If you’re in addiction recovery, you’re probably haunted by one question over and over: will I relapse again?
There’s no one-size-fits all solution when it comes to staying clean, but there are some things recovery experts recommend that could go a long way toward helping you avoid further relapse into addictive behavior.
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Know Your Triggers
“Relapse triggers” are any of a number of emotions, behaviors, or situations that are likely to put you at high risk of relapse.
Many triggers are connected to strong physical and emotional sensations. When you’re hungry or tired, you’re more likely to turn to addictive substances or behaviors to soothe those feelings. Healthy self-care (remembering to eat, hydrate, and rest) is key to recovery without relapse.
Although anger, stress, depression, or anxiety can feel overwhelming, negative emotions are a part of everyday life. Learning how to manage them with healthy coping techniques like therapy, mentorship, or the help of a support group (rather than turning to addictive behavior to numb them) can help you avoid relapsing.
This is particularly important if you have a preexisting physical or mental illness. Mental health diagnoses can make it more difficult to identify healthy coping mechanisms without help from a trained professional. But working with a mentor or therapist equips you with a plan unique to your needs, your goals, and your strengths.
Be Mindful of Places and People
As you grow in your recovery, more positive emotions will surface. You may even feel ready for life to “get back to normal”. But be very careful when it comes to choosing where and with whom you spend your time.
Experts recommend avoiding the people with whom you engaged in addictive behavior in the past. If you need help building new relationships, find a local support group or recovery meeting.
Spend time in places where there is little-to-no temptation to engage in your addictive behavior. For example, if you have an alcohol addiction, avoid bars and nightclubs. Try your favorite park, cafe, or museum instead.
It’s a good idea to avoid romantic or sexual relationships within the first year of your recovery. Sudden, heightened emotions – even positive ones – can trigger a relapse.
If you’re in a long-term relationship before beginning your recovery, make sure your partner is also willing to stay clean and sober. Whether or not they have an addiction, encourage them to come to recovery meetings with you. Make sure you communicate regularly about the support you need from them, and be sure to show appreciation for their support
It’s important to surround yourself with people who will promote, encourage, and prolong your recovery. Because they help you avoid social isolation, healthy, loving friendships and family relationships make relapse less likely.
Something to Celebrate
When you’re in recovery, every day clean and sober is a victory. But how do you celebrate without putting your sobriety in danger?
Be encouraged by the words of the Apostle Paul:
“Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.” — Romans 12:3, NIV
Do your best to temper overconfidence with a realistic, healthy view of your struggles and limitations. This will help you be more mindful of your relapse triggers, more likely to share them with people you trust, and more likely to avoid them in the future.
While you certainly shouldn’t despair if you stumble during your recovery, it’s important to strike a balance. Ask for help when you’re struggling, rejoice when you succeed. Strengthening your faith and recommitting to prayer helps you avoid unhealthy extremes, like thinking you’re invincible during your recovery or reminiscing about “the good old days” in a way that minimizes the pain of your addiction. This sober mindset means you run less risk of hurting yourself or people you love further by relapsing into addictive behavior.
Getting support, avoiding isolation, and facing your feelings in a healthy way will empower you to better avoid relapse as you take charge of your recovery journey.
Celebrate your victories, no matter how small, with gratitude and humility. Give thanks in prayer each day. Let the people who love you know how important they are to your healing and wholeness. Pour your favorite tea, go for an afternoon walk, or sit down with your favorite movie. There are plenty of ways to celebrate while keeping yourself sober and safe.
Have a Plan
Knowing what triggers your addictive behavior can certainly help you avoid a relapse, but that’s not enough. you need a plan that includes:
- How you will replace unhealthy or addictive behaviors with healthy ones
- New places to go (and people to spend time with) that don’t tempt you toward addictive behavior
- How to deal with negative emotions or celebrate a victory without using or otherwise engaging in addictive behavior
Get Support
Recovery from addiction is never impossible, but getting and staying clean is a lot more attainable with the right support.
