Internal vs External Relapse Triggers

Although someone in recovery knows that their addiction was harming themselves and those around them, it’s fairly common to view past substance abuse through rose-colored glasses. To keep emotions from triggering a relapse, people in recovery need to learn coping skills that can be discovered through therapy. Some people experience a whirlwind of emotions when seeing old friends and loved ones, which can trigger the desire to have a drink.

If addicted people could simply make the decision to get sober, snap their fingers, and turn their lives around; they would. Recovery is not easy and most people require addiction treatment to reclaim their lives once they become addicted to drugs or alcohol. As soon as things start getting hard, it’s tempting to turn back to addiction.

Stress Increases Vulnerability to Triggers and Relapse

Similarly to addiction, stress disorders are also related to a trigger stimulus evoking a strong subjective experience. A neurobiological overlap between these two conditions would therefore be expected. The earlier people in recovery can identify and successfully the effects of combining alcohol with other drugs respond to triggers, the greater their chances of prolonged abstinence. Education on coping skills can help people manage thoughts of using. Mental relapse, or relapse justification, is the continuous fight between wanting to use and knowing you should not use.

Substance use disorders and drug use change the way the brain works. If you’re in recovery and experiencing a craving, you’re taken back to the time when substance use brought you pleasure, and your brain pays no attention to all the ways it caused harm. From a therapeutic view, the capability of psychotherapeutic treatments has been demonstrated to restoring the biological normality of brain structure and function (Barsaglini et al., 2014).

Substance Use Treatment

This gives you time to identify it as a trigger and work through the after-plan process that’s been practiced. It sounds simple, but in the heat of the moment, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. No matter how what makes alcohol so addictive prepared you are knowing how to deal with triggers, it’s hard to prepare for the unexpected. Unexpected triggers can even be ones you have prepared for but arise very suddenly and without warning.

Triggers are social, environmental or emotional situations that remind people in recovery of their past drug or alcohol use. While triggers do not force a person to use drugs, they increase the likelihood of drug use. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that 40 to 60 percent of people treated for substance use disorders relapse. Long-term drug use creates an association in the brain between daily routines and drug experiences. Individuals may suffer from uncontrollable drug or alcohol cravings when exposed to certain cues.

Getting Addiction Treatment To Manage Triggers and Stay Sober

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. People who struggle with addiction frequently lose their capacity to know when to stop. Or, treating yourself to one, unnecessary new pair of shoes could lead to a shopping spree. For additional ideas, work with your counselor or therapist about how to effectively deal with these reminders.

Often these are emotional triggers in recovery, but that’s not always the case. If you or someone you know relapses, the most important thing to do is ensure safety. Drug and alcohol tolerance may decrease in recovery, so someone who has been sober for months and uses the same amount of a substance they used before treatment may be at risk of overdose. If the relapse does not seem life-threatening, contacting a sponsor, therapist or trusted loved one is the next thing to do. It helps to compare addiction relapse to relapse in other chronic conditions. A person with diabetes will often relapse due to poor eating behaviors, for example.

In this section, you will find information and resources related to evidence-based treatment models, counseling and therapy and payment and insurance options. To prevent relapse, use different routes where you will not meet with dealers and former friends who are still indulging in dangerous habits. Make sure you are not biting off more than you can chew, and have plans for when it feels overwhelming. Lastly, it’s important to hold yourself to these guidelines, and to be kind and respect yourself, but knowing your limits. It sounds silly but sometimes that little bit of assurance — even if it’s coming from your own lips — can be enough to keep the trigger from causing problems.

Underlying Psychological Triggers Can Lead To Relapse

Do your best to plan meals, engage in mindfulness, seek out social support and stick to a regular sleep schedule. Doing so will provide a baseline that helps reduce reactivity to triggers. Users in recovery can ask themselves some questions to help them understand their internal thoughts and feelings.

This is of especial interest when only limited effects have been documented by pharmacological treatments, for example in the drug addiction . This therapeutic fact of giving a new meaning to the trigger does not exclude the traditional therapeutic avoiding of the trigger, which is an urgent aim at the beginning of the treatment. Nevertheless, after that initial phase, the inner problem should also be addressed. Actually, both are necessary, one to get initial abstinence and the other to help the addict to resolve the frustration underlying drug addiction. What is usually conceptualized as a trigger would be a simplification because it denies the role of the inner experience.

Seeking Help for Addiction at North Georgia Recovery Center

A study of rats by the University of Michigan found that the rats largely preferred rewards that triggered the brain’s amygdala, part of the limbic system that produces emotions. The researchers also discovered that the rats were inclined to work harder to obtain the reward that triggered the amygdala than the same reward that did not trigger any emotion in the brain. Treatment for addiction takes many forms and depends on the needs of the individual. In accordance with the American Society of Addiction Medicine, we offer information on outcome-oriented treatment that adheres to an established continuum of care.

• Health problems, increased responsibility and other events can result in stress that triggers drug cravings.
• External triggers are easier to identify and manage than internal ones.
• The transition back to life outside of rehab is fraught with the potential for relapse.
• When dealing with situations that require your attendance and attention, like school or work, you may have to weigh options.

Physical triggers, also known as external triggers, are usually physically encountered. However, that doesn’t always mean that they involve using substances specifically. Something that immediately preceded drug or alcohol use, or something that usually happened after.

Objects surrounding your daily life can lead to drug and alcohol cravings. For example, if you were using spoons to consume heroin, the piece the signs and symptoms of alcohol abuse of cutlery can trigger those memories. Empty pill bottles, movies, magazines, and some paraphernalia are common triggers of substance use.

Physical Triggers And How To Cope

Many situations may be high-risk for one person and fine for another. The important thing is to recognize situations that cause stress and prepare strategies to mitigate it. The HALT acronym helps those in recovery keep an eye on some of the most basic human needs that can lead to or intensify triggers if not fulfilled.

This external stimulus would lead the individual to repeat drug use or relapse after a period of abstinence. Addiction models constructed upon this observation consider the trigger as a stimulus able to activate drug related memories leading to reward anticipation and craving responses. As a consequence, derived therapeutic approaches suggest to avoid the trigger or provide the individuals with cognitive capabilities to control that emotional response provoked by the trigger. Such cognitive-behavioral therapies include operant conditioning, contingency management or coping skills training (Witkiewitz et al., 2019).

You can learn a lot about yourself by taking an inventory of what you’re feeling and asking yourself why. In fact, learning how to face your emotions without escaping into addiction is invaluable. Understanding what might trigger you to relapse as well as having a plan in the place for these triggers are the first steps toward prevention. Here are five triggers you need to consider and talk to your therapist or counselor about. If you or someone you know is struggling with substance use disorder, reach out to us.

They just have to reset, practice healthy eating and get their blood sugar under control with the help of their doctor. It’s key to remember that these are not failures and shouldn’t be termed as such. Obstacles in recovery are often caused by insufficient coping skills or an inability to plan effectively. These issues can be fixed, and people should learn to challenge their outlook by giving equal attention to past successes. So, with continued therapy and support you should be able to build stronger defenses against common triggers.