Golfing as Part of Your Addiction Recovery
Engaging in outdoor activities you enjoy that distract you from cravings is very helpful during the recovery process. At Silver Sands Recovery, we offer golfing addiction recovery to help you achieve and maintain long-term sobriety. Learn more about how golf makes a difference during the recovery process.
How Golfing Addiction Recovery Works
During recovery, golf therapy helps integrate your emotional, physical, and psychological sides, providing holistic care. Often, people in recovery focus so much on the symptoms of the addiction that they stop thinking about themselves as complete beings who need to bring the various aspects of themselves into balance. Golf offers several benefits that help you achieve this integration.
Prompts the Release of Endorphins
Playing golf allows you to start experiencing pleasure in areas other than drugs or alcohol. Substance abuse impacts your brain structure, making it difficult to feel. This is called anhedonia, and it can lead to relapses.[1] Golfing and other forms of exercise help release endorphins, leading to the rewiring of your brain.
Endorphins are feel-good hormones. The movement that golf requires, including walking from hole to hole, can trigger their release. At the same time, being on the golf course can lower cortisol levels, which is a stress hormone.[2] All of this contributes to relaxation and feelings of well-being.
Offers Gentle Exercise
Your body needs to recover from substance abuse. Thus, while exercise might be helpful for your mental health, you may not yet be strong enough to tackle intense activities. Golf offers a gentler alternative. You get a lot of walking done, and it might even increase your heart rate, which helps strengthen your body without placing stress on it.
Encourages Interactions With Nature
Being outside in nature or “green space” helps to relieve anxiety and can alleviate depression.[3] All of these conditions can co-occur with substance abuse. Spending time in nature can also assist in decreasing cravings, and it encourages mindfulness and relaxation, allowing you to stay in the moment.
Offers Socialization Opportunities
Golf encourages you to interact with other players. Addiction and even the recovery process can be isolating, so learning how to communicate in healthy ways with others is essential during treatment. By playing a sport that is less intense than others and therefore makes conversation possible, you can benefit from a sense of camaraderie and healthy competition.
Introduces You to a New Hobby
Staying sober often relies on being able to find things you can focus on other than cravings. Golf can become a hobby that you turn to when struggling. Because it helps better manage stress levels, it could even become an integral part of your relapse-prevention plan.
Turn to Silver Sands Recovery for Holistic Care
You are more than just your addiction. To be able to get and stay sober, you have to bring together your disparate parts. However, that’s not always easy to do at a traditional recovery center, where the only focus is ensuring that you’re currently sober. At Silver Sands Recovery, we offer a variety of therapeutic options that can help you relearn who you are.
Golf addiction therapy is one of the newest activities we offer. It encourages you to get out in nature, enjoy yourself, and benefit from mindfulness and relaxation. To learn more about our programs or to speak with one of our experts about beginning treatment, contact us at Silver Sands Recovery.
Sources:
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3089992/
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK538239/
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9968503/
About the author:
Lisa Waknin is the Founder and Director of Silver Sands Recovery, located in Prescott, Arizona. Lisa started Silver Sands Recovery after immersing herself in the addiction treatment world for several years to figure out what could be done differently to help her daughter and others like her to overcome addiction and stay sober. She believes in a hands-on treatment approach, which includes taking someone out of their environment, providing a 90-day program in a structured environment. During treatment, clients not only recover physically but also learn to live their life again. Lisa is a sought-after expert speaker for recovery support groups, charities, schools, communities, and companies wanting to educate themselves on the explosion of opiate and heroin abuse in our country and the best way to understand, treat, and beat it.
