Winter is coming. The days are getting shorter and colder, the coats have been pulled from your closets, and small hills of holiday sales mailers hit your front stoop every morning (well, nowadays they're emails in your Gmail promotions folder - but you get what I’m saying).
The phone pings: your sister is checking in. “Is Uncle Bob coming for Thanksgiving dinner this year?”
“Anybody have a good cranberry sauce? Really need to change mine up.” That’s Lauren from accounting. She's having 20 guests this year, and wants to talk recipes.
Your son’s best friend Scottie is giving him expensive ideas.
“I really hope my parents get me that new PS5 I’ve been dropping hints about for two months.”
So goes it. Holiday season is here and is the one thing on everyone’s mind. At this time of year, the conversation on family and friend chats, at office water coolers and on school playgrounds, is all holidays, all the time.
Entering Addiction Treatment on Christmas: The Hard Conversation
Despite all this, another conversation may be playing in your head. It may be about your husband's recent excessive drinking. Or your brother, who'd been doing so well lately -but Mom called last week at 2 AM, crying. He hadn’t come home yet.
Maybe these conversations with yourself are related to your own state of mind. Maybe you've been struggling again with opioids, and deep inside, you know it’s time to seek help.
It’s a hard thought to contemplate - going away for addiction treatment during the holidays seems impossible. So many people need you or your loved one struggling with addiction, and you need them. How can you just abandon them, or tell your loved one to leave at exactly the time when families are meant to be together?
It’s also not easy to find the right person to discuss this with. You keep it inside, but it gets heavier and heavier...
Let’s try to create a safe space here. A place to talk out the benefits of considering addiction treatment during the holiday season, to hash out what it will mean to your family, your friends, and most of all, to you. A way to understand what addiction treatment during the holidays can give you, and how you can resolve the conflicting emotions of going away from your family and friends while also being there for them.
The first thing to remember when thinking about mental health and addiction treatment on Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and the days and weeks that surround them, is why you're doing it.
Think about it like this.
Addiction Treatment and Sobriety: The Best Gift You Will Ever Give
If you asked yourself in a moment of real honesty, “What's the best gift I can give my loved ones this Christmas?”, what's the first thing that would pop into your head?
It’s not a new car, or a house, or a PS5, or a huge flat screen TV. There is only one right answer - and that answer is sobriety.
Entering addiction treatment is the first step to achieving that goal. Leaving home for the holidays to begin the work of recovery isn’t letting your family down. On the contrary, it's the very best way to be there for them. They'll look at the empty seat at the table, and although you'll be missed, it will give them joy. You're giving them the gift of hope; you're giving them the gift of you.
Another thing, dear reader.
The Gift of The Future: Drug and Alcohol Rehab on Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s.
Picture the Christmases, Thanksgivings, and New Years to come. Imagine yourself relaxed, happy, and clear-minded. Next year, and the year after that. Children making snow angels out in the front yard, squealing in delight as their now focused and present mom, or dad, or uncle, or aunt, or dear family friend looks on in love. Think of hot cocoa and blazing fireplaces and happiness and warmth.
With your strength, resolve, and commitment to doing the right thing this time around, with your decision to address your addiction, mental health, and depression on Christmas, you are laying the foundation for all the future magic to come.
It's an absolutely priceless gift you're giving.
That’s the starting point of the brave decision you're seriously considering making.
Starting Mental Health and Addiction Treatment in November and December: Insurance Benefits
Let’s keep talking; there are more benefits to consider.
There are practical aspects too. Things like end of the year insurance deductibles. Look at it this way:
Say your insurance plan's out-of-pocket costs are set at a ceiling of one thousand dollars. Now, throughout the year, it’s quite possible that you've already paid out a big portion of that amount.
For example, in 2021, your out-of-pocket costs may have already amounted to 800 dollars. There are only 200 dollars available for the treatment center to collect from you, while the rest will be covered by insurance. However, should you wait until January of 2022, your deductible resets, and you may be on the hook for the full thousand dollars. So in our scenario, entering addiction treatment during the holidays just saved you 800 dollars!
Getting Addiction Help During the Holiday Season: The Community Element
To be honest, we're really just getting started. One of the most common consequences of drug or alcohol dependence or addiction is crushing loneliness. Drugs destroy relationships, and one of the hardest things to deal with is that you or your loved one may feel all alone in the world. That itself only further fuels the addiction. The holidays are a time when inhibitions are loose - people are drinking and partying full-time. And addiction is a vicious cycle of loneliness, using, and crashing. Over and over again.
Being at in a protected environment like an addiction rehab will give you or your loved one a warm place to celebrate Christmas, New Years and Thanksgiving, especially if the rehab you choose focuses on community. Avenues Recovery Centers is one such treatment center. It's all about being part of a family! Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas parties, and New Year’s Celebrations are all integrated in addiction rehab treatment during the holiday season at Avenues. We have fun, we laugh, we smile, and sometimes we cry. But no client is ever alone.
If you make the courageous decision to start treatment during the holidays this year, you won't celebrate alone. You'll be safe from external triggers and temptations, warm and protected by caring professionals and embraced by a loving family of like-minded peers .
The Avenues Family Celebrates Holiday Joy Together!
Make The 2022 Holiday Season the Most Meaningful One You Have Ever Experienced!
Ok, we're nearing the end of this powerful conversation. You're to be admired for listening so intently, for considering all the angles of the brave decision you stand on the cusp of making.
Become part of the Avenues community this upcoming holiday season. Take advantage of all the practical benefits of doing it at this time of year. Celebrate new hope with people just like you. Give your family and friends the most beautiful gift you can ever imagine giving.
Give them the gift of sobriety, of commitment to addiction treatment, of allowing them to dream of magical Christmases in all the years to come.
Give yourself the gift you want more than anything else in the world.
Give yourself the gift of a beautiful future!