In fact, addiction research shows that treatment programs can help prevent relapses and decrease relapse rates, particularly if the entire treatment program is completed.
Whether it’s getting help through TheHopeLine, your faith community, a recovery meeting, or a close friend or family member, you can free yourself from past addiction and avoid future relapses.
We support people at every stage of addiction recovery. We can help you heal from addiction — starting now.
For more information on breaking addictions, download our free Understanding Substance Abuse eBook.
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When she arrives almost 45 minutes late, you’re confident. You have the right words and that old shyness has melted into a hint of mystery.
Work was similar. One Wednesday evening, happy hour turned half my office into smashed zombies who danced on tables, ate Burger King at 1am, and slept under our desks so we could be on time for work in the morning. We told that story for years at happy hour.
What I discovered was that sober life was fun. I tried new things instead of planning a meetup at the bar. I went skeet shooting. Once, I traveled to eat famous Texas barbecue. I started reading and writing more. I still went to the bar with friends, but would order a soda water and lime and drive people home. I had just as much fun as compared to the times I was drinking. After a long period away from alcohol, I learned how to have a drink and even got into the craft brewing scene. I learned to respect alcohol and enforced healthy boundaries around it. The thought of waking up on the weekends with Metallica playing the loudest show ever in my head had lost its appeal.
I Only Ever Loved One Woman
that moment. In a rage of 
They don’t ask for help but I can see when someone is feeling down and out and like there is no way out because I myself suffer from the same condition. I know for a fact that after tonight, you won’t wake up thinking the same negative things. Yes, they will still roam around in your mind but then when they do, just remember the small things in life, they are the biggest blessing you will receive. For me, it is seeing those lost and broken souls that are now healed by a simple act of caring and kindness and encouraging words. When someone needs someone to believe in them and listen to them with out judging and I do that and they smile.
These and other statements prove the addict has not yet come out of denial and is not yet ready to start the long journey to freedom. Allie put it really well: You must admit you have an addiction and then have the will to change it. You must understand that it will not be easy.(Allie) When somebody who’s addicted says, “I can’t go on like this; I will do whatever it takes to be set free,” then you know there is hope for that person.
The most well-known and used program that helps people overcome addictions is the 12 Step Program. Five of the twelve steps deal directly with one’s relationship with God. Only God can empower an addict to make the changes necessary for freedom. I received a very moving story from a guy named Dan. Once you have read his story, you will see how important a relationship with God can be:
When you think of ways to help in your fight against 
Sufficient sleep is especially crucial for anyone wanting to find freedom from addiction. Not only does the brain recharge and repair during sleep, there are rippling effects that impact the whole body. Going without sleep has been connected to lower immune function, serious disease and weight gain – as well as impaired ability to reason and think clearly.
Alright, one more example. While recharging your body through rest and good fuel is important, if you really want to supercharge it, then try something really radical: move around more!
I’m afraid that many times the warning messages to avoid certain addictive behaviors, go in one ear and out the other. The pitch is almost unbelievable, and it gets tuned out. But I have to tell you, the 
Addictions, at least at the beginning, make you feel great. I’ve heard people say, no one ever forgets their very first buzz…the magic of their addiction. Drugs (or addictive behaviors) work their charm by traveling to the brain’s reward system and telling it to release mega amounts of chemicals like dopamine (high rush), serotonin (euphoric calm), or norepinephrine (adrenaline thrill). So when these chemicals flood our brain, most people feel very, very good. In fact, they can make you feel so good that the feeling is beyond explanation. You’ve tried to explain it to me:
There’s tremendous pressure in our society to feel confident and have the capacity to accomplish a lot in a short time. The pressures of life can slow us down, rather than speed us up, making us feel weak and ineffective. But with some addictive behaviors, there is this incredible feeling of being invincible.
Addictions are expensive. Stealing becomes necessary to fund the addiction. As they say in Narcotics Anonymous, “Are you tired of the high price of low living?” When the craving for the addiction hits them, they often act in an irrational, cruel, and unbelievable way in order to dig up the money.
