Wellness
"Wellness is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." – The World Health Organization. The key phrase in the World Health Organization’s definition of wellness is "well-being, and not just the absence of disease." Wellness is a way of looking at your overall health from a standpoint of achieving growth and buoyancy, as opposed to just avoiding illness.
When we think of health, we usually think of physical health and usually in the sense of avoiding the negative. Wellness focuses on improving from a state of already being in reasonably good health. And it addresses broader areas of life instead of just focusing on physical health.
Here at Alcure we add to the World Health Organization’s definition of “wellness” by including emotional and financial health. We tie emotional health with mental health, and we include financial health since poor financial health is a major cause of stress which, in turn, contributes to alcohol use disorder.
So what does a wellness lifestyle look like for most of us?
A wellness lifestyle is pretty much what your family doctor would tell you to do when it comes to diet and exercise, what a counselor would tell you to do for reducing stress and improving relationships, and what coaches in various other core areas of life would tell you to do to improve in those areas. We’ll break it down more.
When it comes to diet, it’s all about reducing the intake of fats, salts, sugars, and processed foods, and reducing caloric intake in general.
When it comes to exercise, it’s about compensating for the sedentary lifestyle we’ve become accustomed to with some level of regular exercise that gets your heart and lungs going.
When it comes to social and emotional well-being, it’s about developing assertiveness, drawing personal boundaries with others, engaging with genuine people that bring value to your life and avoiding toxic people. It’s about investing in yourself, paying attention only to what matters and not letting things get under your skin, so to speak.
And when it comes to financial health, it’s about avoiding conspicuous consumption and overspending while investing in what earns you money without stressing yourself out.
What does wellness have to do with the Sinclair Method?
The Sinclair Method uses naltrexone as a tool to leverage you out of the physiological aspect of alcohol use disorder. Remarkably, it breaks down your physiological craving or strong desire for alcohol without too much effort until you reach “extinction.”
While the Sinclair Method does some heavy lifting for you, it stops there. And that’s where wellness comes into the picture to complete the Alcure program.
Alcohol use disorder is anchored in a physiological craving or strong desire for alcohol, to the point you’ll feel physically uncomfortable if deprived of alcohol. But it starts with outside factors, the most common being stress.
So, as we reverse alcohol use disorder by starting with an attack on the physiological craving component and optimizing on the Sinclair Method, we need to also introduce strategies for reducing stress in our lives as well, and that’s where wellness comes in.
The Sinclair Method will surface you from what can be some dark depths. But then you’re just there, at the surface. You’re breathing air again but you’re also treading water. It’s a relief, but there’s much more to accomplish.
Think of accomplishing extinction from the Sinclair Method as reaching a gateway that leads to many other areas where you can improve. And by improving on those areas, you replace some of the old patterns of thinking and behavior that resided right alongside your alcohol use disorder with much better approaches and behaviors.
By gradually weaving wellness into the process of extinguishing your alcohol use disorder, you propel yourself an "ocean’s distance away" from it and not only get to the surface, so to speak, but now you can climb and gain altitude. You not only beat a condition that was holding you back, but you start to achieve self-mastery. And things only get better from there.