and less addictive. California Sober may have a place in a person’s path of reducing overall harm, and it is certainly better to be California Sober than to be abusing alcohol, hard drugs, or prescriptions.

What are the main concerns with living a California Sober lifestyle?

The California Sober lifestyle is preferable to using hard drugs and abusing alcohol, as it is less life-threatening. The concern with California Sober is that it will be difficult for any person with an addiction to alcohol or hard drugs to stay “only” California Sober for a longer period of time. No one should undertake to be California Sober under the misconception that it is a solution to substance addiction; it does not prevent relapse on harder drugs.

Additionally, it’s important to understand that while marijuana and psychedelics are less damaging than other substances, they still can be used in a way that interferes with psychological healing, trauma recovery, and mental health.

A person who is in good mental and physical health to begin with may be able to use marijuana and psychedelics occasionally in positive ways, for healing or other consciousness goals. We know many such people, and we believe their experiences.

But people who use substances to self-soothe, cope with trauma symptoms, or reduce their inner pain are using these substances as “self-medication”, which is a way of engaging with these substances that ultimately creates damage to the nervous system and body. For such people, California Sober will not work because she is still attempting to use substances addictively.

Typically, a woman who is drawn to using substances to excess has co-existing and underlying dysregulation struggles, stemming from a history of traumatization or mental illness symptoms (that’s why she’s using substances in the first place).

Being California Sober will not heal underlying issues but rather block attempts to make contact with parts of her that need help. For such a woman, marijuana and psychedelics use would interfere with getting better, only delaying the moment of needing addictions treatment to a later date.

What are alternatives to living a California Sober lifestyle?

There are very good alternatives to being California Sober.

Full abstinence. For anyone with a history of substance addiction, we highly recommend full abstinence from any kind of mood-altering substance. Full abstinence is the only kind of sobriety that works with getting better, treating your underlying trauma, and healing mental health symptoms at the root cause level.

The good news is, if you have managed to get yourself tapered down from more serious substances to a state where you are now able to be California Sober, that is something worth celebrating. Don’t stop there – the fact you got this far means you can do the remaining steps all the way down to total abstinence.

Addictions, trauma and mental health treatment. For those who fear or already know from experience that they do not have the personal ability to stay fully sober, don’t worry. That’s what addiction treatment is for.

If it has been difficult for you in the past to stay fully abstinent from substances, you are not alone, and there is something you can do about it: get help to treat the underlying conditions you have been trying to self-treat or manage through your addictions. It is very hard to get and stay sober while your body and nervous system are still fully convinced that you need substances to survive overwhelming states and sensations. This isn’t your fault, rather, it is a common state that many women end up in, a vicious cycle that is best treated with professional help.

There are more and more trauma-informed recovery programs available, such as the ones offered by our own team at Villa Kali Ma. These programs understand the need for sensitivity and gentleness when approaching the complexity of addiction, making sure that each woman will be stable and safe enough to succeed in feeling ok in her own skin without substances. This is accomplished in a non-shaming, acceptance-based approach through psychoeducation, skills training, and trauma-informed psychotherapies and modalities.

Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy. Although still somewhat rare, psychedelics are sometimes used in clinical settings to help people recover from traumatization. If you strongly feel that you want to use psychedelics in a clinical context, you can do that in a supervised setting. In fact, Villa Kali Ma offers Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy when appropriate for a woman’s recovery from traumatization. However, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy approaches can’t be self-administered (or else we’re back to self-medicating, which is unlikely to be sustainable or safe in the long term).

Villa Kali Ma Makes Being “Fully Sober” Joyful and Possible

Many people fear that being fully sober means having no options for self-soothing, fun, or enjoyment of life. We fear it means returning to the time before we found the solution of drugs and alcohol, back to overwhelming sensations of dread, fear, rage, loneliness, or other kinds of pain that colored our early experiences of life.

We here at Villa Kali Ma have found the very opposite to be true. Full sobriety, in the context of a loving, re-connective recovery path, is not only achievable but a way to experience deep liberation that goes beyond all previous attempts to heal the pain we have carried.

If you’re curious to find out what we mean or you need help getting your substance behaviors under control, connect with us to find out more about how it is that we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that full sobriety is a path to joy, re-embodiment, and full-hearted living.

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Sobriety

Why Do People Relapse?

Recovery is nourished by truth in all forms. Liberation comes not only from heart-opening truths, the kind that melts us like butter in the sun but also from ugly, uncomfortable ones. The kinds of truths that make us squirm with a crawling unease, may be the most freeing of all.

In this article, we’ll do our best to talk about something that is no fun to think about, a shadowy, but valuable truth. This liberating truth is: that there is a pretty high probability of relapse, even after getting professional help.

Any relapse could be our last. The last because it’s the one that leads us to turn our backs on the sweet lies of addiction forever, or the last because it’s the one that gets us, for good.

A life in sobriety is not guaranteed, but rather something we must daily choose and pursue with every ounce of life force and will given to us.

Relapse statistics

It sure would be nice if, after all the hard work, economic expense, and the sheer time it takes to get clean and start a life in recovery, we could at least count on favorable odds of survival.

Actually, the odds are about 50-50. The National Institute on Drug Abuse says there’s a 40-60% chance of relapse, on average, across different drug categories.

