Alumni
Advocacy and High Watch Recovery: Building Bridges for Positive Change
In the realm of addiction treatment, advocacy plays a pivotal role in shaping policies that enhance access to care, support, and recovery resources. High Watch Recovery Center, renowned as the world’s first 12-step treatment center, stands at the forefront of addiction treatment. Located in Kent, Connecticut, High Watch provides comprehensive care across all levels, focusing…
Read MoreGiving Thanks
The dictionary defines gratitude as “the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness”, and this is definitely the season to practice gratitude in our daily lives. There is no argument that gratitude is an integral part of every recovery program. While it may not be written into AA’s twelve…
Read MoreOutreach
When you come to High Watch, you become an immediate part of our family. When you leave, that doesn’t end and we want to be with our alumni offering support throughout their entire lives. Just over a year ago, we developed a system to do just that by following up with alumni after they leave…
Read MoreHow Men and Women Differ When It Comes to Spirituality and Long-Term Recovery
Men and women are hardwired differently, so it’s natural that they experience addiction, recovery, and the associations that go along with them differently. As DrugFree.org states, biological differences in women means that they can become much more easily dependent on substances; they are also at higher risk of developing health-related issues, such as breast cancer,…
Read MoreLearning From Amanda Bynes’s Struggles with Addiction and Mental Illness
Amanda Bynes had a promising career as a child star with a lot of promise. What looked like bizarre behavior on Twitter and her series of arrests were just a cry for help for her mental health disorder. Bynes showed the world how with the use of the internet, we can see how mental illness…
Read MoreHow to Overcome Anxiety on Your First Day of Work
It can be very stressful starting a new job. Even if this is familiar work that you have done for other companies, every company has their own rules and policies that must be followed. It is important to remember how normal it is to be nervous on your first day of work and to breathe,…
Read MoreHow to Go From Being Your Own Worst Enemy to Your Own Best Friend
We all have a tendency to be our own critic. We tend not to look at ourselves in a very appealing light when we compare ourselves to others. It is important to remind yourself every day why you stand out from the rest and how liking yourself is a very important quality people like to…
Read MoreSongs About Suicide Prevention
When the song “1-800-273-8255” by Logic premiered at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards, calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline rose up to 27%. Sometimes, you just need that one special song to remind you that it is time for you to seek help. By listening to songs about suicide prevention, you can listen…
Read MoreDealing with Embarrassment after Relapse in Long-Term Sobriety
Relapse is one of the most commonly feared topics of addiction recovery, mostly because nobody likes to think of themselves as “starting over” or “going back to Day 1”. The reality is the relapse is a normal part of recovery; we’re naturally going to slip back into old addictive patterns of behavior from time to…
Read MoreThe Best Jobs for Those Living with Social Anxiety
Social anxiety can create a barrier when it comes to applying for companies. You get nervous when you are surrounded by people and in roles where you are forced to socialize with others. If you are struggling with social anxiety, you are better off trying to find jobs where you can work on your own…
Read MoreHow to Fight Through Depression at Work
Going to work can do wonders for your depression in that it will give you something to do every week that you will enjoy and feel rewarded by the end of your shift. Work can also worsen your depression from the sense of having no control or if you do not like your job. Since…
Read MoreStaying Motivated in Long-Term Sobriety
As human beings, we’re naturally going to “fall off the bandwagon” every now and then. We’re going to make mistakes, get lost, take a few steps back and find our way again – and it’s all part of the journey. Even those who have experienced 10 excellent, sober years may find their recovery motivation start…
Read MoreHow to Have a Sober St. Patrick’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day is known for going to pubs and drinking pints of beer with your friends. If you are in recovery, on the other hand, you should not feel like you need to miss out on the fun because you can longer drink. You can celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by remembering what the holiday…
Read MoreHow Weather Can Affect the Severity of Alcohol
If you are too hot or too cold and you are drinking, you will not be aware of your own body’s temperature. This can cause you to develop a lot of health problems whether it is heat stroke from being in the sun for too long or you freeze to death. It is important that…
Read MoreContinuing to Build Your Spirituality in Long-Term Recovery: 12-Step Programs
12-Step programs have helped thousands of people strengthen their recovery over time, and much of it is because of their focus on spirituality. Those in active addiction often find a void that they’re trying to fill: a sense of loneliness, anger, discomfort, pain, or something else that is causing them despair. It is often through…
Read MoreMaintaining Recovery Long After Treatment: Key Elements to a Lifestyle of Sobriety
Living a life of sobriety is easily one of the most rewarding paths you could take. You’ve spent so much time working on bettering yourself, and you can probably list many of the steps that you’ve taken over the past year (or years) that have lifted you up in recovery. A lifestyle of sobriety is…
Read MoreCould You Be Sabotaging Your Sobriety?
