Feeling confident in your ability to influence and improve your own life will motivate your meth addiction recovery, and increase your general life satisfaction. Regular physical activity also allows you to experience improvements in strength, speed, endurance, and flexibility that increase your sense of self-mastery. Exercise also releases dopamine, giving you a small, healthy hit of the same pleasure you once got from drug use, and over time, exercise increases the overall production of both dopamine and serotonin, a neurotransmitter that relieves depression. Furthermore, exercise improves circulation, which will speed your healing process. First off, physical activity improves your health, and better physical health results in improved mood. Scientific research has proven that exercise can reduce post meth depression. If you still need additional help, try taking a homeopathic sleep medicine or a very low dose of melatonin, but don’t get in the habit of using it nightly. If you find this too difficult, make sure to sit far back from the television, and switch your phone to a “warm” or “night shift” setting, which will reduce the blue light that keeps your brain on alert.
Try not to eat or smoke right before bed, avoid late-day caffeine, and shut off all screens two hours before bedtime.
If you find yourself becoming agitated when you lie down and close your eyes, keep a notebook by your bed and write down your worries and hopes, telling yourself that sleep is the answer. If you wake up at the same time every day and go to bed as soon as you start feeling tired, you will soon figure out how much sleep you need to be at your best. The best way to ensure you get enough rest is to develop habits that encourage quality sleep. Avoid taking sleeping pills, both prescription and over the counter, as these will only slow down your brain’s healing, while also making you vulnerable to developing a new addiction. Sleep is also the time when your brain does most of its healing, so you need adequate rest to restore your normal brain chemistry and heal post meth depression. Insomnia is common during meth withdrawal, and sleep deprivation can contribute greatly to depression. 10 Ways to Overcome Post Meth Depression 1. Protect your health by recognizing that things will get better, and by taking action to improve depressive symptoms and prevent relapse. You may experience a constant state of low mood and energy for months or years after initiating meth withdrawal. Your fluctuating brain chemistry during this time may make you feel on top of the world one day, and down the next. Post meth depression will last however long it takes your brain to repair the structural changes and chemical imbalances caused by your addiction. PAWS is experienced by 75% of people recovering from stimulant drug addiction, so if you are in meth addiction recovery, odds are, you will be dealing with fluctuating, ongoing meth withdrawal symptoms such as insomnia, depression, anxiety, and impulsivity.
These brain changes can be healed, but it is a slow process that is usually accompanied by ongoing post meth depression, and other symptoms of post-acute withdrawal syndrome, or PAWS. This creates an ongoing low mood that can only be relieved by increasingly larger doses of meth-or long-term abstinence. Too much dopamine creates a euphoric rush, and when repeated, also causes the brain to react by decreasing the amount of dopamine produced and shutting down a number of dopamine receptors.
Meth is a stimulant drug that revs up the central nervous system and releases unnatural amounts of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with motivation, reward, and pleasure. Don’t let post meth depression sabotage your recovery.