Drug Addiction Relapse Prevention and Exercise
The past few weeks, I’ve been reading and researching and thinking quite a bit about those few days before you enter drug rehab and the weeks following your return home. What do you do during those days? You’ve likely lost your job, you’ve alienated positive friendships, and all you want is not to get drunk or high and yet it’s all you can think about. How do you stop yourself from relapsing?
During my research on relapse prevention, I find some research that says exercise may help prevent substance abuse. Well, of course it does! We knew that, right? But it’s always nice to be validated by the scientific community.
The United States government is pushing for even more research in this area, something that explores the effects of “regular” activity as opposed to the “runner’s high” achieved after a really intense workout. In other words, can normal people like us who aren’t athletes benefit from exercise in the area of drug and alcohol use prevention?
Drug Addiction Rewards and Exercise Rewards
It’s all about the reward system in the brain. After prolonged periods of drug and alcohol use, this is one part of the brain that suffers long-term, if not permanent damage. It’s harder to feel happy or even normal without drugs once you’ve grown dependent on getting high. This means that events that “normal” people may be able to take in stride seem more like a mountain than a molehill to those with opiate addiction issues. The stress of the incident can make an addict want to use, to manually trigger the reward system in the brain to numb the drama. Herein enters exercise as a possible solution.
Clues That Exercise May Fight Drug Addiction Relapse
Here’s what some researchers have found to support the idea that exercise can be an important part of a relapse prevention program:
- Rats were less likely to ingest amphetamines if their cages had running wheels, suggesting exercise stimulated a reward pathway in the brain to leave them less vulnerable to the drug’s rush.
- In people, exercise acts as a mild antidepressant and relieves stress. Depression, anxiety and stress increase risk of alcoholism, smoking or drug abuse.
- Volkow is intrigued that attention deficit disorder and obesity both involve problems with the brain chemical dopamine, one system that drugs hijack to create addiction.
- Baby monkeys who do not play enough in childhood have problems controlling aggression when they’re older. The most aggressive tend to have defects involving the feel-good brain chemical serotonin — and binge-drink when researchers offer them alcohol.
- Back to rats, physical activity increases production of growth factors and stem cells in key brain regions important for learning and mood; increases formation of blood vessels; and strengthens communication networks between brain cells.
Exercise, Schmexercise… Bring Out the Bleach
Personally, when I feel triggered or feel any of the emotions that used to precipitate a run, I get out my arsenal of cleaning supplies and a bucket of old rags and get to work. And I don’t mean light dusting. I’m talking pulling everything out of the closet and reorganizing in earnest, pulling the refrigerator and stove away from the wall to scrub the floors beneath, getting on all those projects that tend to get put off during normal life. It’s a workout with a tangible result at the end.
Do you work out to fight off the impulse to relapse? Do you clean the house when you’ve got too much idle time on your hands? How do you fight off drug relapse?
Tags: Drug Addiction, drug addiction recovery, drug relapse, drug-rehab, relapse prevention
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