The key element to sobriety is happiness. What makes you happy. People say that getting clean and sober is the easy part, but staying sober is the hard part. Find positive support that understands the importance of staying clean. Choose activities that make you feel good and boost your self-esteem and confidence. Increasing self-esteem will boost your confidence in staying sober. Choose people in your life that will be supportive of your decision not to drink or do drugs. It can be hard to find people who are clean and sober, but they are out there. Being picky about the choice of friends, can be very hard, but may save your life.

Remember to set goals in life. Make a list of things you want to accomplish. Keep a daily planner and write your responsibilities, or how you may feel that day, or even how far you are being clean. Keeping yourself organized and aware of your progress will make your more determined to succeed. Journaling is all about expression, writing down, recording our feelings, and recognizing them and leaving them on the page, is an excellent way to understand and figure out what is important to us.

Try new things. Remember when your relationship was your drug, you were very involved with your addiction, that life passed you by and you missed out on the fun things in life. You may have secluded yourself in the room and didn't want anyone to disturb you. The only thing that was on your mind was your drug. When will be the next time you were going to get a hold of it, how you were going to get it. Where was the money going to come from. It was like a job, from the time you woke up until you went to bed, only to do it all over again in the morning.

Pay attention to triggers. Certain times of the year could be harder, like holidays, birthdays, or an anniversary of a tragic event or even just a stressful day. You may need extra support for yourself. You can go to AA or NA meetings, call your sober coach, or someone who you can confide in. If you feel a new trigger coming on, and you feel the need to get high and use. Make sure you think about it, call someone close or even write it down, so you can prevent this from re-occurring in the future. Write down how these drugs destroyed your life. What was the outcome of when you started using drugs or alcohol. Loss of family trust, loss of money. Loss of a job, or can't hold a job because of this evil drug. Write down how much you hate it and what it caused you and your family.

Staying clean and sober is hard, go easy on yourself. Pay attention and give yourself credit how far you've gone. Stay positive and give yourself a pat on the back for the accomplishment you've made in changing your life around. We all sometimes get in that rut and feel hopeless, but isn't our goal to feel happiness, peace and serenity? Never give up and hold on like this is your life.