If you’ve successfully completed drug or alcohol rehab, congratulations! Your hard work and struggles have led to a great accomplishment.

As you’re probably discovering, your hard work and struggles aren’t done. You’re still trying to navigate the world in new ways. You’re trying to function without drugs or alcohol, substances that were a big part of your life for a significant amount of time.

Who you travel with on this journey could make a big difference. But relationships aren’t always easy. They can cause some internal conflict.

Your brain could tell you that it’s not a good idea to spend time with friends or relatives who are still abusing alcohol and drugs. Your heart might tell you differently. Emotionally, it might be more difficult to distance yourself from these people. They might be relatives or longtime friends. You might have fond memories of them and of good times you spent together.

Such battles between your head and heart could’ve caused you to abuse drugs and alcohol in the first place. Maybe you used because you were trying not to think of certain things or feel certain things. Alcohol and drugs may have numbed these thoughts and feelings at first. But as your abuse progressed, you probably realized that drugs and alcohol didn’t dull your pain. They only added to it.

Addiction treatment could have helped you address these thoughts and feelings. Maybe therapy and group meetings helped you realized why you thought and felt certain ways. Maybe these treatments helped you develop ways to deal with these thoughts and feelings without the use of drugs or alcohol.

Addiction treatment is also a good place to work on relationships. It can help people re-establish bonds with supportive loved ones. It can help them forge new relationships with people invested in their sobriety. Relationships and sobriety aren’t easy, but good assistance can help with both.