Addiction, whether it’s alcoholism or drugs, is a lifelong problem with no readymade cure. In the first place, it disrupts rewards circuits of your brain and renders you ill. It seizes your mind and then makes it surmise that the substance is indispensable as breath. As a result, your brain becomes dependent upon the drug to “feel good.” That is why addiction is tough to beat because it hijacks your “processor.”
But, you can curb it through a program of individual recovery, abstinence, and mutual aid. One of the oldest programs you know is alcohol Anonymous (AA). AA has a twelve-step recovery program where addicts abstinent and passes through self-healing. But, that is a topic to discuss later.
Today, you’ll learn how the jiu-jitsu program helps in addiction recovery.
Helps in building a support system for sobriety
Sobriety is the state where you don’t show any degree of effects of drugs or alcohol. The AA helps its members achieve sobriety through a network of stable individuals.
Likewise, in Jiu-jitsu, you’ll have training sessions and competitions. Attending this session helps build your network with stable individuals. Also, it helps quiet the self-centeredness in you.
Besides, attending Jiu-jitsu sessions each week will help you maintain sobriety. As a member, you’ll be able to control:
- How you deal with outside pressure or stress
- Control what you do in your spare time to avoid boredom
- How you believe in yourself
- The people who matter in your life and community
A strong support network that values you can help you from the likelihood of relapse. In other words, the absence of support systems makes one avoid social ties at all costs. As a result, individuals will go back to drugs to heal emotions.
Helps you learn relapse prevention skills
Relapse prevention has three main stages, and Jiu-jitsu can help you in fixing. We have:
- Emotional relapse. Here, your behaviour and emotions bring you down to where you were. They include signs such as isolation, poor eating and sleeping, and being selfless.
- Mental relapse. In essence, you’ll find yourself in a war of thoughts. Mental deterioration can go more in-depth and lessen your cognitive resistance. Sings of mental relapse include an appetite for drugs and thinking about past use.
- Physical relapse. It is a stage when you start using the drugs once again. Usually, it’s where you make use of a window opportunity and abuse drug.
In general, learning relapse preventions help one achieve success in the recovery journey.
Studies show that cognitive therapy is the best tool for learning relapse prevention.
Some of the prevention skills that you’ll derive from jiu-jitsu include:
Improve Self-care skills
In life, your body, mind, and soul fitness plays a significant role in how you live a happy life. Knowing how to eat right, do regular exercise, and get some quality sleep is a good sign of self-care.
Practising self-care is an assignment many recovering individuals find to be hard. Here, you need to follow a good structure for exercise, eating, and sleep.
By attending a session at jiu-jitsu, you retrain your body to sleep better and avoid relapse. In most instances, you’ll eat less than you need and become worn out. As a result, you’ll turn to addiction to escape or relax.
Studies show that mind-body relaxation reduces addiction to long-term relapse prevention. At large, it helps reduce stress and tension, quell negative thinking, and self-esteem.
Deep breathing
Deep breathing is a good exercise that helps your brain relaxes. Jiu-jitsu deep breathing exercise helps release neurotransmitters in your mind. As a result, more oxygen flows inside, which also allows you to breathe out more carbon dioxide.
Changing breathing patterns affects the psycho-physiological in brain-body interaction. The observable signs here include emotions or mood change.
Develop healthy activities
Healthy activities help you manage stressors that can act as triggers to relapse. For example, regular exercise improves self-esteem and reduces stress in the body. Some of the benefits of healthy activities include:
- Regular exercise
- make new friends
- adrenaline activities
- Learning new skills
Jiu-jitsu pushes your mental and physical limits. In the end, help you come out assertive and keen. Apart from that, you also reduce the risk of other illnesses and heart diseases.
You’ll also be able ready to fight depression in the feature because your mental health is in balance.
Summary
Apart from drugs and alcohol, we also have other addictions, such as gambling and video games. In any event, there is no single medicine that can cure addiction.
But, through cognitive therapy and other behavioural changes, recovery path becomes possible. Jiu-jitsu helps in addiction recovery in many ways. One of them is fixing behavioural changes and how an individual perceives the world. Here, you’ll also meet people who will help bring back community sense in you.