Substance use disorder (SUD) and other mental health disorders negatively impact millions of people across the world. In the United States, there is a SUD epidemic that has ravished individuals and communities across the country. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes, more than one million people have died from drug overdoses since 1999, and over 75% of people have died from opioids in 2021. The devastation of SUD highlights the need to address the roots of SUD and co-occurring disorders for addiction recovery.
Even with an alarming number of lives lost to SUD in the United States alone, the grip of addiction can make you feel like there is no hope. It can be even more difficult to seek treatment and addiction recovery when you are still trying to maintain other parts of your life. Whether you are a parent or student or have other responsibilities, it can feel like there is no time to seek treatment.
Maybe you have convinced yourself that you are managing, but managing and thriving are not the same. You deserve more than just to get by in life with your dependencies. With support, addiction recovery becomes real and can empower you to embrace a new life in long-term recovery.
At Rancho Recovery, we know no matter how long you have been overwhelmed by SUD, we can find tailored treatment strategies for you. Addiction recovery is a personal journey, so you deserve access to treatment that addresses your unique needs to heal. Even when it feels like addiction recovery is impossible, there is a path for you to heal and lead a fulfilling life. Thus, we are committed to providing a comprehensive range of support services to meet you where you are.
Here, at Rancho Recovery, we know an important part of addiction recovery is knowledge. Therefore, services like psychoeducational groups are a foundational part of the addiction recovery process. Through education, you can build the tools you need to understand and dismantle the root causes of your challenges with SUD and co-occurring disorders.
Understanding Substance Use Disorder
According to “Substance Use Disorder” by Azmi R. Jahan and Doug M. Burgess, SUD is long-term exposure and excessive use of legal and illicit substances. Some examples of legal and illicit substances you can have challenges with include:
- Alcohol
- Binge drinking
- Comfort drinking
- Excessive social drinking
- Stress drinking
- Nicotine
- Smoking
- Vaping
- Chewing tobacco
- Snuff
- Cannabis
- Smoking
- Vaping
- Eating
- Drinking
- Sedatives
- Pills
- Intravenous (IV)
- Hypnotics
- Pills
- Oral sprays
- IV
- Intramuscular (IM)
- Anxiolytics
- Typically used to treat anxiety disorders
- Pills
- Injections
- Nasal spray
- Typically used to treat anxiety disorders
- Inhalants, also known as huffing
- Sniffing
- Inhaling
- Snorting
- Opioids
- Pills
- Lozenges
- Injection
- IV
- Patches
- Suppository
- Hallucinogens
- Smoking
- Oral ingestion
- Stimulants
- Pills
- Smoking
- Injections
- Snorting
The misuse of one or more substances can not only be detrimental to your health but every part of your life. Your excessive use of substances can significantly impair your ability to function in your daily life and interactions. SUD can also impede your ability to build and maintain relationships.
Moreover, challenges with substance use can also disrupt your work, school, and home life in a variety of ways. You may find it difficult to maintain your work and school performance and your household responsibilities. Despite the harm challenges with SUD can have on your life and relationships, addiction takes over your life.
As MedlinePlus notes, drugs are chemical substances that not only change your body but also change how your mind works. Addiction creates a cycle in which repeated drug use changes your brain, and those changes lead you to want to consume more of the substances. Now, you may question how you got to this place in your life. Why did you start misusing substances?
Causes of SUD
Through deeper self-awareness and self-understanding, you can gain into the hold addiction has had on your life. Moreover, understanding the root causes of SUD and your challenges can help you build tools for resilience and engage in addiction recovery. As noted in the Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Mental Health, SUD is a biopsychosocial disorder. Understanding SUD from a biopsychosocial approach acknowledges that your psychological and biological factors are constantly in interplay with the relational, social, economic, cultural, and political elements of your existence.
Thus, addiction recovery is not a one-size-fits-all approach, as everyone has a unique path to addiction. However, recognizing the intersectional nature of addiction highlights that SUD can stem from a variety of challenges in your life. Listed below are some of the risk factors that can contribute to challenges with addiction:
- Traumatic and stressful life experiences
- Physical, sexual, and or emotional abuse
- Emotional and or physical neglect
- Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)
- Maltreatment and neglect
- Exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV)
- Unaddressed challenges with mental health disorders
- Untreated parental SUD
- Unaddressed parental mental health disorders
- Exposure to violence
- Community violence
- IPV
- Life-threatening and chronic health issues
- Discrimination against marginalized communities
- Chronic and prolonged stress
- Lack of social support
- Relationship conflicts
- Insecure attachment
- Easy access to substances
- Poverty
- Unstable housing
- Financial instability
- Untreated mental health disorder
- Seeking out substances as an unhealthy coping tool to suppress psychological distress
- Depression
- Anxiety disorders
- Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
- Seeking out substances as an unhealthy coping tool to suppress psychological distress
- Other biological factors and accompanying sociocultural barriers
- Genes
- Gender
- Ethnicity
- Experimenting with substances in childhood and adolescence
- Peer pressure
- Hanging out with friends who misuse substances
- Encouraged by a romantic partner to use substances with them
- Sports injuries and other injuries
- Trying to improve work and or school performance
Looking at the risk factors for SUD highlights the psychosocial nature of addiction. The mental, emotional, social, and spiritual aspects of your life all play a role in the development of SUD. Therefore, the roots of SUD are often tied to psychological distress in which a bidirectional relationship occurs between SUD and mental health disorders.