Addiction Group, a site sharing data about addiction and recovery, cites relapse rates as high as 90% for certain drugs, such as opioids. 75% percent of people receiving treatment for stimulants relapse in the first five years of recovery. Alcoholism relapse rates fall in the 40-60% range, though some studies show more dire outcomes, suggesting we can expect more like 8 out of 10 individuals to relapse within the first year after treatment.

You might be thinking: where’s the liberation in all of this truth? Isn’t this depressing? Am I doomed to fail? Why work so hard when my chances of making it are so bad?

That’s a serious question to sit with and to hold with reverence. Let us not bypass it. Let us not miss the grimness.

But all darkness holds a grain of light. Here’s one grain: you could also see the reverse, that a percentage of seriously addicted people manage not to relapse.

Taking a glass-half-full approach, 50-50 odds means it’s equally likely that the liberating, healing force within you wins out. This fact alone is remarkable, at least when you’ve seen how bad it can indeed get in some addiction cases.

All of this shows the danger and also shows what’s possible. What can we do to help ourselves and our loved ones be in that percentile?

Why women relapse

It’s good to remember that relapse is caused most of all by the phenomenon of addiction itself. Prolonged exposure to addictive substances changes the human body dramatically and irreversibly.

Some positive repairs and regeneration of physiology are possible in recovery, but halting the advancement of the disease is the only realistic hope. We do not regain our pre-addiction body. As they say in AA, “You can’t turn a pickle back into a cucumber”.

If that’s true, how is it that we recover and go on to live lives of joy and meaning? The answer is: that we find new pathways, workarounds, and ways to repair our hearts and minds so that what got changed in the body does not determine our fate anymore.

Since addiction never really is fully uninstalled from the body, relapse is always a risk. Relapse isn’t so much a bug in our recovery, as a core feature of the addiction that still lives in us, lying in wait for us to lose focus on recovery.

Another way to say this is: if we were not prone to relapse, you wouldn’t use the word addict to describe us. It is part of the diagnostic criteria of addiction to establish that there have been past failed attempts to stop using the substance.

It is this peculiarity of broken willpower, and inability to act in one’s own interests nor to obey one’s own higher intelligence, being instead completely overrun by appetites and urges gone rogue, that defines addiction.

Within that, there are several common causes for relapse. It’s helpful to be aware of these so that they do not blindside us entirely.

1. Women are more vulnerable to relapse than men

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, women are more vulnerable to relapse than men. The reasons are considered to be psychological as well as biological, as subtleties of neurobiology and hormones are affected differently than in men.

What to do about this? Take extra care. Do not diminish or self-gaslight what your emotions, especially your pain, are telling you. Listen to the female experience – it is often ignored. In the case of addiction, we do so at our own peril.

2. Withdrawals

The top reason that people relapse is because of overpowering physical and psychological discomfort during withdrawal from the substance. The combination of painful physical symptoms and emotional agony is often too much for people, and they are pulled back in.

For this reason, it’s wise to check yourself into a professional facility for detoxification, such as a medically supervised detox like the one we offer at Villa Kali Ma. Initial withdrawals are over relatively quickly, within a week to ten days, but they are fierce. These withdrawals are dangerous and can kill a person if not medically overseen, especially in the case of alcohol, and prescription drugs like opioids (OxyContin) or benzodiazepines (Xanax, Ativan, Klonopin).

Examples of overwhelming physical withdrawal symptoms may include nausea, vomiting, sweating, muscle pains, tremors, seizures, and psychosis. Emotional torment may include severe anxiety, panic attacks, deep depression with suicidal feelings, and bizarre delusions and hallucinations.

Post-acute withdrawals refer to the ongoing symptoms and effects, which may linger for many months or even years, depending on each individual case. While these are more easily addressed with gentler interventions, they should not be underestimated, either. Depression, anxiety, suppressed immunity, ongoing physical pain, and other impacts can take a toll, and pull a person into using again.

3. Trauma and Mental Health Disorders

Even when we are able to get through the shorter-term wave of withdrawals, our next challenge is to face our mental state and our emotional health.

For the majority of women who have substance abuse problems, this means dealing with our traumatization. It means finding ways to mitigate mental health symptoms, like anxiety and depression. If we do not have adequate, timely support for doing the emotional work that is necessary to heal from our emotional damage, our chances of staying clean and sober plummet.

If we are appropriately committed to doing our step work in our 12-step program, that will guide us through the mental and emotional changes that are necessary to recover. It is also highly recommended to enter into therapy and to get specialized attention for trauma healing.

4. People, Places and Things

Another major cause of relapse is placing ourselves in physical proximity to people, places, and things that are linked to our past history of using substances. People who are still using drugs and alcohol, people who are emotionally charged for us (family, friends, enemies, loved ones, old flames, etc), and people who are just associated with our use for whatever reason are all sources of trigger to relapse.

Places we used to frequent when in our addiction, or which are new to us but frequented by other people who are using drugs and alcohol actively, are clear danger zones. But due to the complicated ways that triggers work, our list of places may include locations in themselves benign, but made dangerous by our personal connection to them during past phases of life.

Finally, even things, like objects, movies, music, and sounds, can suddenly act on the body to release the state of craving.

5. Underestimating Addiction

Perhaps the simplest way to explain how and why relapse happens is that each person typically needs to find out for themselves, through their own experiences, how formidable a foe addiction really is. Addiction infiltrates us in every aspect – our bodies, our minds, our hearts, our very sense of who we are, and what we are doing here in life.

