This month, we’re presenting a series of blog posts on how to get through after drug rehab. Today, our discussion focuses specifically on relapse prevention and what you should do when you feel like you’re going to get high or drink. Though you likely learned a little bit about relapse prevention during drug rehab, it’s not always easy to remember the actionable steps you should take when faced with the temptation to relapse in real life. Here’s what to do:

1.       Call someone. If you have a sponsor, this is the time to call the number they gave you. If you have a supportive friend or family member, call them. Talk about what’s happening to you and, if necessary, arrange to meet them somewhere right away and spend some time until the feeling passes.

2.       Get to a 12-step meeting. In some places, there are 12-step meetings available to you around the clock. Go online or call their 1-800 number to find the next meeting that’s closest to you and get there.

3.       Walk away. If you are in a situation where someone is offering you a drink or to get high and you feel like the next words out of your mouth might be a “yes” or you are concerned about being rude or looking stupid, simply walk away. “No, thanks” or “no, that’s alright,” is all you need to say and then turn and walk out the door. Don’t stop walking until you get somewhere safe.

4.       Blow off some energy. Many people report feeling antsy, like they can’t sit still and just can’t seem to do anything to distract themselves from the thought of getting high right before a relapse. If you feel that way, do something active to work off the energy: lift weights, go running, play paintball, walk an energetic dog, go for a bike ride, vigorously clean the house. Anything physical that will help you get rid of the excess energy that is pushing you toward relapse.

5.       Write it out. If you feel calm but still tempted to get high but can’t get anyone on the phone (e.g., therapist, 12-step sponsor, supportive friend or family member) then talk it out to yourself on paper. A journal is an excellent device to work through what you’re feeling and why, write what happened leading up to the feeling that you wanted to get high, what has worked to help you avoid relapse in the past, and how to avoid or get out of the situation if it comes up again.

If you have yet to enroll in a drug addiction treatment program, contact us at The Canyon today to learn more about how we can help you heal from drug and alcohol addiction.

Stay tuned for our next post in the series, After Drug Rehab: Paying Off Your Drug Addiction Treatment Bill.

Relapse in recovery is a serious issue. It’s one of the most common times for an overdose to occur and can hail the return of a full-blown addiction. It’s important enough to dedicate some serious time and research to. This month, we’ll look at how relapse begins, the difference between a slip and a relapse, how to identify a relapse before it happens, how to create a plan to fight off relapse, and how to move forward positively after a relapse. Stay tuned!

How Relapse Starts

Attitude is everything when it comes to recovery and there are a number of attitudes that can mean the beginning of a relapse. They can lead to more poor decisions-making and risk-taking that is the next step to relapse. Some things to look out for include:

• Overconfidence. Those who feel like they are acing recovery and no longer need to attend 12-step meetings or personal therapy sessions, stay out of bars or away from friends who continue to abuse drugs and drink heavily are often the ones to relapse, surprising themselves more than anyone else.
• Stress. If stress is already high and emotions are too much to handle, it’s only a matter of time before one stressor too many results in relapse.
• Isolation. Those who go out of their way to spend a lot of time alone and avoid interactions with others are often close to relapse.
• Returning to old patterns. This can mean old thought patterns that are negative and damaging or it can mean old behaviors, people and haunts that used to be a big part of an addictive lifestyle. Those who start to hang out with those who drink or abuse drugs heavily or go back to the places where they used to buy drugs or use them, it’s likely that they will relapse.
• Avoiding recovery. For those who have slowly cut their treatment plan out of their lives, no longer attending meetings or doing other things that help them maintain their sobriety, relapse can often follow.
• Depression or negative thoughts. Those who feel down more days than not and begin to have feelings of worthlessness or hopelessness may be more likely to give up on recovery and relapse.

If you are concerned that relapse could be a problem for you, consider sober living or amping up your recovery with an outpatient treatment program. Contact us at The Canyon today to learn more about how we can help you stay on the right track in your recovery.

Meth is a hard-hitting drug. It takes your body on a wild ride every time you use it. Over time, the chemical influences can really harm your body. Drug rehab is essential with a drug as powerful as crystal meth. But the challenges don’t stop once you get sober. With a lot of support and persistence, you can start feeling better and rebuilding your life. Take a moment to better understand how and why your body may take a while to recover from crystal meth addiction.

Possible Brain Damage From Meth

Your brain is a very flexible and resilient organ, but it can’t always bounce back when it’s been damaged. Meth can significantly harm your brain over time. In some cases, normal functioning can return after a few years of sobriety. But the longer you have used meth, the more likely you are to suffer some level of permenant damage.