Addressing SUD and Co-Occurring Disorders
Your mental health is an essential part of your overall well-being. Not only is your mental health important for you as an individual, but it is also a vital part of your family and community’s wellness. With good mental health, you are more likely to have adaptive coping skills, positive social connections, and resiliency to adverse experiences.
Whereas poor mental health contributes to decreased self-esteem, unhealthy relationships, and maladaptive coping strategies. Thus, SUD and other mental health disorders often co-occur because they are both typically rooted in traumatic experiences and low self-esteem. As the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) notes, SUD itself is a mental health disorder that shares a bidirectional relationship with other mental health disorders.
Some of the other mental health disorders that can co-occur with SUD include:
- Depression
- Anxiety disorders
- Bipolar disorder
- Personality disorders
- Schizophrenia
- ADHD
Moreover, while SUD and other mental health disorders do not directly cause each other, they can contribute to each other’s development or exacerbate underlying symptoms. Some of the ways SUD and other mental health disorders can contribute to each other include:
- Common risk factors for SUD and other mental health disorders
- Genetic factors
- Substance and other mental health disorders run in families
- Environmental factors
- Untreated chronic stress and traumatic experiences can change thinking patterns that impair functioning
- Genetic factors
- Mental health disorders increase the risk of misusing substances
- Individuals with mental health disorders like anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) self-medicate with drugs and alcohol
- Some substances temporarily alleviate distressing symptoms, but eventually, symptoms worsen due to SUD brain changes
- Increases feelings of anxiety
- Decrease sense of self-worth
- Some substances temporarily alleviate distressing symptoms, but eventually, symptoms worsen due to SUD brain changes
- Brain changes from certain mental health disorders can enhance the reward feeling from substances
- Individuals with mental health disorders like anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) self-medicate with drugs and alcohol
- Substance use increases the risk of developing other mental health disorders
- Misusing substances can trigger changes in brain structure and functioning that make you more susceptible to developing a mental health disorder
The bidirectional nature of co-occurring disorders highlights the fact that your challenges with SUD are deeply interconnected to your psychological well-being. Thus, the process of addiction recovery must acknowledge and treat every part of you for addiction recovery to be effective. When addiction recovery only focuses on eliminating the substance use itself, it ignores the root causes of why you started misusing substances in the first place.
Through a holistic approach to healing and recovery, you can gain insight into the unique causes of your substance misuse. When you understand why you use substances, you can build the tools you need to dismantle harmful thinking and behavior patterns to support your well-being. Thus, access to a holistic approach to addiction recovery aligns you with support resources to build a treatment plan that best supports you.
Benefits of Treatment Support Resources for Addiction Recovery
There are countless barriers to addiction recovery treatment that can make you feel like recovery is hopeless. According to Substance Use: Research and Treatment, barriers to SUD treatment spotlight the value of a holistic model of care to support addiction recovery. Barriers to addiction recovery can be broken down into three levels:
- Individual
- Inaccurate beliefs about treatment
- Believing treatment is not necessary
- Belief that withdrawal can be done alone
- Perceived fears
- Fear of stigma
- Do not want to be perceived as weak
- Thinking that people will judge you or act differently around you
- Worry about legal repercussions
- incarceration
- Fear of losing custody of children or termination of parental rights
- Concern about withdrawal symptoms
- Fear of stigma
- Inaccurate beliefs about treatment
- Personal traits
- Low self-esteem
- Lack of self-confidence
- Poor self-concept
- Self-image
- Your ideal-self
- Self-worth
- Loneliness
- Low motivation
- Poor coping skills to deal with challenges
- Emotional deregulation
- Psychiatric comorbidities
- Challenges with untreated mental health disorders can hinder seeking treatment or receiving effective treatment for all your needs
- Social
- Stigma and lack of social support
- Feeling embarrassed
- Lack of social capital
- No life goals
- Family factors
- Influenced to use substances by partner, family, or peers
- Relationship conflict
- Intimate partner violence (IPV)
- Lack of supportive family
- Friends network
- Lack of supportive friends
- Difficulties establishing and maintaining non-drug-using friendship
- Severed connections with existing drug-using network
- Fearful to talk about past substance use in new relationships
- Lack of successful recovery role models
- Stigma and lack of social support
- Structural
- Treatment provider services
- Insufficient treatment locations
- Poor treatment options for diverse populations
- Gender-specific care
- Long waiting list/times
- Lack of effective comorbidity treatment options
- Mental health services
- Financial difficulties
- Poor SUD and comorbidity knowledge among primary care physicians
- Lack of connection between emergency care and expert treatment providers
- Insufficient training and support for peer workers
- Lack of available peer workers
- Treatment programs that ignore the need to treat the whole person and your lived experiences
- Legal barriers
- Restrictive policies
- Lack of legal structure and organizational relationship between prisons and treatment programs
- Poor options for child custody arrangements for parents in treatment