A common assumption for those who’ve completed treatment is that they’ve got everything figured out. They’ve made it through a year, or two years, or twenty years or more of sobriety thus far, so they shouldn’t have to worry anymore about relapse, right? Well, not quite – recovery is a lifelong process, and that doesn’t…
Read MoreAcceptance, Gratitude and Strength: Positive Messages Received in Recovery
When we’re in the throes of addiction, we often lose sight of what’s real. We become confused about our sense of purpose in life, sometimes with the belief that substances are all we’re meant to seek out. We may lose aspects of our lives that were once near and dear to our hearts – such…
Read MoreFinding Our Purpose
A universal part of the human experience, whether or not we’re living with addiction and mental illness, is the existential crisis of not knowing our purpose in life. When we’re recovering from addiction, we often feel an acute sense of overwhelm and pressure when we experience this kind of crisis. We already feel like failures…
Read MoreCelebrating Sobriety
We live in a culture that glamorizes substance use but stigmatizes addiction. We celebrate drinking alcohol and using drugs, but we demonize addicts. Our mainstream culture, our popular media, our music, television, movies, video games, social media and entertainment all trivialize and normalize excessive drinking, drug use and addiction. We’re brainwashed to think that a…
Read MoreCreating Healthy Habits in Recovery
A successful, lasting recovery depends on our willingness to shed our unhealthy habits and replace them with new, empowering ones. Living with addiction, we’ve developed all kinds of habits that fed our insecurities and self-hate, that perpetuated our cycles of self-destructiveness and self-sabotage, that exacerbated our addictions and kept us living in pain and fear.…
Read MoreThe Journey of Recovery
After years of living with painful addictions and mental health issues, we’re inclined to think that our recovery will be straightforward and simple, based on a foundation of sobriety, committed abstinence from our addictive substance or behavior. While sobriety is a large part of recovery, it is only one part. Our recovery is not a…
Read MoreBreaking Down the Barriers of Shame and Stigma
One of the things so many of us continue to carry with us into our recovery, even after doing some great, transformative healing work, is our sense of shame. We hold onto intense guilt for years after the mistake or wrongdoing in question. We refuse to forgive ourselves. We see ourselves as shameful, immoral, bad…
Read MoreCreating a Recovery Community
After completing a treatment program, one of the most important things we’ll want to do in our recovery is create a community for ourselves based on sobriety, mutual support and connection. While living with addiction, depression, anxiety and other mental health issues, many of us grew accustomed to completely isolating ourselves from our loved ones,…
Read MoreGratitude in Recovery
Being grateful in life, and in recovery specifically, is a gift in and of itself. Gratitude allows you to find beauty in everything you see and experience. Gratitude turns painful experiences into lessons that we can appreciate and apply directly to our healing progress. Being grateful helps us to see the good in everything. Having…
Read MoreResilience in Recovery
The process of recovering from our addictions challenges us mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Recovery shows us just how strong we truly are. It puts us to the ultimate test. Recovery from any addiction or mental health issue requires certain skills– willpower, resilience and resolve being some of the most important. Resilience is our ability…
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