Spend The 2021 Holidays With Us

Shlomo Hoffman

Dec 09, 2020

Holiday season, for so many of us, comes with warm memories of lights, comfort food, and family group hugs. Yeah, the gifts were fun too! 

So, if I would tell you that now is the optimal time to check in to an addiction treatment center, you might look at me funny. I hear you protesting, “Now is the time to be together on the homestead, to laugh and love together with the people who care about you most.”   

But as crazy as it may sound, there isn’t a better time to embrace a chance at a brighter future. Procrastination is a basic part of the human condition. We are sort of programmed to push off the difficult things in our lives and tell ourselves well get to it at specific round moment of time, a checkpoint if you will. 

Avenues Holiday Client Gift Bag

Christmas, New Year’s and the feelings of hope and renewal that come with it, can be such a checkpoint. It’s when people are in touch with what they are missing, what they might have lost, and more importantly, with reflecting on how they can find it again. Take today and make it build all the tomorrows you so desperately wish for. Take advantage of the clarity given to you by a calendar turning another page and make it a holiday season you will remember forever.  

Don’t push the snooze button! The moment is now.  

Find a place in a thriving community!  

Drugs can make you feel as if you are on an island. Nobody understands you, the thoughts racing in your head, or why reliance on the substance of your choice is the only thing that makes you feel alive. Or makes life worth living. Loneliness, when the world around you seems to be bursting with joy, is a dagger that doesn’t stop stabbing.  

Joining a community like Avenues Recovery Center puts you in a place where there are others just like you. They identify with your challenges, understand the hole in your heart. It is precisely here where the work on filling those holes happens.  

Tap into the season of joy by sitting side by side and sharing the fight. The joy of a man on an abandoned island watching a stream of boats finding his shore is the joy of knowing that the pathway home has emerged.  

Alumni Holiday Party

Alumni enjoy a holiday party at Avenues Recovery Center at Philadelphia

Use your days off from work!  

On a practical level, your PTO days may not roll over. It’s the end of the year and if you have unused days just lying around, use it as a chance to take off from work and make a positive change in your life. It just may be the perfect gift to yourself at the perfect time!   

The social scene on the outside can be full of triggers. 

At times when people gather, the atmosphere can be loose. Alcohol flows, and people let their guard down. At Avenues Recovery Center you will celebrate the holidays in a safe environment. We can show you how to take part in the joy and blessing around us with a protection from relapse triggers and illicit substance abuse. Celebration can be done without external negative influences and we can show you how!  

This year can be the holiday season that you look back on for years to come. The one you will be thinking about in 5 or ten years from now, when you are sitting in the joy and the light of being surrounded by family, and your head is clear and free to internalize all the things that those blessings mean. The holiday season that gave you the ultimate gift.  It will be the year you found the strength at Avenues Recovery Center to give every holiday season in your future the brilliant light of addiction recovery! 

Looking for more? Read on: “How to stay sober through the holidays“

Since joining the Avenues Recovery content team, Shlomo has become a thought leader in the addiction field. His popular addiction podcast "Rubber Bands" is a must listen for anyone involved in Substance abuse treatment. He is a Seinfeld junkie, a recovering Twitter fanatic, and a sports expert. He enjoys milk shakes and beautiful views from rooftops.