While living as a drug addict most of my life I picked up habits that were not beneficial to my emotional state after getting clean. I did not successfully navigate emotions; stress management is not a skill I acquired in active addiction. Managing feelings and emotions is something a person learns during their foundational years. Since mine were spent in chaos and addiction, I had to fast track learning to manage feelings, especially when experiencing stress.
Hiking for me quickly became a solution to my stress problems. Using hiking as a tool in times when emotions are high has proven to be my solution to dealing with tough emotions. It has worked better than talking to a counselor or taking medication. Being in nature has proven to relieve symptoms of a number of different mental health problems, including personality disorders, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and depression, to name a few.
I have attempted to stop using harmful substances, including alcohol, and change my life more than once. However, this time has been much different than any time in the past and I truly believe that hiking and mountains have played a major role in my success so far.
When a person has used drugs for a number of years and damages their lives, body, and mind, they do not fully recover from the damage. I have seen it a million times. One of the biggest issues many recovering addicts experience is the inability to manage stress. Certain stressors have been known to “take a person back out”, which means they return to using drugs. Hiking is a solution to these stressors.
After finding my way to the mountains and learning to manage my stress through activities such as hiking, I sought out others like myself. In my travels, I have been lucky to find that I am not the only recovering person that has found their freedom in recovery through a relationship with the mountains. I currently volunteer with an agency that introduces people in recovery to mountain adventures.
Hiking has been implemented in recovering people's lives regularly in the Seattle area. When people enter recovery and are interested in trying something new, there are places they can go to have a hiking experience to enhance their recovery. Hiking has successfully helped many people get and stay clean.
A couple of organizations that help addicts begin relationships with mountains are OSAT and Recovery Beyond; both of these organizations connect recovering addicts with mountain adventures, which often contribute to the person’s continued recovery. These kinds of activities are not specific to the recovering addict, they can apply to anyone in any kind of stressful situation.
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