The fancy psychological term for this quick and easy motivation tool for helping people to help themselves with alcoholism and drug addiction recovery is called decisional balancing. It may sound complex, but it is really very simple.
Decisional balancing simply means weighing the costs and the benefits of using or drinking. The object of this quick exercise is to list the pros and cons, the pluses and minuses of using or continuing to use alcohol and drugs.
In the benefits column you might have things like it numbs the pain, I like to get high, it helps me to forget, I feel like I can do more, it helps me to get in. In the negative consequences site you might have it costs a lot of money, I went to jail, it might be causing my depression and anxiety, my health is going down, destroying my relationships.
Now that you have the lists done, they're a couple questions to ask yourself. The first question is how different are the two lists? Compare the two columns and see if the benefits are still outweighing the negative consequences. Most people will find that the benefits that they use to get out of drinking and drugging I'm no longer occurring, while the negative consequences for the minuses list is growing and growing.
The next couple of questions you should ask when comparing the two lists is how much time does the drinking and drugging occupying your life? Are you spending the vast majority of your life either looking for the high, getting high, or recovering from the high? You might even be doing it to the point where you gave up activities which he used to find enjoyable. That is a sign of addiction.
The final important question to analyze an answer is are you addicted to the drinking and drugging and are you objected to the lifestyle you are currently maintaining, or trying to maintain? How is it working for you? If the answers to these questions are causing concern it might be time to ramp up the motivation to change. One of the most insidious background features of drug and alcohol addiction the fact that it keeps us" stuck". We come to believe that we have lost the power to change. But that is not true. The ability to change ourselves and our reaction to life in the situations around us is a fundamental quality of being human.
Is it time for you to change? We can help with answers to your questions on entering addiction recovery. There are lots of free help and resources available.
Decisional balancing simply means weighing the costs and the benefits of using or drinking. The object of this quick exercise is to list the pros and cons, the pluses and minuses of using or continuing to use alcohol and drugs.
Then just do a brain dump. Just start writing don't worry about how important or how silly anything sounds just get it all out. We will look at content later.
Simply sit down with a piece of paper and pen and draw a line down the center of the paper forming two columns on the first column lists benefits or pluses of drinking and driving and the next column lists drawbacks were negative consequences of drinking or drugging.
In the benefits column you might have things like it numbs the pain, I like to get high, it helps me to forget, I feel like I can do more, it helps me to get in. In the negative consequences site you might have it costs a lot of money, I went to jail, it might be causing my depression and anxiety, my health is going down, destroying my relationships.
Now that you have the lists done, they're a couple questions to ask yourself. The first question is how different are the two lists? Compare the two columns and see if the benefits are still outweighing the negative consequences. Most people will find that the benefits that they use to get out of drinking and drugging I'm no longer occurring, while the negative consequences for the minuses list is growing and growing.
The next couple of questions you should ask when comparing the two lists is how much time does the drinking and drugging occupying your life? Are you spending the vast majority of your life either looking for the high, getting high, or recovering from the high? You might even be doing it to the point where you gave up activities which he used to find enjoyable. That is a sign of addiction.
The final important question to analyze an answer is are you addicted to the drinking and drugging and are you objected to the lifestyle you are currently maintaining, or trying to maintain? How is it working for you? If the answers to these questions are causing concern it might be time to ramp up the motivation to change. One of the most insidious background features of drug and alcohol addiction the fact that it keeps us" stuck". We come to believe that we have lost the power to change. But that is not true. The ability to change ourselves and our reaction to life in the situations around us is a fundamental quality of being human.
Is it time for you to change? We can help with answers to your questions on entering addiction recovery. There are lots of free help and resources available.
Reference: Bill Urell
Drug addiction can be cured but it really depends on the drug addict him or herself and also having a support group around is indeed an invaluable asset. Drug Intervention
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