In recovery, we have a chance to start over, but it requires a steep learning curve. We must find a way to be much more wakeful, present, and self-responsible than we ever dreamed a person has to be. However much we think recovery asks us to change, it is more than that.

Due to the fact that many of us just can’t quite conceive how thoroughly we must change in order to recover, we may have many phases of getting complacent, losing our fear, becoming bored, feeling sorry for ourselves, overestimating our progress, broiling with resentments, nourishing a sense of victimhood, and in general starting to think things which perk up the ego, but aren’t actually correct. All of these forms of fantasy, deception, and manipulation pull us back to the addict.

It can take some years of experience to detect the difference between our own self-sourced thoughts and the thoughts that are coming from addiction. Living in fear doesn’t help, but we must be wisely apprised of the facts about addiction. We can never afford to lose our vigilance and wariness, and we must, if we want to live, learn to discern the difference between the voice of truth, and the slippery, self-serving thoughts and feelings that arise when the inner addict is coming around, asking to be let back in.

6. Intimacy too Soon After Getting Sober

Dating isn’t recommended in the first year of recovery and is generally approached with caution and support within recovery circles. The reason for this is that intimacy, sex, romance, fantasy, and intrigue are all closely linked to relapse.

Many people relapse over a relationship or romantic scenario, that has gone south, or even one that has gone well. Heightened emotions, self-destructive urges, and our deepest wounds are connected to love and sex. Likewise, inappropriate entanglements, especially in dramatic scenarios or with unhealthy choices of partners, are so common as to be predictable in our first years of trying to recover. The addict within often hides under the cover of “love” and romance and its roller coasters of drama, so it’s wise to watch out for that, especially in the beginning.

Holiday Relapse

Many people relapse over the holidays. The holidays tend to bring us into contact with people, places, and things related to our personal history. The holidays are also linked to painful emotions for many, including isolation and grief, which are triggers. Finally, the holidays are associated with celebration, blowing off steam, and excess. Extra caution is advised during this season.

Ways to Prevent Relapse

Relapse may be common, but we also can’t afford to be fatalistic about it. We have to try our very best to succeed at staying sober and hope we are among the group of people who make it.

If a relapse were to grab us again, the chances that it takes many more years out of us would be very high. It might even kill us (or someone else). Make no mistake, if a relapse does happen, it will be bad for us.

So in the words of Julia Cameron, let’s pray to catch the bus, then run like heck.

Here’s how to do your very best to prevent a relapse:

1. Daily Contact with Recovery People

The best way to nurture your ability to live in the eternal now moment of freedom, where the gift of recovery exists, is to place yourself with people who are already living that reality. You can find these people in the halls of AA and other 12-step recovery circles. No, not every single person there is free. But there is a higher percentage here than anywhere else.

There are many ways to be in daily contact with recovery people. The most powerful is to be physically present in meetings. One meeting a day for the first year is not too much, if you are serious about your recovery you will understand how these meetings give you time, rather than taking time away.

It is also wise to have daily phone calls, daily step work, and a volunteer position that requires you to be accountable. Whatever you do, and however you do it, do not let yourself get separated from the people and places where recovery exists.


2. Do Your Psychological Healing Work

In addition to psychological healing which will come as a result of participation in your recovery community, it’s highly recommended to get individual therapeutic support, especially when mental health problems like depression and anxiety are present in your experience. Trauma must also be addressed as soon as humanly possible.


3. Get Trauma Treatment

If you have any reason to believe you may have trauma, from a childhood of neglect or abuse, and most especially from sexual abuse or assault in any form, it is highly recommended to receive healing for that right away.

Timely trauma healing makes the chances of relapse much, much lower. This is the driving reason behind Villa Kali Ma investing so heavily in trauma therapies, to the point of opening our own trauma healing center for women, The Retreat.

If you’re not sure whether you have trauma, but you are a woman with a substance abuse problem, chances are high that you do. The vast majority of women with substance use disorders also have trauma.

Villa Kali Ma can help prevent relapse

Villa Kali Ma is dedicated to helping women recover lives of freedom, joy, and purpose. We know what it’s like to have the odds against us and to nevertheless prevail.

Every day, we help women find their way back to the land of the living, through holistic healing methods and evidence-based clinical approaches that treat addiction, mental health disorders, and trauma. If you’re worried about relapse, for yourself or someone you love, reach out to talk over your options!

References:

https://nida.nih.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction/treatment-recovery

https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/substance-use-in-women/sex-gender-differences-in-substance-use

Categories
Sobriety

A Guide to Staying Sober During the Holidays

For some women in recovery, the holidays represent pressure, stress, and temptations. We understand why!

Here at Villa Kali Ma, though, we’re of the opinion that women can have genuine, heartfelt fun during this season of celebrations, all without drugs, alcohol, or drama.

Read on for our considered thoughts on how to stay sober, and truly enjoy the beauty and meaning of the season of lights.

How to Stay Sober During the Holidays: A Guide

Staying sober starts with the intention to stay sober. Let’s start here: what are your intentions for this upcoming holiday season? We suggest identifying a few sobriety intentions right now, before reading any further.

I intend to…

For each of your intentions, add a “because”. A powerful why goes a long way. Why do you intend what you intend?

I intend to stay sober, because…

Why is it difficult to stay sober during the holidays?

