You’ve likely heard of the term “relapse.” Addiction relapse is said to occur when you resume substance use while in the middle of abstaining from it.
It will feel like a failure, but more than criminalizing yourself for falling into its trap, it’s better to focus on understanding your triggers. That way, you can prevent and manage your relapses better. Take this blog as your starting point.
Relapse does not happen immediately upon exposure to a trigger–it’s a process. The three distinctive stages of relapse are inevitable: emotional, mental, and physical.
The first stage is emotional relapse. This is particularly challenging because it's the hardest to recognize. Most of it is unconscious, requiring you to be in tune with your thoughts and feelings. Moreover, it happens before you can even consider the idea of a relapse.
Emotional relapse is all about emotional stress. Your anxiety, restlessness, or defensiveness may unfailingly resurface. You may also find yourself falling back into poor eating or sleeping habits or a lack of motivation for personal hygiene.
Mental relapse is the next stage. It’s more immediate, almost physical, and significantly more disturbing. The best way to describe mental relapse is a mental tug-of-war: you want to temporarily give up withdrawal, but you know you shouldn’t.
It may begin with light contemplation until it develops into cravings, and then a bargain with yourself. You may even find yourself planning how to sneak some substances into your room.
Physical relapse is tangible, conscious, and a concrete way towards relapsing. This is when abstinence begins to fail.
You find yourself sneaking into the cabinets of your recovery center, calling your dealers, driving to the liquor store, or snatching back your pack of cigarettes. We lovingly warn that if you don’t catch yourself before this stage, it becomes difficult to stop the relapse process.
Maintaining sobriety is a real struggle, and no one can deny that certain triggers make fighting against addiction harder than it already is.
Picture this: you’re huddled around a table with your family and friends, happily celebrating the holidays. At the center of that table is your devil’s pawn: a bottle of wine. And then you sense it: a whiff of cigarettes and drugs at the corner of the room.
Being reminded of all the fun you had with these substances and having these available to you may be extremely challenging and may trigger a relapse.
It’s no surprise that by standing near a location where substance users, dealers, and sellers are, you’re risking yourself to relapse. This puts you in a place of familiarity–a type of comfort that you undoubtedly missed after having spent a reasonable period resisting your cravings.
Remember that the main driver of your substance abuse was likely the bursts of dopamine surging through your veins. Stress gives the opposite effect – it almost feels like emotional stress eats your dopamine reserves. And thus, most people look for an outlet.
Once upon a time, your outlet was a choice between drugs, alcohol, or maybe nicotine. You are trying not to be that person anymore, but being exposed to stress in the middle of recovery will likely make the thought tempting.
Everyone knows that being surrounded by negative pressure is highly associated with substance use disorder. When you’re trying to recover, spending time in such a social environment can only be harmful to your recovery.
They’ll tell you that it’s only one little drop, a shallow prick under the skin, a sniff lasting a single second. The worst case is you fall in until you’ve caught yourself a moment too late.
Chances are, you started using substances because of trauma symptoms. After all, addressing your physical problems doesn’t necessarily mean you’re connecting with its root causes. Your trauma won’t stop just because you stopped substance use.
When such traumas are buried deep down the brain, they will inevitably resurface. You’ll feel the symptoms one by one, your triggers will appear at every corner of the room, until the collective becomes too much and causes a relapse.
Boredom sounds like a very mundane problem. But when you’re recovering from addiction, this could trigger falling back into substance use.
This is especially crucial if you’re new to recovery and just recently started a path to sobriety. Your pieces of candy, your previously instant sources of gratification have been confiscated, and you want them back immediately.
There’s a running theory that exercise makes you feel better. That’s because studies cite that exercise and other rewarding things–substances on your end–activate the same parts of the brain, causing a similar feeling of pleasure and satisfaction.
Now, when your physical health is poor, it does the complete opposite. You have rendered yourself out of substances for instant relief, and when you also rid yourself of exercise that can satisfy that craving, you're drawing a path opposite to recovery.
You already know that stress is one of the triggers to relapse. Well, life is hard and likes to get in the way of everything.
So when major life changes occur while you’re in the middle of recovery, there are high chances of you wanting to fall back into something easy, familiar, and comfortable: substance use.
Most triggers stem from a lack of coping skills. Again, you have to address the root causes of your addiction, or else everything's going to resurface. Without the coping skills or prevention plan to keep these on track, you may easily fall into relapse.
With so many triggers that could cause relapse, it becomes crucial for you to understand your own personal triggers. What makes you tick? What makes you crave?
If you think you do better with active monitoring, you could explore strategies like journaling and therapy to recognize your triggers.
When you've got these down, see if you can find a support system that can call your warning signs out. This way, you're reducing the chances of a full-blown relapse.
Relapse, once again, is a normal process–not a single-step event. Learn your triggers, find a way to acknowledge them, accept what they are, and then healthily let them go.
Keep in mind that relapse, as ugly as it may look or sound, is a part of the journey. A relapse won’t erase your progress, but it helps if you can prevent these relapses from happening in the first place. Reach out to Freedom Recovery today if you need any assistance in identifying and coping with yours!
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