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Relapse. A word any recovering addict wakes up and goes to sleep with. It’s always there, that feeling, that nagging thought. There is no escaping it, there is only fortifying against it and remaining strong against its onslaught of waves. It’s not so difficult to stay strong and focused in our daily lives, but there will come a time when a choice or a decision has to be made. A decision that could lead you to make a mistake and fall in the relapse trap. Let’s continue our overview of some of the most popular and prominent relapse triggers and how to avoid them.

Unrealistic goals

No one is perfect, least of all addicts. Addicts in recovery are no different, we are all people, after all, not machines. To make mistakes is in the nature of humanity. A string of mistakes have been made that got us in this situation in the first place, right? There is no need to deny it or run away from it. You have made mistakes before and there is plenty more where those came from, so don’t beat yourself up when you feel anxious, angry, frustrated or tempted. It is normal. Try to stay true to your recovery plan and if anything goes off-the-rails, don’t sit on the tracks with your head in your hands. Shake it off and focus your attention towards getting back on track.

Dysfunctional family

We don’t choose our family, we have what we have and must make do. One can not simply swap a sibling or two, change your parents or even more distant family like cousins and aunts or uncles. That said, if your family is highly dysfunctional and prone to arguments, drama and makes you anxious, there is nothing that will force you to keep their company and join their angst-riddled merry-go-round of bickering and blaming. No family is perfect, just like no human being is perfect, we already established that. Families consist of people, therefore to presume that a group of imperfect people could form a perfect family is just an illusion. There is imperfect and then there is toxic. Extremely toxic family relationships could have been the very reason you made those bad decisions that landed you in addiction. In these cases, it is more important than ever to distance yourself from the negativity that these people bring to your life. It is not worth slipping back into the abyss just to please your family. A family that cares for each other, at least on some level, will understand and support that decision.

Overconfidence

There is a reason why you got addicted. A very good reason, one way or another. What that reason may be, is largely dependent on each individual and the immediate world around them. The majority of people, however, start using because they are confident, that they will not get addicted. There is a fine line between confidence and overconfidence. You made it through your 30 days of inpatient rehab, sat through the support group talks and checked in for a few weeks already. Surely that’s enough, right? Wrong! It doesn’t matter whether you are recovering from addiction for 5 weeks, 5 months or 5 years. As soon as you feel that your addiction was a non-issue and is a thing of the past, you have sabotaged your recovery and a relapse is more than likely to happen as soon as you have a really bad day. We all get bad days from time to time, it’s important to not let them control us and our cravings. Most recovering addicts have slipped in relapse without even realizing it, just because they underestimate the long lasting mental and psychological impact it leaves on people.

Keep these thoughts with you as a warning and reminder how easy it is to slip up. Better yet, personalize possible relapse triggers and write them down somewhere. There are recovering addicts that write down every single situation that led them to thoughts of relapsing. They write it down on a small card and keep them in a wallet, close at hand for when you need reminding of the previous times you almost gave up but found the courage and strength to stay true to yourself and keep resisting the urges. Not only will this remind you, that you are not the only person going through these very prominent triggers, but also to remind you of that corner in your mind that found strength the last time you had to make a hard decision.

 

You successfully came to a conclusion, that your addiction is no longer going to control your life. You did your research, you did your detox, you even went through an inpatient program in a professional rehabilitation center. You are now an addict in recovery. Consciously knowing all the terrible things drugs did to you, your body, mental state and social life make you feel like you would never, ever go back there. Not while you had something to say about it. And then it comes – a craving, a passing thought, an itch at the back of your skull that you can’t quite scratch. You break, you succumb to the inner voice that reminds you – you’ve done it before, you can get clean again, it’s just one bump after all. And when you have relapsed, back in the ditch with a needle in your arm, provided you are conscious at all, you begin to wonder, what was the mistake that allowed you to relapse. Let’s have a look at some of the most popular mistakes that have been crucial to countless relapses and failed recoveries.

Leaving support behind

It doesn’t matter what it is, a tight-knit group of supportive friends, a 12 step program group or a church group – stick with them. They were there to support you in your first steps and will be there for you long after you have sobered up. There will come a point when a recovering addict will consider himself cured and treated. At that point, these meetings may seem unnecessary, but in truth, they are what got you to the self-assured and confident sober situation you are in right now. Without them, you would never have made it this far. While being confident and proactive in life is nothing but commendable, it’s important not to get overconfident and slip up because you felt that you had outgrown the very support that pushed you through the clouds in the first place.

