Social media can be a great way to connect with friends, family members, coworkers, and complete strangers. For this same reason, it can also be a serious problem for people who are in addiction recovery.For many people who are fighting addiction and striving to achieve lasting sobriety, external temptations are the number one obstacle between them and their goal. All it takes is one friend who is unaware of your addiction treatments to suggest getting a drink or having a hit of marijuana for everything to unravel. They might have meant no harm, yet harm is ultimately done. Even seeing a friend have a drink when you are in an alcohol addiction treatment program can be the tipping point that sends you back weeks, months, or years.
While on social media, you can be exposed to countless people partaking in all sorts of activities. Every night, your feed could be filled up with people going to bars or clubs. You might even see suggested posts from strangers who are having a drink or smoke. A brief glance at such a post could tempt you horribly to abandon your treatment recovery plan.
For this reason, it is usually suggested that you do not spend much time – if any at all – on social media while fighting drug or alcohol addiction. There are simply too many external temptations and factors for you to reasonably control.
Uninstall or double-password your most-used social media apps, such as:
- TikTok
You can also ask a trusted friend who knows you are in recovery to change your password for you. They write down the password in a few safe locations. Once you are out of recovery, they give you the new password so you can log into your accounts again. The bottom line is that you should not prioritize social media over your recovery.
