When you are trying to maintain your sobriety, being prescribed medications can be a tricky proposition. You don’t want to refuse all medications recommended by your doctor, but there are many opportunities for abuse with many different common medications. Managing your meds responsibly can be very difficult, especially for newly sober patients.

Medications for Mental Health

One of the biggest problems with medication management during sobriety is that many people who have an addiction also have a mental illness. If you take medications for bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, depression, anxiety, PTSD, or another mental illness or disorder, taking medications to manage your symptoms could be necessary.

However, many of these medications can be abused, such as:

• Sleep aids
• Barbiturates
• Benzodiazepines
• Amphetamines and other stimulants (for ADD treatment)

It is important that these medications are taken as directed. If you don’t feel that you can manage your meds without abuse, you should consider putting yourself in a situation where you have help dispensing and managing your medication.

Pain Management

If you are severely injured you may be prescribed pain killers of different varieties to treat the pain as you heal. Even though you are sober, you don’t want to flat out refuse pain relieving medication, especially if you have had surgery or broke a bone. Take pain meds as prescribed, and if you aren’t capable of doing that on your own appoint someone to dispense them to you as appropriate.

If you are worried about not being able to manage your medications effectively without abusing them, you may not be ready to be on your own. Sober living can be a great benefit to people who need to learn how to manage medications with their sobriety. Contact us today for more information.