Relapse Prevention

It’s a common for addicts to want to put their past behind them by forgetting they even had an addiction. They regret the life they lost due to their addiction and don’t want to waste any more time on their recovery. They tend to skip meetings, focus less on self-care and take up more responsibilities. They feel that they are fully recovered and possess the ability to avoid a relapse. However, relapse is common and happens to a lot of people recovering from an addiction. However, there are rules in recovery that can be followed to prevent a relapse:

Making Significant Changes

The most important part of recovery is that it creates a new life where it is easier to not abuse alcohol or drugs. But recovery requires constant effort and if an addict doesn’t change, the factors that contributed to the addiction will result in them suffering a relapse. But often, clients do not want to change – they want to go back to their old life without the addiction. But even though change is hard and overwhelming, in case of addiction it is necessary and forces an addict to revaluate their lives and make significant changes. But change does not mean that someone in recovery needs to change everything in their lives. There’s only a portion of their lives that is associated with their addiction that needs to be changes or reformed. There are three significant types of changes namely avoiding negative thoughts, incorporating the rules of recovery and avoiding the people and places associated with their addiction. Developing a healthy fear of people, places and situations associated with their addiction has also shown to be effective in recovery.

Complete Honesty

Being addicted means living a life of secrecy that entails lying about abusing alcohol or drugs and not acknowledging the consequences of their addiction. Over time, they get start lying to themselves and when they cannot be honest it indicates an emotional relapse. Being truthful and admitting mistakes is a crucial part of recovery. During recovery, it helps to a have a circle of your close friends, relatives, doctors, counsellors or sponsors that you can be completely truthful with. The circle can be expanded to include more people close to you or you are comfortable with over time. As it pertains to past lies, it’s always better to be honest even it maybe hurtful to you or your close ones.

Asking for help

For most people suffering from addiction, it’s usually a very uphill task to ask for help. Until the very end they think they are in control of their addiction and do not acknowledge their issues. Getting professional help early-on is usually a good idea to successfully overcoming addiction. In addition, joining a self-help group such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous promote healthy recovery. Attending self-help groups regularly can help combat feelings of loneliness, seeing addiction through the lens of other people, understanding how others.

Practicing Self Care

Most addicts abuse drugs or alcohol for a wide variety of reasons such as to relax, escape or reward themselves. And since they are the “primary benefactors” to them abusing, addiction treatment involves helping them find healthy alternatives. Self-care is a crucial but overlooked part of addiction treatment. Recovering addicts usually tend to be hard on themselves, and often feel that they do not deserve to be treated well because of mistakes that they made in their past. Mind body relaxation has shown to be effective at reducing the effects of drugs and alcohol and effective at preventing a relapse. It helps reduce stress and tension by letting go of negative thoughts.

Sticking to the rules

The rules of recovery are what they are and what they aren’t is negotiable. The rules of recovery are to be followed as a whole and certain parts can be ignored or done away with. It is not uncommon for recovering addicts to look for loopholes in the recovery process. They do not fully acknowledge the extent of their addiction and are likely to relapse at milestones such as the recovery anniversaries. But it is important to understand that recovery works when it is whole rather than as parts.