The main goal of recovering from addiction is to get healthy. Stopping drug-use is a small part of that; yet it’s the main focus.

The main goal of this article is to inform you that treatment is important but lacks addiction education, severely.

I see so many in recovery running around trying to “not use” while ignoring all the other areas of well-being that make it exponentially easier to not use. I recognize it because I did it for years, and struggled, unnecessarily.

I get it, conquering the cravings and obsession and reprogramming the nervous system is a big process. But I have a $100 on a bet that I could walk into any treatment center, any sobriety group and ask a simple biology questions such as, “what does your lymphatic system do?”, and I would hear nothing but crickets chirping in the background.

Addicts can spend weeks, months, or a year in treatment and come out with no more knowledge about how their body and mind works other than, “I have trauma, take my pills, go to my meetings.”

When I went to my first inpatient treatment, I went at it like, “I’m here, I might as well learn as much as possible,” and I attended it as if I was in college, but without all the alcohol and partying. The problem was that I learned nothing useful. I even asked a counselor for more in-depth homework, “is there any more knowledge I can learn to help me, other than take my pills and go to my meetings and pick good friends?”

This is not to educate about the lymphatic system. It is to show that treatment is the airport terminal and the airplane is education. If you don’t have an airplane, you will be sitting in that terminal indefinitely and never take off.

How is it that someone can be in treatment, detoxing, and learn nothing about how to optimize detoxification? Worse yet, many still believe they are detoxed after the first few days. “Sure, I’ve been pouring poisons into my biology on a daily basis for years and it’s cleared in a week with some city tap water, a folic acid vitamin, and a slew of neurotoxic medications and taco Tuesdays—all clean!”

The lymphatic system plays a crucial role in removing toxins, waste, and other unwanted materials from the body.

That sounds like something an addict in recovery may want to optimize; because, in functional medicine, sluggish lymph = sluggish detox = stalled healing. If drainage is poor, all other detox systems (liver, gut, kidneys) suffer too. You can’t “detox” if you’re not draining.

To maintain a healthy lymphatic system and enhance its detoxification capabilities throughout your entire life, not just right after you almost died from toxicity, consider the following practices:

Stay Hydrated: find fresh water with minerals (or maybe take some electrolytes), not tap water, not just any bottled water. You have a supercomputer in your pocket, do some research on water companies and brands. Quality water doesn’t cost any more than the soda and coffees we usually buy. Fruits help a lot as well—full of antioxidants and readily available plasma hydration.

Lymphatic Drainage Techniques: Methods like massage and dry brushing can help stimulate lymphatic flow. If you cannot afford regular massages, all you really need to do is massage the following areas yourself in the shower: spend an extra 30 seconds rubbing soap on your neck, armpits, below sternum (pancreas area), and inguinal areas (sides of your crotch)

Fasting: I believe this should be an automatic practice every patient in treatment undergoes with some supervision. The best detoxification method, by far, is fasting. When you are going through withdrawal and nausea, that’s the body saying, “stop eating, I need to clean this shit out fast.” Yet, what does the doctor want to do? They give you a medication to override the symptoms and feed you a bunch of food that bogs down the body that is just trying to do its job.

                Granted if you are malnourished, underweight, etc. do your research and execute small fasts first. Like, eat dinner at 6 pm, and don’t eat anything until “break-fast”, or breakfast at 8am.

Exercise Regularly: Physical activity stimulates lymph flow and circulation. Don’t go too hard during, or shortly after “medical” detox. Start slowly. But keep everything moving.

Magnesium, Epsom Salt: Everyone lacks magnesium because our food isn’t a great source of it anymore. Epsom Salt is basically Magnesium and you can dump two cups of it in a bath and absorb it through the skin. It doesn’t directly support Lymph drainage. But it does help suck the toxins that are stored in body cells out into the bloodstream and eventually into all our filters: liver, kidney, and lymph for proper disposal.

Eat a Healthy Diet: I know, everyone knows this. Now do it!

Okay, now back to my point. That wasn’t too complicated. Any idiot can grasp the concept and apply it in their recovery. Even if you can’t read just hit the Read Aloud button in an app (patients are not as dump as often perceived). But what we have is a bunch of people trusting an industry full of master’s degree holders who, apparently, don’t think this is important enough to teach someone in treatment.

Our body knows the toxicity level, no matter how much we ignore the signal, or got used to it. The signal the midbrain receives is an alert. If you get too many alerts, cravings for a quick fix for the discomfort (anxiety) ensue.

See how that works?

For more on Cravings hit the link here.