The holidays can challenge our commitment to sobriety and other positive intentions. Here are a couple of reasons why that’s the case:

Stress

The holidays are notoriously stressful. Stress weakens our immunity, not only physically, but also emotionally, mentally, and energetically. We don’t feel as stable, and outside influences affect us more.


People

Being around more people than we’re used to, people we haven’t seen in a while, people who are drinking, or people we associate with difficult feelings and experiences from the past, are all ways that our sobriety can be tested. There’s nothing wrong with being close with people, of course, but as recovering addicts we need an extra shield around our energy.


Distraction

When we travel from our home base, have people staying with us, or participate in seasonal gatherings, there’s a greater possibility of unexpected encounters, surprise events, and other ways we can get distracted and derailed from our intentions.


Trauma Triggers

Depending on our personal history, the relative consciousness levels of our family of origin, and when in the year certain events that hurt us in the past took place, the holidays can be a yearly chance to revisit our core wounds and life themes.


Depletion of Energy

It is a natural effect of the darkening hours and the holidays’ position as a marker of a year’s end, that we may arrive at the holidays already feeling a bit tired out from all we have been working hard to accomplish during the year, including our work we put in for our sobriety. It is a potential risk factor to keep in mind, that we are just plumb tired before the holidays even begin.

What should a woman in recovery do if she is feeling triggered to relapse?

So, what to do if one of the above scenarios gets you, and you realize you’re triggered to relapse?

1: Name It to Tame It

Tell someone right away that you’re triggered to drink or use. Ideally, call a sponsor, or a stably sober recovery friend. To prepare in advance for using this tool, have several numbers in your phone already. It helps even just to leave a voicemail.

The next best thing is tell someone near you. “I am experiencing cravings to drink but I don’t want to, I want to be sober.” It is the truth itself, and your willingness to tell on the addict within you, to disregard embarrassment and ego and fight for your life instead, which will save you.


2: Get out of There

Leave the room, or maybe even the whole event. If the substance you are addicted to is there, and you’re tempted to use, just leave. No one can put that substance in your body but you, if you’re not there, it won’t happen.


3: Get to a Meeting

Get to the next possible meeting. Remember you can tune in to an online meeting from your phone while sitting in the car if you need to.


4: Get Physical

Combat the trigger by changing your body state, right away. The fastest thing you can do is vigorous exercise for a few moments, like jumping jacks, high-knee running in place, push-ups, or squats. Do this until you’re sweaty and out of breath. Don’t hurt yourself, but spend your physical energy and change your state.


5: Orient to the Here and Now

It’s important to get out of the head and into the here and now. The physical world can help you – splashing cold water on your face, stepping outside and taking several breaths of fresh air, and so on.

This trick, called 54321, is also handy:

Look around you and name 5 things you can see, with an adjective of some kind: (Turquoise lamp, bushy palm tree, shiny water bottle…).

Listen for 4 things you can hear (soft-sounding wind in the trees, regular ticking of my watch…)

Touch 3 different material things (cool tabletop, fuzzy sweater…)

Smell 2 different things (sparkly lemon peel…)

Taste 1 thing (sweet water…)

What are tips for staying sober during the holidays?

Prevention is the best medicine. How can you plan ahead to make sure you’re not even triggered? Here are some tips from us over here at Villa Kali Ma.

30 Meetings in 30 days

The program works, as they say, if you work it. One way to make sure we do in fact work it is to pre-commit to a number of days, tell a bunch of people you’re doing that (so you can’t back out without awkwardness), and then follow through and actually do it.


Daily Contact With Your Sponsor

If you don’t have a sponsor yet, get one. A temporary sponsor will work. If you absolutely cannot find one, co-sponsor with a recovery buddy. The point is to check in daily, even if only for 5 minutes, to couch each day in sobriety-prioritizing terms.


Get A Lot of Emotional Support

Through therapy, groups, meetings, and friendships, triple up on emotional support this season. Share your feelings even when you don’t think you’re having any.


Have an Abundant, Loving, Fun Self-Care Plan

We highly recommend that you make a season-specific self-care plan that covers not only meetings and emotional support, but also diet, exercise, sleep, and sober fun. Get out your calendar for the month of December, and start breaking it down into weeks and days, making a realistic but still abundant plan of self-loving.


Schedule Sober Fun

Go to at least one sober party, do an activity you wouldn’t normally bother to do (ice skating? bowling?) with sober friends. You can initiate. It shouldn’t need to cost a lot – for example, you can try a new recipe for some seasonal cookies, buy yourself and your friends some stickers, make holiday cards together. Make it feel festive and fun, as best you can.

What are daily sobriety tips for women in recovery?

How can you stay sober every single day? Here are some tips that work on the daily level.

Daily contact with your Recovery Community

We know not everyone loves AA, and we do understand why and how that is. But the fact is, it works. You don’t have to love AA, you don’t even have to connect all that much with the people who go there (though we know you will, eventually, if you keep going) – what you have to do, to have any kind of a life worth living, is stay sober! So rely on AA for what it’s good at – helping people stay sober. Do this every single day. Daily meetings, daily sponsor contact, daily outreach to newcomers, daily time spent doing step work, all of these are powerful sobriety protectors.


Take Care of the Body

Your body is where your life is happening. Take care of it. Nourish it with healthy foods that are full of nutrients, water it, and rest it adequately. Exercise it. Soak it in the bath. Rub oils into it. Let it wiggle its toes in a material that feels good. Make sure its socks are warm. Treat it like your favorite pet.

