Social Media is Not Helping You Stay Sober
Addiction can feel like it has a complete grasp on your life. Trying to break free from it can be one of the most difficult things you will ever try to do. It takes willpower and a full understanding of what you should and should not allow into your life. Awakenings for Women understands this struggle and knows that there are certain triggers you may not realize are counterproductive to the process of becoming or staying sober.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are not helpful during the process of staying sober. Posts on Facebook, Instagram, and twitter produce anxiety in their viewers, as they become jealous of others’ lifestyles and begin to question their own. Viewers start aspiring to create a persona as the ones they see online, setting unrealistic standards for themselves. Though you may not realize it, flooding your mind with social media all the time can severely affect your progress when trying to stay sober in a women’s sober living facility in Boca Raton.
For women who are working on staying sober, social media can make you feel like you are missing out on the party. Advertisements and photos referencing drug and alcohol use are nearly everywhere you look. The “perfect” images posted can intensify your cravings and make you feel like you too should be sipping cold champagne amongst good looking men and women. When your favorite party-girl celebrity posts a photo online, it is almost certain to be one of her drinking champagne at a big glamorous party, not the photo showing how sick and hungover she was the following morning, right? The consequences and pain that come with a drunken night are never posted or advertised. Viewers don’t get to see the addiction, struggle, depression, and the uncertainty that people are actually living with. Don’t forget, these photos have thought put into them, and are carefully crafted to convey a particular image and lifestyle. Social media is a platform for people to create their own version of a beautiful, luxurious world, which influences your perception of reality and how someone actually lives their life. It’s a way for people to promote a certain lifestyle that most often is simply not how they truly live on a daily basis.
Avoiding social media platforms can help you to focus on supporting yourself and your personal recovery process to staying sober. Free your mind from the never-ending feed of “beautiful party goers drinking, living without consequences and having way more fun than you are” If you don’t want to delete your social media entirely, block, de-friend or hide posts from those that are constantly serving up toxic reminders of your old lifestyle. Keep people and posts that don’t positively serve you away from your life.
The reality is that social media just isn’t reality. Awakenings for Women wants you to understand that these party posts online are not conducive to keeping you and on the right track to recovery.