The Aviary Recovery Center Blog
A Little R&R – Ritual and Routine – In Recovery
Ritual and Routine: "Two Rs" in Recovery Back in the day, there was a popular little ditty about the “three Rs” of education: reading, ’riting, and ’rithmatic. You would be forgiven if you found it odd that a song about school goes out of its way to misspell “writing”...
Purge the Urge to Turn Back to Drugs with the Urge Surfing Technique
For people in recovery, the experience of intense cravings for drugs or alcohol can be extremely difficult to manage. These cravings—or urges—threaten your hard-won sobriety, and so it is absolutely essential that you have a plan for coping with them. There are lots...
Watch for Inspiration: Documentaries Can Offer Models of Hope and Heroism
Stuck At Home Let’s just admit that an awful lot of us are watching an impressive amount of shows and movies on various streaming platforms right now. The COVID-19 virus has us stuck at home and at loose ends—and sometimes sitting on the couch and watching the screen...
Is Your Inner Critic Too Influential? Tackling Negative Self-Talk
The Critic Imagine a theater critic watching a play or musical. The critic is, perhaps, sitting off to the side, unnoticed and scribbling in a notebook. The job requires making judgments about what works and what doesn’t work in the performance. Are the costumes...
The Brief on Grief – Dealing with Intense Emotion During Recovery
Grief is one of the most challenging emotions we can experience. We often associate it with the death of someone we love—and that is certainly one of the most difficult losses. But we can also feel grief about many other things. In fact, the current public health...
Get Your Zzzzzs in Recovery
Do you ever wake up in the morning feeling like you haven’t slept at all? Poor sleep is a common problem for a variety of reasons ranging from sleep apnea to nightmares to partner (or pet) disturbances, and more. Sleep Is Essential Sleep issues are a problem because...
Don’t Put Off Treatment Due to the Public Health Emergency
Is the public health situation related to COVID-19 preventing you from tackling your problems with drugs or alcohol? Are you tempted to just ignore your issues with drugs until this whole virus situation is resolved? Have you found yourself drinking even more than...
Alcohol Awareness Month
April is Alcohol Awareness Month. Sometimes alcohol and the problems it can cause are overshadowed by substances that are deemed “more serious” due to their illegal status. Unfortunately, alcohol is also able to ruin lives, even though it’s easy to purchase legally....
Don’t Trade One Addiction for Another in Recovery
You’ve been through detox. You’ve completed rehab. You’ve headed back into the world determined to stay sober. And then you find yourself at loose ends. It’s an understandable situation. Drinking or drug use probably used to take up a great deal of your time and...
Try, Try Again – A Relapse Is Not the End of Your Recovery Story
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Odds are we could all agree that this is good advice with broad applications. Didn’t win the match this week? Practice some more and try to win the next one. Didn’t hit your sales goal this month? Evaluate your...