When you love the body well, you have a much, much better chance of being happy, and therefore, having no interest whatsoever in returning to a life of misery. Do something for your body that feels like a treat and makes the body happy, every day.


Express Yourself

Use the creative voice you have been given, to express the take on life that is yours alone. It doesn’t need to be different than anyone else’s truth, it just needs to be true for you. The benevolent, loving forces of life love it when you dig deeper into the specialness of exactly who you are. Say something that’s true for you personally, every single day.

Villa Kali Ma can help women stay sober during the holidays

Villa Kali Ma provides a unique program of services to help women recover from addictions, mental health disorders, and trauma. We unite holistic approaches like yoga, Ayurveda, and breath work, with the most effective, evidence-based clinical modalities, like EMDR and dialectical behavior training (DBT).

If you’re looking for extra support staying sober, healing an old wound, or turning a new leaf this season, check us out. We’d love to work with you.

Categories
Sobriety

The Importance of Your Sober Birthday

What is a sober birthday?

The original 12 Step program, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), pioneered the concept of a sober birthday. Sober birthdays mark the day we stopped using drugs and alcohol. Getting sober is a kind of rebirth, and a sober birthday celebrates the day a new, sober self is born.

Why is it important to stay sober?

Total sobriety, or abstinence, is a critical part of recovery from drugs and alcohol. That’s because it’s the nature of substance addiction to pull a person back in when we’re re-exposed to even just a small amount of the substance.

A person can go for years without drinking, then one day relapse by thinking they can have “just one”. While it may begin with just one, typically within days, weeks, or months, substance use will escalate back to previous levels of consumption and beyond.

While a meaningful, good life is possible after addiction, it is only possible through choosing to live in total abstinence from all mood-altering chemicals.

What is Alcoholics Anonymous?

Alcoholics Anonymous is a 12 step program. AA is self-run and self-organized on a fully volunteer basis, as a fellowship of recovering alcoholics.

Although AA features an element of spirituality, sharing that a spiritual awakening is usually required to be able to recover from addiction, AA is not part of any religion. The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking.

AA works for spiritual-but-not-religious people, religious people, agnostics, and atheists equally well, provided they are willing to surrender their egos to a benevolent healing force of some kind in order to be able to recover.

Alcoholics Anonymous is, as the title implies, fully anonymous, meaning that membership in the group is protected by a vow of anonymity, and no one may reveal another person’s membership in the group. Also, what is shared within the walls of an AA meeting is considered fully private and confidential, not to be shared outside of meetings.

Alcoholics Anonymous is free to attend. Collections of small donations are accepted but not required, used for fees related to renting space to meet, publishing pamphlets, maintaining websites, and outreach in jails, hospitals, and schools. There are no AA employees, and there is no permanent hierarchy or leadership, though there are temporary service positions, such as being a chairperson or speaker at a meeting.

There are AA meetings all over the globe, and every major US city will have multiple options for meetings every day. There are also online meetings that are easy to attend from anywhere with an internet connection. You can find meetings on the Alcoholics Anonymous website.

AA is based on the 12 Steps of Recovery, which are psychologically healing actions recommended to all people who are seeking to recover from the nightmares of addiction to substances. AA has been effective for millions upon millions of people, who are able to now live joyful lives in recovery.

However, AA only works “if you work it”. This means that while everyone is welcome to attend no matter where they’re at in their journey, and all are encouraged to take on board only what feels right for them, positive results require people to attend regularly (often daily for the first several years of sobriety), to complete the 12 Steps, and to work with a sponsor.

What is a sobriety chip?

AA believes in celebrating sober birthdays by handing out sobriety chips. These sobriety chips are small round medallions made in different colors to designate different lengths of time sober.

The most important chip is considered to be the 24 hour chip, given to members who have managed to stay sober for their first full day. In the first year of sobriety, many different lengths of time are honored, such as 30, 60, and 90 days. After the first year of sobriety, birthdays are generally celebrated annually.

Many people find that having a sober birthday celebrated has more meaning and impact than they could have imagined, and that to be cheered on, honored, and congratulated for the hard work of staying sober after addiction is very helpful for healing the heartache and loneliness that can haunt the lives of people prone to addiction.

What is an aftercare program?

Aftercare refers to any kind of ongoing treatment that takes place after a person has completed an inpatient substance abuse program or outpatient substance abuse program. Villa Kali Ma has an aftercare program, for example, through which we stay in contact with our graduates once they leave our doors.

Aftercare programs usually involve a combination of follow up check ins with treatment providers, and activities that help a person stay in contact with the recovery community. Most aftercare programs strongly recommend involvement in 12 Step as a way to better ensure a life of continued sobriety after all the hard work of treatment.

Why is an aftercare program important for sobriety?

Aftercare programs are important as a way to bridge what is learned in treatment into our work and family lives. Aftercare programs provide continuity and support in the form of friendly faces, and reminders of how bad addiction was and could become again if we aren’t vigilant, accountable, and engaged in the community.

Aftercare is an important way to gradually adjust to greater levels of independence, while still maintaining as much connection as we might need to feel safe and strong in our new lives.

What happens to the sober birthday date if a relapse occurs?

Relapse is a feature of the disease of addiction, and it’s not uncommon for people to relapse several times as a process of coming to terms with the true dangers of addiction.

Many underestimate the deceptive nature of the disease until relapse teaches us to be more emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually ready than we were before, to change in the ways that a life in recovery generally requires.