Firing your counselor

For very similar reasons as the above point, don’t charge into quitting your relationship with your counselor. It is something that should be recommended by him, rather than your own feelings. There will come a time when that will happen, but there is a reason why your own decision-making skills can be put under scrutiny and deemed not to be in your own best interests. Stay safe, stay connected and make that hurdle when both you and your counselor thinks it’s time to move on.

Returning to unwelcome company

Homo Sapiens is a very social creature. An addict is just as human as anyone else and as such usually seek out connections and like-minded individuals to spend time with, socialize and make connections that allow them to score drugs. While being addicted, you probably spent a long time with some of these people, called them friends. They are no longer your friends, or at the very least, they should not be, in order to achieve true recovery. Sounds harsh, but when it’s your literal life on the line, some hard choices have to be made. These people enabled your use, supplied it even, in some cases. Being surrounded by addicts tripping on a drug you once used together is no place to be for a recovering addict. Avoid this situation at all costs.

Falling for a quick relief

Being addicted does a number of things to your psyche and memories. Any recovering addict will tell you – there comes a day when you can literally taste the drug on the tip of your tongue, feel its after-effects or even smell them. You could be on the toilet, working or just watching TV.It can strike at any moment. At that point, the urge and the suppressed need to use comes rushing back to the surface like a shaken soda bottle being opened. It is overwhelming and hard to resist, which makes it all the more important to have a distraction from it as soon as it happens. Call a friend, go for a walk, start a new project at work or engage your mind in other ways. It is all in your mind, after all, nothing more.

 

These are but a few of the most popular causes and triggers for relapse. Getting to recovery is hard, it is exhausting and mentally challenging, but during the rehabilitation phase, you have support and help from professionals and other recovering addicts. It allows you to focus on your goal and achieve it with relative ease – there are always people around you that will help. When you are no longer an in-patient and return to normal life as a recovering addict, there is no more hand-holding and there will be hard choices to make when there will be no one around you. It’s in these moments we must remind ourselves what we went through and that we have help just a call away. We will continue talking about the pitfalls any recovering addict should avoid, in our next article.

You pass so many people on the streets each day, without realizing how many of them are struggling with hardships and what they have going on in their lives. Someone is overjoyed because he just found out his wife is expecting a baby. Someone is miserable because their ice-cream fell on the pavement. Some have urgent cravings of injecting heroin in their veins just so the cold-sweats and cramping would stop. None of these things may be immediately apparent, but they are there.

Every addict has to go through a lot of hoops on their way to sobriety. They struggle with social stigmas, personal demons and general ignorance from people who think addiction is just a weak personality trait. Let’s have a look, at some hard truths and open pleas of understanding from recovering addicts.

Moving on

When a person becomes addicted, it can be for many reasons or even combination of circumstances. One thing we know for a fact is that human beings are social creatures. We seek acceptance and like-minded individuals to spend our time with. Addicts are no different, human after all, they seek other addicts who will not judge their use and will understand the hardships they go through. When it’s time to step off the train of self-destruction, distancing himself from people that influence, remind or even impose drug use is one of the first steps towards recovery.

It’s a slippery slope

Every recovered addict has gone through or seriously considered relapsing. The path to sobriety is slick and treacherous. Just because a person is physically sober, does not magically remove all the triggers and reasons that moved him to use in the first place. Mental addiction is much harder to treat than physical addiction. Slipping back into the comforts of drugs and alcohol happens, there is no way around it. Regardless of how many months or even years have passed, that next hit and the feeling of relief it used to bring is forever at the back of their minds.

Short term goals – long term success

It is important that an addict has goals and a track record of their previous achievements. Short term goals bring gratification and sense of accomplishment once achieved. This is necessary through the depressing and cold slog through the recovery process. Keeping track of your merits and achieved goals is just as important to have a new one just around the corner. Be it sobriety of 10 minutes, 10 days or 10 months, each minute counts and is a success on its own.