When you are living in this fantasy world, you soon become unaware of what’s happening in the real world around you. You become blind to reality, failing to see the hurt in the eyes of those who love you the most. A user doesn’t grasp what the addiction is doing to their loved ones, and how it is destroying their relationships. After all, a user is a user. They end up using whoever is near them so they can keep feeding the addiction, and the addiction is always very hungry. The problem with users is they soon forget how to love because they become so self-absorbed and selfish.
Unfortunately, while you think you are finding freedom and vacation from the struggles of life, what you are really doing is turning into a slave to your addiction. No one ever goes into an addiction telling themselves, “My life is going to be totally taken over by this cruel thing.”
That’s a lot of money. Think of all the good things that could happen if our society had 500 billion dollars to invest in schools, health care, and helping the poor. But it’s blown every year on addictions. That’s bad enough, but what hurts more is what it does to you and me. When I talk to teenagers and young adults on my radio show, Dawson McAllister Live, I hear so many sad stories from people whose lives are being ruined by addictions. After all, 60%-70% of Americans have some kind of addiction. Why do so many people fall victim to an addiction? I’ve thought about and researched addictions for quite some time, and I believe there are four main reasons for addictions.
When we get involved in addictions, we are attempting to trade a high to replace a low. The high comes from chemicals or some repetitive behavior that gives us pleasure, and the low comes from the emotional and spiritual pain in our lives. Some people call this spiritual and emotional pain a hole in our soul. Those headed for a cruel addiction ask themselves a good question: “Why not fill the hole in my soul with a high? That will surely do the trick. What could be wrong with that?”
I have known people who have gone on drug and alcohol induced binges for months and months trying to forget the conflicts and hurts they face everyday. They barely function.
Put another way, only a deep, meaningful relationship with God can truly set us free. That’s why just about every recovery group for an addiction uses the same proven 12 step program and only adapts it slightly for each addiction. Six of the twelve steps talk directly about God. Rather than working on a deeper relationship with God, we make the addiction our god. God created you and me to know and love Him. All addictions make a lousy god. Is it any wonder then most people who have an addiction are eventually miserable? Here the good news: the same God who never wanted you addicted to begin with will give you the strength to recover. It’s a matter of trusting Him to heal you and committing your life to letting God help you turn your entire life around.
One idea in staying clean from addiction is to go back to the basics. It’s not easy breaking addictions. It’s not easy, but it can be done. On my radio show, Dawson McAllister Live, I spoke with a young mother in her early 20s. She was a heroin addict.
I was reading the Bible the other day and came across a really cool verse. It says, Enemy, don’t laugh at me. I have fallen, but I will get up again. I sit in the shadow of trouble now, but the Lord will be a light for me.(Micah 7:8) Your addiction is your enemy, just waiting for you to fall so it can laugh at you.
I have been thinking about addictions a lot lately. It all started when I began receiving so many calls on my show, Dawson McAllister Live. It seemed like 60-70% of all the calls coming in dealt with some kind of an addiction. Not only did I hear about personal addictions, but from people who knew the addict and were paying a very dear price because of it.
e learned addictions don’t go away on their own. It’s not like you grow out of them. It’s far more serious than that. Through it all, I’ve come to hate addictions. I’ve committed to learn as much as I can about them and to help as many people as possible recover from the addictive grip that is ruining their lives. I am writing a series of blogs on addiction. You will read my personal opinions on this very important subject. It may just change your life. It is my prayer you will never become addicted, and if you should, you will be able to find help and be set free from its horrible grip. 
[Drugs or certain behaviors] affect the mind, get into the blood, create a feeling or better an illusion that everything is perfect. [It later makes] the person feel moody, depressed, and angry. All that person can think about is the next fix, the next drink just so they don’t have to feel this way again. None of these addictions are a way to live; they are a way to die. Eric 
