- Hello, and welcome to "Families in Recovery: A Family Education Video," produced by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The "wall" stage, or "protracted abstinence," starts anywhere from six weeks to five months into recovery, and can last 12 to 16 weeks. People may have problems with negative thoughts and feelings. This is the hardest stage of recovery. Your loved one can be irritable, have little energy, feel depressed, have trouble concentrating, and lack enthusiasm. Some of these symptoms come from changes in brain chemistry as the brain heals from the damage of the substances. Many people relapse during this stage. They try to make these bad feelings go away or use because their cravings return with ferocity. Continuing with treatment, exercising, and attending mutual-help meetings can help during this stage. The goals during the wall stage include working to repair relationships with family members and friends who do not use drugs. People in recovery need to develop new support networks of people who do not use and continue to develop new interests, stay active. Getting through this stage is a big accomplishment for the person in recovery. - One of the things they talked about in the Matrix family group was the wall, which is something the person can go through, I guess, between 60 days and four months of their sobriety. Now, my son did hit the wall. It was around-- I think he had a couple of months of sobriety and I noticed that he didn't want to get out of bed in the mornings, and he seemed depressed and low-energy. And I started realizing that this is all the stuff they talked about in the group. So with that, I was able to talk to him, you know. First, share about it in the group and get some direction from the facilitator and then, you know, talk to my son and say, "Hey, do you remember this thing they talked about called the 'wall'?" - I have some very, very good friends who I call when I feel like isolating and I have a lot of them who call me. We seem to have a connection over all these years, that they know, somehow, when I'm needing to hear from them, but I'm not reaching out because there was a period of time, there, when I just had to learn how to reach out. - Mostly, what I do for relaxation involves like-minded people in recovery, that, you know, we do a lot of things together. In our area, we have everything as diverse as recovery softball, recovery canoe trips, campouts, dances, a lot of other types of events that doesn't involve sitting in a meeting, talking about the steps, but it involves the socialization process with like-minded people in all other areas and all other activities. I quit smoking cigarettes and started exercising. I joined a health club that I've belonged to for many years, now. - People early in recovery need to learn to cope with "dangerous" emotions and thoughts, ones that "can trigger relapse"-- feeling lonely, stressed, or angry and thinking only of the good times associated with substance use. - I know, today, that I have to be careful of getting too stressed out. I have to be careful of putting too much on my plate. I have to be careful of getting overwhelmed, in any way, because that could lead me to having some type of unmanageability in my life, which would be a trigger for me. - I had to change my value system because I valued a lot of nonexistent virtues. You understand what I'm saying? I had these street values that didn't really mean nothing, in terms of being a productive, drug-free citizen in society. You know, I mean, I had all this negative stuff embedded in my brain at a young age, running the streets, and so, I had to change my thoughts altogether, and that's how I was able to become a better person and that's how I've been able to continue and maintain my personal recovery. - In treatment, people learn relapse prevention techniques, such as thought-stopping, identifying triggers, maintaining a daily schedule, using relaxation techniques, participating in mutual-help meetings, and reaching out to abstinent friends and family members, to name a few. - So in order to avoid the euphoric recall, you know, the stage where my mind wants to glamorize the drug use, I have to play the tape, you know, I have to sit there. And now that it's a bad thing, I have to say, "All right, this would be nice and all, but what would really happen, you know? Am I willing to exchange this feeling for jail or institution or death? Am I willing to, you know, glamorize this segment of my disease, to go out and ruin my life and, possibly, die?"