Support

Addiction is hard enough to kick, even harder if there is no one supporting you. Addicts on their path to sobriety need constant emotional and physical support. Become their confidant, listen and offer advice or insight when necessary. Be their work-out partner, give them a ride to the support group meetings, become their sponsor. As was mentioned earlier, humans are social creatures, therefore overcoming hardships come a lot easier in a group and with the support of family and friends.

Statistical demoralization

Statistics are just numbers, cold facts, rarely disputed or argued with. Lifeless and emotionless tally of one thing or another. Comes as no surprise that no person likes to be called a statistic. We are all part of some kind of statistic, be it voter consensus or your local library attendance rate. Somehow there still exists a stigma of being a part of addiction statistic. Being called a statistic is implying that whatever hardship an addict is going through, it’s not that important since there are thousands upon thousands going through the same issues. Just because something is widespread and well-known does not make it any less hard to beat or deems any less support from the society. Stop labeling addicts, they are real people.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Addicts are more often than not depressed and miserable beings. Cold and withdrawn, in emotional or physical pain, recoiling at every offer to help them. It’s easy to give up and abandon all your support for them, thinking that they just don’t appreciate it or even worse – they are a lost cause and nothing will bring that original personality back. It could not be further from the truth. Any person can turn their lives around in a very short time and with the right support, therapy and mindset, anything is possible. Addicts are not hopeless, they have dreams and aspirations that they think of every day. An addiction is not an immediate death of a person, they are still there, the same person you befriended or fell in love with so many years ago, they just need help clawing their way back up to the surface.

 

Be engaged in your recovering friends and family members lives. Be their trusted support and pillar, their walking stick they can lean on when the going gets tough. Most important of all, don’t presume – communicate and make your decisions educated.

When a friend or a friend is in need, for most people, first course of action is to help and support them. It’s an unwritten law – friends and family stand by each other through thick and thin. Finding out that a friend or a loved one is suffering from addiction is as thin as it gets.

A well-known fact is that addiction is a tough guest to deal with. No one disputes it, even if they themselves have never had the misfortune to be addicted themselves or even been in contact with someone who has. We all know its hard, it’s taxing, its draining and very depressing. So we try to help. We do everything, to the best of our abilities to help the addict deal with his daily struggles fighting an addiction. Yet we should weigh both positives and negatives when it comes to helping someone with an addiction. Too many people enable addicts to continue their unhealthy fixation on their drug of choice, sometimes perpetuating the addiction itself. They mean the best for the addict, always with an intent to help, but there are a few things that people help addicts with, that actually contribute to the addiction and are extremely detrimental to a full recovery.

Elephant in the room

Often people will try to avoid topics that mention or contribute to addiction or drug use when an addict is present. Even if the addict is at risk at losing his cool and becoming angry during a conversation about addiction, simply ignoring the fact is not going to make it go away. Walking on eggshells when an addict is around will just make him feel like he has some contagious disease and often results in self-pity and continued drug use.

Claiming addiction is just a phase

That is the general approach to a great many parents when they find out their teenage son or daughter is using and abusing drugs. An addiction is not something a person can “grow out of” or “get over”. Addiction does not simply go away after a certain milestone is reached, don’t fool yourselves.

Covering for the addict

A severely hung-over addict that is going through withdrawal symptoms may not be able to go to work or school, so the first thing most loved ones do is cover for them. Calling in work or school to cover for them may save them from flunking their subject or getting fired in the short run, but it is very counter-productive for the addict. Facing hard truths and realities is a lesson that is much more important at that point in time than a satisfactory grade at school or a happy boss.

Financing their lifestyle

When an addict approaches their friends or family for a hand-out or a loan, odds are that money will never go towards groceries, education, gas or whatever else reason was cited during their plea. It goes straight to their dealer, who is more than happy to take that money from you. Addicts will do most anything to chase their next high. Bad, immoral and illegal things. Lying about where that money will go is definitely on the tame side of this spectrum.

Catering for their mess

Dirty laundry, broken needles and empty dime bags in every corner. A typical scene for an addict, one that is hard to stomach for moms, dads and friends everywhere. Cleaning an addicts mess may help him cheer up, but it does nothing to further their path to sobriety. An addict has an addictive personality, so when all their mess is cleaned up for them, after a while it becomes a norm and they begin to rely on that. The addict needs to face the consequences of their addiction.

