Relapse Prevention & The 12 Steps: What You Need to Know
By consistently working on your coping skills and adapting them to your evolving needs, you can enhance your resilience and ability to maintain sobriety in the face of adversity. Exercise is an excellent self-care practice that can help improve mood, reduce stress, and promote overall well-being. Regular physical activity can also help prevent relapse by providing a positive outlet for stress and negative emotions. Implementing physical exercise into your daily routine doesn’t have to be complicated; even simple activities like walking, swimming, or yoga can https://ecosoberhouse.com/ provide significant benefits.
Ongoing Therapy and Self-Monitoring
Most alcohol and drug treatment centers educate clients on relapse prevention techniques and help clients learn them in order to maintain recovery and achieve short- and long-term goals. There are a vast array of relapse prevention tools one can implement into their daily routine to help prevent relapse. There is a common misconception that relapse prevention skills should only be used when someone is having a desire to use.
The Stages of Relapse
- Now is the time to put our plan into action or we increase the risk of a lapse.
- Relapse prevention planning aims to recognize and address these signals before they escalate to the physical stage.
- A relapse prevention plan works best when you do it under a therapist or counselor’s supervision.
Someone who has grown dependent on a substance may not feel “normal” without it. Therefore, a return to drug or alcohol use may seem like a good way to get back to feeling OK, curbing withdrawal symptoms, and combating strong cravings. There are effective relapse prevention strategies that can help to turn you back on the path to recovery. It’s important to cooperate with doctors and take urine drug tests as recommended.
Relapse Prevention Plan: Techniques to Help You Stay on Track
Utilizing your support network can be an important part of your prevention plan. You might want to write a list of friends or family members you can call when you are experiencing cravings or challenging situations. It is important that these people understand your recovery process and are not going to create triggers or temptations for you. Sometimes, specific people may act as triggers, such as friends that you used to drink or use drugs with. It may be a necessary part of your prevention plan and recovery process to identify and remove these people from your social circle, to avoid facing temptations. The following 10 strategies can help you stay on track and avoid relapse, from recognizing and addressing triggers to staying motivated and persistent.
Create an Action Plan
For each goal you achieve, give yourself a reward as motivation to keep moving forward. For instance, book yourself a relaxing massage or buy yourself something you’ve had your eye on. Seeking help for addiction may feel daunting or even scary, but several organizations can provide support. About half of people recovering from an SUD eventually return to using within 12 weeks of completing intensive inpatient programs that may last 4–12 weeks or more. The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) defines relapse as the recurrence of behavioral or other substantive indicators of active disease after a period of remission. John C. Umhau, MD, MPH, CPE is board-certified in addiction medicine and preventative medicine.
Since then, he’s worked in multiple settings that provide diagnosis, assessment, and counseling for individuals struggling with what is relapse, and give 3 skills for preventing it from happening. both addiction and co-occurring mental health diagnoses. He is passionate about the work he does, and has worked towards implementing what he’s learned, to his own life for his own continued personal growth. Joseph is always looking for opportunities to learn more and grow his skillset with the central goal of improving the lives of those around him. Remember, if you are trying to quit, you should plan for and try to avoid relapse. But if you do relapse, you should accept that it is a normal part of quitting and resolve to learn from the experience.