When a relapse occurs, the date of a sober birthday is amended. It is the humbling nature of addiction that any of us may need to ask for a 24 hour chip all over again. There is never any shame attached to relapse, however, and 24 hours are as celebrated with AA as 20 years.

How to assist a loved one struggling with substance abuse?

It’s not easy to help someone who has a substance abuse problem. We cannot do the work of getting sober for another person. We cannot even make the decision to get help, on their behalf. It must come from them.

All we can do is make it less convenient for them to stay in their addiction, and to speak the truth to them with kindness and consistency.

If your loved one knows and acknowledges that she has a problem, and she is willing to seek help, this is a special window of time in which to take action right away to help her.

Support and encourage your loved one to enter treatment and/or to go right away to an AA meeting. If she wants that, you can even come with her – there are designated open AA meetings in which it is ok to attend even if you are not an addict. By being willing to sit in the room yourself and be present for the reality of addiction, you will learn a lot yourself as well as help your loved one know that you are willing to be in the difficulty with them.

However, if your loved one is fully “in her disease”, denying the impacts of her addiction on you, others, and herself, the best thing to do is to let go of trying to control her. Instead, tell her the difficult truth, hold strong boundaries, and do not skirt around the issue. Judgment isn’t helpful, but directness and firm limits are.

Very common is that a person goes in and out of willingness to admit there is a problem. Again, AA can be helpful here. Go to AA with them, or support them to go, whenever they have moments of clarity or willingness.

Keep in mind that even if your loved one seems not to have been positively affected by an AA meeting, or even scorns or mocks the group, this doesn’t mean it won’t help her later on. The truth about the nature of the disease which is talked about openly within AA has a curative effect on addicts and will plant seeds of recognition and insight in her mind. Many people who circle back to AA do so because a seed of truth planted during an AA meeting many years before has sprouted now, bringing courage and willingness.

It’s important for people just to know on some level that a solution exists. Even if a woman needs to spend many more years in the disease as a part of her process, exposure to AA makes it more possible that the life-affirming part can gather inspiration and strength to overcome the lies of the inner addict someday.

Villa Kali Ma can assist you with staying sober

Addiction is very serious. It gets worse and worse over time and has many severe consequences, including eventual death.

The good news is, it is fully, realistically possible to recover – once you want to recover. Yes, it takes some emotional courage, hard work and a willingness to be changed, but it is largely a matter of surrender and diligence.

No woman needs to know beforehand exactly how she’s going to manage it, nor to feel herself capable of it. All she needs to do to begin, is to honestly say yes to the following question: are you willing to get better?

If she can answer yes to that and can make a decision to enter the unknown of it all, to surrender all her burdens to a benevolent, healing process, she has what she needs to get there.

Recovery requires learning how to live a life more aligned with who we really are, in our best and highest natures. Villa Kali Ma was founded for just this purpose, to help women find out for themselves just how wonderful life can be, through the path of recovery.

Categories
Sobriety

10 Tips for A Sober Summer

Ready for a sober summer? Us too!

How to avoid alcohol during summer events

No getting around it, alcohol is served everywhere, all the time. Summer is no exception. For the sober-committed among us, this upcoming 2024 season of pool parties, weddings, and BBQs is likely to present several opportunities for self-sabotage.

But not to worry, we know it’s coming and we can prepare. The addict within will use the same old strategy it always does, which is to try to get us to forget the danger and fall asleep at the wheel so that it can take over again.

But we won’t let it. We’ve worked too hard and come too far. And the addict is not the boss of us. We are in charge.

We will have bright, clear, healthy, awake, aware, heart-connected summers. Yes, we will. Here are 10 tips from us over here at Villa Kali Ma!

10 Tips for a Sober Summer

1. Set Your Intentions Strong and Clear

Write out an unambiguous, strong statement of your intentions for this summer. Something like this:

I, [your name], intend to have a 100% sober summer, this summer of 2024. I do not consent or agree to any form of relapse, slip, or other form of self-harm or self-sabotage.

I am committed to sobriety because…[your reasons].

A strong intention with a strong why goes a long way. This is the royal decree that you, as the queen of your spirit and body, set for yourself.

Make no mistake, the part within which has tried to harm you in the past (the addiction, the self-sabotage, whatever it is), will interpret any fuzziness, vagueness, or lack of clarity as permission to return. Make it clear that you are 100% all in for sobriety, and that you are not in any way interested in revisiting your painful, miserable past for one last hurrah.


2. Design Your Summer

Take a little time to imagine what your ideal version of this summer would even be if you could have what you wanted. What would fill you up, nourish your soul, light your fire?

What do you need? What do you long for? What could life bring you, that would make up for the imagined missed fun of drinking and using? What would make a sober summer feel less like a goody-two-shoes thing, but a magnificent reward, a deeply connective chapter of your life?

Free write on the topic of your ideal sober summer.

If I could have a beautiful sober summer that magically matches my soul’s deepest longings, my unmet needs, the things I secretly wish for, this is what would happen…


3. Make a Realistic Plan

Imagine you were going to build a house on a piece of property, yourself. What would you do? You would probably research, talk to other people who have done it, arrange for help from people who know what they’re doing, and make a serious, thorough plan.

Do the same for your sober summer. Research and plan it out, as realistically as you can, thinking of all the things that can go wrong and all the things that could be awesome.

