Going online anyone can find information about the dangers of drinking too much coffee. There are dangers to excessive coffee drinking in recovery, as well. This includes the impact of caffeine on the brain and body and how coffee can change a person’s mood.
Coffee and Recovery
Coffee has been around a long time. Coffee can have great benefits including alertness and increased metabolism. It can also have physical and psychological impacts like addiction for some people, especially those in recovery. One of the key components of recovery is learning to cope with stress without numbing it with substances. Many people who drink coffee without major health consequences wonder about sobriety. Given history of substances, a person may begin to need caffeine to sustain waking life. Recovery has enough anxiety and challenges so consuming a beverage that might heighten anxiety seems to go against better judgment, yet many people consume more caffeine from coffee than they should.
Mood-Altering Substances
Some point to coffee as the first mind-altering drug we accept as appropriate when we are children. It seems more legitimate now with the advent of coffee houses everywhere we turn. There is no shame in drinking coffee, but its mood-elevating effects can drag us down rather than boost us up. Learning to draw the line in recovery is the challenge.
Personal Choices
A person in recovery from addiction deals with stress by escaping them with substances. Breaking the pattern is not easy. Living sober means taking problems head on without a crutch. It means facing a challenge at work and not staying home to get high or tackling a task that is difficult without a stimulant. Drinking coffee can become a way of escaping by putting another substance into the body in order to achieve a certain effect. Drinking coffee does not doom a person’s sobriety but it may change it in relation to how they feel and how they operate on a daily basis. Like with anything in recovery, if a person starts to drink too much caffeine, it may be time to step back and assess what is going on and why the amount of caffeine being consumed has increased. Once this assessment is done, it can be helpful to look at the environment and see what is going on that is causing the increased caffeine consumption. It is also healthier for the pocketbook not to drink so many caffeinated beverages and drink coffee in high volumes.
The Springboard Center’s addiction treatment programs are tailored to meet the needs of each client. By utilizing a set of diverse methods of addiction treatment, we are able to deal with your addiction from all angles and concentrate on every aspect of your healing process. It is important to recognize that many of our services offer a group setting and environment, so that the client spends time with other people affected by the same chronic disease and problems. 432-620-0255
