THE FIRST FEW WEEKS OFF DRUGS OR DRINK: THE 24-HOUR PLAN AND THE 10-MINUTES-AT-A-TIME PLAN
Give up drugs and drink just for the day – the day you are in now or the twenty-four hours that started from your last drug.
Everybody – yes, literally every single addict and alcoholic – can give up drugs or drink for a day. You may have done it many times – times when you couldn’t get your supply of drugs or drink, or times when you were making those promises to yourself: Til never do that again.’
This mental trick concentrates all your energies where they should be – on staying away from drugs now. It also means that you can stop worrying about tomorrow, or next week, or how you will manage next Christmas.
Most addicts cannot envisage staying off drugs for life. Indeed, if they think of it in that way, they simply become downhearted, or even downright unwilling to try. But you do not have to think in terms of a lifetime.
This forward thinking is what NA calls ‘projection’, and it’s a killer. Thinking forward to all the difficulties that lie in the future fills your head with fear and despair, making it too much for you. So don’t do it.
All you have to do is get through today without a drug. Thinking about giving up drugs for just one day, the day you are in, is much less worrying. Just concentrate on that.
Push tomorrow out of your head. And push yesterday out of your head too. Thinking back to the past will fill your head full of either dangerously euphoric memories or guilt and anxiety. Yesterday is no concern of yours just now.
Today is the only day that matters. And today is the day that you are going to get through without a drug.
Sometimes, when the cravings get very bad, you will probably feel you can’t even manage a day without drugs. This is the moment when you start living not just twenty-four hours at a time, but ten minutes at a time.
The 10-minutes-at-a-time plan-In the first few days, you will probably have moments when you feel that you are going to use drugs literally any moment now. The craving is so strong that you feel almost – but not quite – overwhelmed by it.
This is when to live ten minutes at a time. Tell yourself that you will get through the next ten minutes – or five minutes, if necessary – without taking the drug. Postpone taking the drug or picking up the drink just that long.
You can do that. Undoubtedly, you can get through ten minutes without using drugs.
And when that ten minutes is over, start the next ten minutes without taking the drug.
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