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Beach House Rehab Center » Blog » Addiction Triggers: How to Prevent a Relapse
Long-term recovery from a substance use disorder requires strategies for preventing relapse that help you cope with various addiction triggers. These cues to drink or use drugs can be especially challenging to navigate during early recovery. This article will educate readers on common addiction triggers and how to avoid them, as part of a larger discussion of relapse and effective relapse prevention.
According to its more clinical definition as articulated in at least one study, relapse is “a setback that occurs during the behavior change process, such that progress toward the initiation or maintenance of a behavior change goal (e.g. abstinence from drug use) is interrupted by a reversion to the target behavior.” Put more simply, relapse is a return to drug or alcohol abuse.
This return to drugs or alcohol is clinically understood as a “gradual process with distinct stages,” according to another study published in the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. (In fact, each stage of recovery has its own risks of relapse, the same study explained.) The goal of treatment is therefore to help individuals recognize the early stages of relapse, when their chances of successful intervention are greatest. “Relapse prevention” is the name given to this objective.
Relapse prevention is also a psychosocial model for clinical intervention that, thanks to its evidenced recovery outcomes, is now an integrated component of most drug and alcohol treatment programs. Specific interventions to prevent relapse can include:
During early recovery, various people, places, feelings and things can trigger the compulsion to use. And there are countless potential triggers, according to Dr. John Craven, a medical doctor, in a presentation on how to prepare for relapse triggers. Craven qualified this assertion by stating that most individuals with a substance abuse problem have one or two situations or people who are most dangerous to their recovery. In other words, effective relapse prevention identifies and targets these biggest personal triggers.
Common relapse triggers appearing on Craven’s list can include the following (which will vary from one person to another, depending on their addiction history):
An article in Addiction Professional listed still other triggers to watch for, based on the clinical observations of an addiction therapist, Brian Duffy. Duffy laid out the top six triggers he has encountered in his practice. They are:
Identifying these common triggers is the first necessary step in preventing a return to drugs or alcohol. What follow are four other key steps for managing relapse triggers (and this article in Psych Central expands on them):
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