- No clear structure on the misuse of prescription medication
- Restrictive policies
- Policy barriers
- Exclusionary attitudes, policies, and programs against individuals with SUD and or co-occurring mental health disorders
- Policies that focus on the enforcement of punishments rather than harm reduction and addiction recovery
- Supporting policies that favor enforcement
- The continued criminalization of drug use and of those who misuse substances without individual context
- Lack of focus on supporting vulnerable communities
- Failure to address social determinants of health
- Non-medical factors that influence health outcomes
- Access to healthcare
- Quality of healthcare
- Access to educational opportunities
- Quality of educational opportunities
- Social and community contexts
- Economic stability
- Neighborhood
- Work environment
- Non-medical factors that influence health outcomes
- Lack of consideration for contextual life factors
- Poor attention to individual needs for housing and employment
- Treatment provider services
Through a holistic model of care, you can find whole-person addiction recovery support services to heal in mind, body, and spirit. As the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) notes, the guiding principles of addiction recovery encompass principles like holistic, peer support, relational, strengths, and responsibility. Listed below are some of the principles of addiction recovery that support the whole-person approach to healing:
- Holistic
- Recovery encompasses your whole life: mind, body, spirit, and community
- Self-care practices
- Family support
- Housing and employment
- Transportation
- Education
- Faith and spirituality
- Services and supports
- Community participation
- Recovery encompasses your whole life: mind, body, spirit, and community
- Peer support
- Encouraging and engaging peers in developing a vital:
- Sense of belonging
- Supportive relationships
- Valued roles
- Community
- Mutual support and aid allow for the sharing of experiential knowledge and skills
- Relational support
- Being surrounded by people who believe in your ability to recover
- Fosters hope, support, and encouragement
- Suggests strategies and resources to support your addiction recovery
- Being surrounded by people who believe in your ability to recover
- Supported by individual, family, and community strengths and responsibility
- You are responsible for your self-care and journey to addiction recovery
- Your family is responsible to support you in your efforts to heal
- Communities are responsible for providing opportunities and resources
- Address discrimination
- Support social inclusion
- Encourage recovery
Every component and principle of addiction recovery is important for healing. Within the process of addiction recovery, connection-based support resources are a foundational part of healing. As noted in Alcohol Research: Current Reviews, supportive recovery networks are vital to your recovery capital. Your recovery capital is the number of internal and external resources you have to initiate and sustain addiction recovery. Listed below is the recovery capital you develop from a holistic approach to support resources:
- Personal components of recovery
- Self-efficacy
- Knowledge
- Hope
- Health
- Education
- Employment
- Financial stability
- Transport
- Social and environmental components of recovery
- Social branch
- Supportive and pro-recovery relationships with your loved ones, peers, and recovery and support groups
- Community branch
- Treatment resources
- Support services
- Social acceptance
- Continuum of care resources
- Mental and physical health services
- Social branch
While barriers to support exist, awareness of those barriers and resources is an important step toward addiction recovery. With an increased understanding of the challenges of SUD and how it impedes your well-being, you are better equipped to advocate for your needs in treatment. Through a holistic approach to care, the deeply personal nature of addiction recovery is acknowledged and nurtured to help you learn and grow into a healthier you. Thus, more insight into SUD and recovery showcases the value of a personalized approach to healing to support your lasting recovery and improve the quality of your life.
Finding Person-Centered Care for Addiction Recovery at Rancho Recovery
At Rancho Recovery, we know lasting addiction recovery happens when you have access to individualized care. Through person-centered care and evidence-based treatments, you can find the guidance and support you need to heal. The impact of SUD and co-occurring mental health disorders can warp your perception of yourself and the world. Thus, the distress your dependencies cause can convince you that there is no hope or that you are not worthy of healing.
However, we are committed to meeting you where you are with holistic care that sees you, not the addiction. No matter where you are on your addiction recovery journey, we are here to empower you to recover and thrive in your life. With a small client group at our luxury rehab, we can give you the attention and support you deserve.
It is never too late to reach out and seek support. Treatment and recovery is possible at any stage. With our tight-knit Christian rehab center, we will not let you slip through the cracks.
The distress of SUD and co-occurring mental health disorders can convince you that addiction recovery is not possible for you. Yet, with addiction, you become trapped in a cycle of harmful thinking and behavior patterns that impede your life. Unaddressed SUD and co-occurring disorders can impair daily functioning, work life, school life, and relationships. However, with more insight into SUD, you can understand the root causes of your challenges. Moreover, with recovery knowledge, you can find the holistic personalized treatment plan you need to heal and lead a fulfilling life. At Rancho Recovery, we are committed to providing person-centered care that considers you as a whole rather than as your addiction. To learn more, call us at (877) 484-1447.