Tough love

Being a close friend to an addict or even a family member, it is important to remember that addict became an addict because he had little self-control and became dependent on one substance or another. Likewise, good deeds and a helping hand can enable the addict to stay in the ditch, instead of pulling him out. Appealing to a basic human decency does not work when it comes to addiction, and that should not be held against the addict either. The craving and voices that go through an addicts head is beyond that, it transcends social norms and established truths. When an addict needs, he needs, no matter what. A bit of tough love can go a long way.

An addict will gamble, sell and trade everything they have to get their next hit – their dignity, their wealth, their community, their job, their friends and anything in between. It’s a deep fall from being sober to a full blown addiction. It happens very quickly, but along the way it’s easy to lose everything, most of all – perspective. Most addicts will tell you, it’s not the lost cars or houses that keep them up at night. It’s the lost opportunities, friendships, relationships. The hardest part of any addicts recovery is stepping up and admitting their flaws and mistakes to the people they care for the most. A big majority of addicts began using just to avoid these kind of confrontations and emotional pain in the first place. To become a functional member of our society an addict must learn ways to communicate with their peers and loved ones alike.

Communication skills

Effective recovery process can go only so far with physical and mental self-conditioning. An addict will almost never reach sobriety again without support and care from people around them. It doesn’t even have to be friends or loved ones, not at first anyway, that part comes later. First things first, as they say, so learning how to convey and communicate a thought, an emotion or a feeling is very important.

Learn to listen

An addict has probably heard extremely “useful tips” from people around them for years. Do this, do that. Just stop. Just don’t. Nothing annoys and pushes away a highly depressed addict more than some happy-go-lucky chump to tell them “Just stop using and cheer up!”. Learning to phase out this “white noise” is the very first thing they learn to do, since according to an addict, he is not addicted so all these nonsense recommendations are unwarranted and unnecessary. Until they are.Being able to step back and actually listen to what a person has to say can be very difficult for an addict. Years of practice ignoring people can be a hard habit to break.

Take yourself out of the equation

Chasing the high can take a lot of things out of perspective. When the craving sets in and the addict begins to come down, nothing but the hunt remains. They need it, and they need it now. Their entire focus turns to themselves and their personal needs and gains. Addicts are selfish beings, the very nature of addiction ensures that. For an addict, the world revolves around them and their next hit. This is not true, however, the world does not care for an addicts struggle and continues spinning regardless. It can be very daunting and troubling experience to re-learn the basics of living in a community, learning how to be a part of something more than a sum of its components. Empathy and care for other people and their opinions are very necessary skills to learn when returning to the sober world.

Meet them halfway

Working in a team, rather than a single unit. That is something new to most addicts. Being able to meet people half-way and compromise on difficult topics is essential for successful re-integration into society and building normal relationships. Most addicts have understood that not everything goes the way they want a long time ago. Being beaten into the mud by their addiction, again and again, has a very humbling effect, so when an addict doesn’t particularly care about feelings and needs of people around them it’s not done out of malice or deliberate hate. They are just used to the idea that no one gets what they want, life is unfair and there is nothing that can be done about it. Teaching an addict that by simple acts of kindness and self-sacrifice a group of people can prosper and flourish much faster than a lone-wolf approach to life.

Restore your core values

Addicts rarely have the luxuries of silk sheets and gourmet chefs cooking for them. They lack most of basic needs that we consider necessities. A shelter and a hot meal often take a back-seat to an opportunity to get high. Addicts will do a long list of self-compromising and downright degrading things just to get their drug of choice, a good meal or a comfortable nights sleep. Prostitution, lying, stealing and cheating to name a few. A recovering addict needs to re-establish boundaries that will never be crossed again. A pillar of core beliefs that are honorable and just, standing for something that provides character integrity is an important step to recovery and rebuilding your relationships with friends and loved ones.

Communicating with your addiction

These skills will be a cornerstone in a recovering addicts life to come. They will ensure that rehabilitation process is carried out without blockers, smooth and as quickly and efficiently as possible. The very same communication skills will also allow them to be honest with themselves and people around them. These skills will allow them to say no to drugs, alcohol, and other addictive behaviors.

Being an individual is important. Being an individual that is able to co-exist and cooperate with other individuals is paramount. To break out of this self-imposed prison, communication is key.