Using your “ideal summer” free write from question 2, ask yourself what you can do, practically, to give yourself at least some of those feelings and experiences.

Maybe you can’t have all of it, but there is always something we can do to get into the energy of it. Use your ideal summer blueprint as inspiration, and see what you can practically and realistically implement.

Shoot for the moon, be willing to land among the stars if you don’t get to the moon, and also do the prep work to make sure your rocket doesn’t explode.


4. Commit to do the Work

Be ready to work to fight for your sober summer. This may mean different kinds of effort: the work of setting boundaries, managing expectations with family, and communicating.

Prepare yourself and commit yourself to double down on attending meetings, working with a sponsor, going to therapy, and continuing to learn. As they say in 12 Steps, it works… if you work it.

Those of us with addiction patterning sometimes avoid hard work, not because we’re lazy but because we’re scared – of disappointment, failure, feelings – whatever it is that has taught us to fear our effort.

But when we invest energy in ourselves, that effort is rewarded a thousandfold by the benevolent forces of healing that are on our side.

The more we commit to the work of recovery, the more rewards come flowing to us in expected and unexpected ways. The self-worth that blooms internally when we fight for ourselves has to be experienced to be believed.


5. Generate Hubs of Positivity

Become a hub of positivity, knowing that what you do for yourself and others is amplified and helps many more people than you could know, through the subtle energetic fabric that connects us all.

Create and share experiences you wish someone could give to you. If you wish someone would throw you a sober party where you play board games and make handmade pumpkin ravioli – girl, throw that party.


6. Find your Sober Family

When we first get sober, the addict within tells us there will never be any social connection, love, or belonging ever again.

It’s not true. We can have plenty of friends, the types of friends who love us as we are, get what we’re about, and treat us with kindness and regard.

These people exist, but we may have to search a little to find them. One way to find them is to start going to different environments. Go to sober events. Try things you wouldn’t normally try. Be on the lookout for your people. See who shows up for you, when you show up for you. Have patience, it can take a while. But keep looking!

If this is an old hat for you, use this summer to reconnect and nourish the heart connections you have.


7. Garden and Spend Time in Nature

Let Mother Nature heal you. Spend some time gardening, hiking, walking, camping, biking, surfing – whatever you can do to get out into her embrace. Nature knows how to heal a sick spirit, and how to make you remember that you belong to life. Nature is a way to connect with the source.


8. Exercise

The body needs to move. When we exercise, the body gets happy. When the body gets happy, so do we. Exercise! Play with new ways of moving. Learn to tango, go to a rock climbing gym, kayak, or do yoga teacher training. Ask your body what it wants to do, and listen to the answer.


9. Complete a Creative Project

Undertake a creative project for your summer. Print out your favorite photographs from this year and make a collage. Collect recipes from your family and make them into a recipe book to share with them. Take a pottery class. Using your creativity, especially in a short-term, project-oriented way, gives us structure, purpose, and something to do with our hands.


10. Tell the Truth

The truth is healing and sets us free. Find ways to strengthen it this summer, asking yourself, “What is my truth?”.

In your journal, in Twelve Step meetings, with your therapist, with your recovery peers, or among safe friends, practice sharing your truth. Start small, and build up to as much honesty as you need to feel its soul medicine. Authenticity cures the alienation of conditional belonging and banishes addiction to the hinterland.

Villa Kali Ma can help women stay sober during the summer and all season long!

Here at Villa Kali Ma, sobriety is our jam. Since the earliest days, we have been helping women recover and learn how to live in this world, sane and sober. Come check out our many programs that help women thrive.

Categories
Sobriety

10 Tips for Staying Sober This New Year

Are you aiming to have a sober 2024? Good for you, my friend. Yes yes yes! Go you.

Sobriety is so important. Your physical body can only be happy, strong, and resilient with sobriety. Your thoughts and your emotions can only heal and create positive vibrations for yourself and others with sobriety.

Your relationships can grow, change, and trend towards the positive only with sobriety. Your financials, your material life, your career, your family, your pets…everyone is better off when you’re sober.

Here are ten tips from Villa Kali Ma, ten reminders for all of us who are seeking to walk a positive path of change in our lives, whether we’ve been sober one day or one decade.

1. Revisit Your Why Frequently

In his very poignant work Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl writes, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.“

Frankl was writing about the human being’s remarkable capacity to withstand adversity, and how helpful it is to have a good reason.

What are your reasons for staying sober this year?

The more compelling your why, the easier it will be for you. If you can’t remember, stop right now and journal for 7 minutes on this topic:

I commit to sobriety today because…

Here are some reasons we can think of.

We stay sober because life is better sober, in every single way.

We stay sober because we want to be in charge of our own lives.

We stay sober because of the love and gratitude for those who helped us get and stay sober.

We stay sober because we know our sobriety helps other people get and stay sober.

We stay sober because we choose to believe we matter. 

What are your reasons?

2. Connect With Your Higher Power

Cultivate your relationship with a positive, benevolent life force power that you believe can and will help you stay sober.

The definition of a higher power is very broad and permissive in AA. Famously, one early member prayed to a doorknob and found it effective.

In or outside of AA circles, truthfully you are allowed to choose your own higher power as long as you understand that sobriety requires some measure of humility and relinquishment of the ego.

The false self, the conditioned self, and the ego self cannot overcome addiction, but your true loving Self-nature, the part of you that is one with all of life, can.