One of the biggest problems with meth addiction is its powerful effect on the body’s dopamine reward system. Dopamine is neurotransmitter that allows you to feel pleasure naturally. Eating, sex, or an happy event causes dopamine to flow through your body. It keeps you motivated to do things that are essential to your survival.

Meth overstimulates the dopamine system, causing an intense rush sensation in the early stages of use. Over time, your dopamine system shuts down. Excessive meth use can even kill nerve endings that use dopamine. When you get sober, the dopamine system doesn’t quite know what to do for a while. As a result, you may find that fatigue and depression challenge you in your first year or two of recovery.

Feeling Fatigue After Sobriety

Many crystal meth users have a lot of trouble feeling energetic shortly after becoming sober. Meth is a powerful stimulant, giving you an unnaturally high feeling of energy during your first several uses. As time progresses and your body adjusts to the presence of meth, you need the drug just to feel normal.

Your body dramatically alters the production of dopamine and other chemicals that help you regulate your cycles of energy and rest. Also, the addiction lifestyle will cause you to neglect your nutrition and physical health. This can also be part of the fatigue experienced in early recovery.

Feelings Of Depression

The lack of dopamine moving through your body also affects your mood. Without the natural ebb and flow of dopamine, you will likely feel many symptoms of depression. You may lack motivation or interest in doing things, feel hopeless, and feel unhappy much of the time.

Exercise, good nutrition, and healthy social connections can gradually retrain your brain and body to enjoy naturally positive things. It may take some time and patience, but recovering meth addicts can and do get through this period. If you are newly sober from meth, you can do it, too.

Meth Addiction – Adjusting To Sobriety

When you get sober from meth, you go through stimulant withdrawal. You experience the exact opposite of what you felt when you were using meth. Fatigue, depression, and lack of motivation are common hurdles in your first year or two of sobriety. When meth use is stopped early enough, you may eventually feel more like you did before your addiction. But you’ll need drug rehab to get you started. Don’t hesitate to call us for more information today.

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?

Relapse is a trying time for anyone afflicted with addiction. Feelings of failure, low self worth, and hopelessness can certainly overcome a person who realizes they’ve taken a step backwards. However, it really helps to take a look at relapse as a part of a bigger picture. Relapse prevention is best done with a wide angle lens.

Dual Diagnosis Treatment

Some conditions can be cured with the right treatment. Got strep throat? Get some penicillin. Got tonsillitis? Take your tonsils out. Some health problems cannot be cured at this moment in time. We all hope that some day diseases like diabetes, asthma, and cancer can be cured forever once they are found inside a person.

Unfortunately, that is not reality for any human being. Cancer can come out of remission. Asthma problems can come and go. Diabetes needs careful daily monitoring. This is much the same for addiction. Unlike cancer, asthma, and diabetes, drug and alcohol addiction involves voluntary actions and consumption of toxins. Even so, addiction has the potential to do as much damage as any other chronic health problem.

Relapse Is Part of Addiction

Relapse is a natural normal part of addiction. Of course, no one looks forward to it and many people do whatever they can to avoid it. However, addiction has such a profound and long-lasting effect on the mind and body. It is hard to completely erase any chance of relapse, even after years of sobriety.

In fact, the attitude that you have addiction for life could help you stave off relapse. If you get into the “I’ve totally got this thing licked” mode, you may set yourself up to be blindsided by relapse triggers. Acknowledging that you may continue to have various triggers through your whole life can help you understand the possibilities.

Self Discovery Helps Relapse Prevention

Making new discoveries about yourself keeps your brain “tickled” about who you are at the moment. From moment to moment, who you are continues to develop. You don’t just sit still in time, you change and evolve to account for the changes around you and personal changes inside you. Or, you don’t make good adjustments, you stay focused on some kind of past moment for too long, and you lose sight of what really matters now.

The things that are important in your twenties aren’t usually the same as when you are in your thirties or forties. This progression continues upward as you age and see your environment change and grow. The “aha” moments you have along the way are often unexpected – they are usually quiet moments of realizing and embracing a new thought, a new feeling, the truth that has been there all along.

If all goes well, you will continue to evolve as you grow older. You keep the good stuff and throw out the bad stuff along the way. So of course, being in a constant state of self-awareness and renewal is a great way to keep yourself from getting stale and too far from reality. And denying reality is what addiction does best. Lies lies and more lies – before you know it, you are caught up in old beliefs, old patterns, and old problems.

Relapse Prevention at Drug Rehab Help People With Dual Diagnosis

If you have struggled with addiction relapse too many times, you may need a different rehab experience. Perhaps your untreated dual diagnosis is preventing you from having a long lasting period of sobriety. Sound like you? Don’t wait to get help – learn more about The Canyon dual diagnosis drug rehab.