How to Help Someone in Early Sobriety

Someone you know has started their journey in early sobriety, and you want nothing more than to help in every way possible. There are some essential ways in helping, like creating an inclusive environment without triggers, making new habits, and understanding that you will also need time for yourself. 

Helping someone through their journey will look different in every circumstance. The most important thing is being there for them and letting them know they can lean on you when needed. 

You can play an important role in helping someone through their early sobriety journey. To learn more on how you can help, keep reading. 

Different ways to help a recovering alcoholic

Whether you are a recovered alcoholic and helping in the way that helped you, or just helping a friend or loved one in their early sobriety journey, there are a few key notes to take with you. There are many different ways to help someone in recovery, but I want to go over a few that made the biggest impact on myself and my clients

Firstly, although each story and experience is unique to each individual if you have gone through recovery, it could help to tell your story. This could help someone in early sobriety see that it is possible to not have alcohol control them and to be able to overcome any obstacles they could be wary about. 

What has helped me and what I love doing for clients is changing the focus from drinking to healthy eating habits. I focus on creating a happy and healthy relationship with food with an emphasis on protein!

What we don’t want to do is replace alcohol with a sugary substitute. Go to cooking classes or learn new recipes at home; not only will it bring you closer together, but it is creating healthy habits. 

• Learn more about healthy eating habits Here

Living with someone may make this next step easier as it has to do with reducing environmental triggers. This could be something in the house that may remind this person of bad memories or makes them think about times they were getting drunk. 

This could also be outside of the house and represent a place they used to go. Try to avoid going to bars, restaurants, or anything that may remind them of drinking or have a connection with them when they drank. 

Most importantly, helping someone in early sobriety will take patience. Do not try to speed up the process, but rather allow them to take things as they need to. 

Remember to have open communication with anyone you are helping get through their beginning journey of sobriety and listen to what kind of support they need. 

Avoid overloading yourself with too much responsibility

Of course, when someone has made the decision to begin their sobriety journey, you may be willing to put your own needs aside and focus on the needs of your loved one, but that may not be as helpful.

If you are then overloading yourself and forgetting about your own well-being it can cause remorse; make sure you are still prioritizing the important things in your life.

Remember to also take care of yourself. It will model and demonstrate recovery-related behaviors to your loved one. 

Signs of relapse/regress

When helping someone in early recovery, remember that each person's journey is different and will vary. It is important to know some signs or different attitudes someone in recovery may have when thinking of relapsing. 

One of the hardest things to get over for them is constantly thinking about having a drink. Overthinking something so frequently could lead them back to the bottle prematurely before they fully control their habits. 

A change in a person's behavior or attitude could also be a sign of potential relapse. If you see someone become more irritable, agitated, depressed, or having increased mood swings, this could be a sign that they are struggling and could potentially lead them back to drinking. 

Lastly, watching how they are taking care of themselves, neglecting self-care such as not eating right, neglecting exercise, or creating poor sleeping habits could all be indications that someone in early recovery may have lost focus on recovery. 

If you observe these changes, try not to bring attention to what they are doing wrong, but rather encourage behavior that was bringing out positive results before. Consider yourself the “enthusiasm producer”, there to help them get re-energized about healthy habits, and just how awesome they are at maintaining them. 

Final thoughts

Everyone’s early sobriety journey will be different and unique to them. There may be some bumps in the road as they figure out what to do and how to mold their new adventure.

Allow the bumps to happen and be there for support when they need you. Make sure they know that you are available and not to dread on the bumps, it does not mean starting over. 

Be there for them to create new healthy habits and find new ways to spend their time. Make this as enjoyable as possible, for them and for you. Make sure you are also healthy and focusing on self-care to lead by example.