We can approach sobriety in a million different ways, but if we live out of alignment with the nature of life, if we are overly selfish, egoic, and unloving towards ourselves or others, we’re heading for a relapse.

Prioritize living a positive, loving life that brings no harm to others, that does unto others as we would have them do unto us, and we are turned in the right direction (towards God, or whatever we want to call it).

3. Stay Connected With Your Recovery Community

It’s important to prioritize sobriety every day. One easy way to make this a strong habit is to make sure you stay connected with other positive recovering people. These people help you remember the sneaky dangers of addiction, to stay cautious and smart in the face of the very real dangers of relapse.

A suggestion for starting in 2024 is to complete a time-based recovery challenge, such as attending 30 meetings in 30 days. Alternatively, you can make goals related to recovery tasks, such as working through the 12 Steps with a sponsor this year (even if we’ve done them before).

4. Do Your Healing Work

Underlying traumatization are serious risk for relapse, so it’s important to make sure we get help. If you know you have struggles staying and being happy in your skin – as so many of us do, that’s why we were addicts in the first place, isn’t it? – make sure you’re actively involved in your healing.

This can take many forms. Perhaps you’re working on yourself in psychotherapy, in a therapy group, or receiving a series of treatments targeting your trauma. Maybe you’re taking a yoga teacher training or doing a healing art project. The important thing is to keep one foot in the waters of healing so that this stays alive and awake in you.

5. Socialize With Sober People

A lot of sobriety is just staying away from places and people who might offer us alcohol and drugs. The addict within will tell us this means we have to live a boring, isolated life, but that’s not true. Addiction leads us to that, not sobriety.

If you’re feeling a failure of imagination about this, see if you can come up with a list of 12 things that sound fun to try with others, that don’t involve any substances.

  1. take a gardening class
  2. go to a meet-up for hiking
  3. plan a board game night with my sober friends

Could you put something from your list on the calendar for early 2024?

6. Take Care of Your Physical Body and Health

Feeling good in the body is a large part of happiness.

Prioritize your physical health, by eating an abundance of healthy fresh, and ideally home-cooked foods in enough but still moderate amounts. Exercise, in a variety of ways, frequently. Stretch, go for long walks, do something for cardio, and something that builds your strength.

If it feels doable this year, stay away from screens, sugar, and caffeine. The body doesn’t like these things. The body likes moving, breathing fresh air, playing, and being in nature.

7. Get a Hobby

The human being loves to learn and loves to be creative. If you feel like you’re not sure what to do with yourself or you’re not too excited about anything these days, consider getting a hobby.

If there is something you’ve always wanted to try, or which you admire others for having the courage to learn how to do, give yourself a window of time, such as three months, just to explore, with no attachment to the outcome. You might not stick with it past the window of time, or you might.

Don’t do it for the results, per se, but for the experience itself, for the positive benefits of having a hobby. You might find that you get the bug for something, and surprise yourself. Allowing the human side of you to flourish, to be curious, exploratory, and experimental, does wonders for feeling meaning and connection in life. One exploration will lead to another, don’t decide everything in advance, but rather let yourself try it and see.

Here are some things we think sound fun to try out if you never have:

bellydancing

improv

cooking or baking class

learning a language, practicing it with a native speaker

crafting, such as sewing, quilting, flower arranging

ceramics, watercolors, life drawing

woodworking

learning an instrument

making up songs

8. Spend Time in Nature

Nature is a healer. If we can get out into nature, we will get all the benefits of our brains getting entrained to the flow state, which helps us learn, grow, regulate, move past our trauma, and become creative and peaceful.

If nature is a little scary to you, start with short visits, start small. But get to know nature. Outer nature reflects the vastness, beauty, and remarkable qualities we have inside ourselves too. We are nature, we come from nature, nature made us and is happy to have us back.

9. Celebrate Yourself

You are a lovely being, you deserve affirmation, recognition, support, and kindness. And celebration is one of the human needs we all have. If we celebrate ourselves in positive, smaller, life-affirming, generous ways in our ordinary lives, we won’t feel so much need to “celebrate” in the old way.

If you feel like you don’t have too much to celebrate at the moment, setting some small goals for yourself and then achieving them will help (see number 10 below!).

If you set a goal of completing a gardening class, and you do complete the gardening class, and come home knowing how to compost, celebrate the eff out of that, my friend. Celebrate it like it’s a really big thing. It is a big thing.

If it’s too big a thing, start with something little. I want to try a new recipe. I will do it tonight. Wow, I did it, I tried the new recipe! I am trying new things! Yay! I did something loving and positive, look at me! I love my cookies!

Does this feel childish? Good. We’re all children on the inside. When we care lovingly for the child inside, then we, paradoxically, finally behave like responsible adults. Responsible adults with twinkly, smiling eyes.

10. Get Some Goals

If you’re not yet familiar with how goals can help you feel good about being alive, try it out this year. Setting and meeting specific, doable goals is a confidence-builder and a bringer of joy to your life. It can completely change your sense of yourself.

If you need to prove it to yourself, start with something little and very achievable, and build up. If you’ve already got some goals, review, refresh, and reset them this year.

Villa Kali Ma Can Assist You With Staying Sober This Year!

If you think you might like some help this year, help is here to be had. We at Villa Kali Ma are devoted to sobriety through and through, along with healing trauma and mental health struggles. Check out our offerings for inpatient and outpatient, and consider coming over to get to know us.

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