Many clients arrive at a drug rehab center with more than one addiction. Obviously there are people who use multiple drugs, but this is not what I am discussing here. I am alluding to the people who have addictions in other areas of their life as well. Gambling, overeating, problems with inappropriate sexuality, compulsive shopping, internet and games…. well the list is almost endless. Ultimately to have control of your own life and to be headed in the direction you truely want in life you must deal with these behaviors as well.
All of these compulsive type behaviors have in them some element of dealing with stress and coping in your life. Many of them simply invove escaping the normal daily stress and adding the "rush" of the activity. All of them have trigger and patterns , and all of them have cues. They may not be the same cues and triggers as you have for using drugs and alcohol, but they are there, none the less. You simply have to examine and look for them. If you have multiple addictive behaviors, dealing with them in drug rehab will involve extra work, however it is certainly doable. The simplest method is just doing all the exercises and stategies for each of your addictive behaviors. If you do drugs and gamble, then do every exercise in the drug rehab program twice. Once for the concern of drug abuse, and then do it again from the view of your gambling. Many times the result for bath may be almost identical. The triggers and cues ho! wever will probably be the areas where you will find the biggest difference in your addictions.
The harder part may be funneling all this information into one "master" relapse prevention plan. Combining all the elements and solutions for all these negative behaviors into this plan will be a lot of work. It may invlove a bit of creative thinking and solution seeking as coming up with simple clear boundaries, goals, and commitments in several areas is not easy. Ask for help, as dealing with only one addiction will still leave you unhappy and most likely the one addiction will pull you back into the other as well.
