Five Rules of Drug Relapse Prevention
We’ve put together five simple rules that can make your life in recovery from drug abuse, addiction, or alcoholism much easier to sustain.
When we’ve had enough of our active addiction and are ready to make that change to turn our lives around, we ask for help or some of us may get an intervention or legal issues that made us quit using. Whatever the case may be, the steps toward recovery usually start with discontinuing the use of drugs and going to detox for a bit and continuing to a treatment center, and hopefully complete with a set of coping skills that we can use when life shows up.
In the end, matter how much time we have or how much education on recovery we’ve obtained, relapse will always be feared so follow these five rules of recovery and your life can get easier.
Time to Make a Change for Sobriety
We’ve put together five simple rules that can make your life in recovery easier. These rules can be guidelines to double-check if you are ever in doubt or get scared that you might relapse because believe it or not if you have broken one of these rules there is a chance you are on your path to relapse.
- Change Unhealthy Life Habits
When you are in active addiction you gather many unhealthy habits and negative patterns. When you change the everyday habits that you had in active addiction you start gaining new healthy habits that can become positive patterns.
One way to change your bad habits is to avoid high-risk situations like people, places, and things. This means:
- People – People whom you used with, or people who encouraged you to use are common triggers for relapse.
- Places – Places where you used, or places where you went to get drugs or alcohol are common triggers.
- Things – Things that you used, such as drug or alcohol paraphernalia are powerful triggers.
Until you get a good hold on your addiction and you are no longer triggered it’s best to avoid your drinking friends, your favorite bar, and having alcohol in the house. Avoid people who you used with, driving by your dealer’s neighborhood, and remove all paraphernalia from your house. Of course, you can’t avoid all high-risk situations. But if you’re aware of them, you won’t get caught off guard, and you will have a chance to prepare yourself. If you’re not prepared, small triggers can quickly turn into strong cravings. Then those cravings can turn into a relapse.
- Ask for Help and Develop a Sober Family
Addiction can be lonely. Most people usually end up cutting off everyone and using on their own. When you are trying to recover, doing it alone can be difficult and basically impossible.
Recovery involves learning to reach out and ask for help. Besides family and therapists or counselors you can go to support groups such as AA or NA where everyone has more or less been in your situation and are more than likely willing to give you advice or listen to your troubles.
- Be Honest
While you were in your active addiction you were lying 24/7. From where you were, where you were going, why you needed money and it just became second nature after a while.
Recovery requires complete honesty to yourself and to everyone around you. If you are lying that means you are hiding something and therefore you won’t do well in your recovery.
- Practice Self-Care
In recovery, you can still self-medicate, without drugs, and be selfish and treat yourself so you feel better in tough situations. You just have to find different and healthy ways to do this. Such ways can be taking a walk on the beach, meditation, yoga, going to the gym, reading a book and so many other ways you can relieve your stress or anxiety. Sooner or later these healthy activities become habits and second nature when you start feeling the least bit off.
- Don’t Try To Cut Corners
When you are serious about your recovery there should not be any negotiating or cutting corners. Recovery will be tough and won’t be easy but it will be worth it. Give yourself a chance and you will be grateful that you did after waking up sober and happy day after day.
Start the Path to Recovery Today
Evoke Waltham in Waltham, Massachusetts, understands that there are many ways to treat substance use. Every person’s circumstance is different. Additionally, factors like age, medical history, family history, the quantity of the substance used, and many other factors need to be individually addressed.
To ensure that each of our clients is put in a position to reach their recovery goals, the addiction specialists at Evoke Waltham customize each program to the client’s unique needs. We also offer the full spectrum of drug and alcohol rehab programs so that individuals can get the tools they need for lasting sobriety, no matter the severity of their addiction.
