A substance relapse commonly occurs within the first year after completing an addiction treatment program. However, a relapse can also occur after years of sobriety.
Substance and trauma triggers can influence drug abuse. Emotional challenges linked to unforeseen life events can also interfere with your ability to sustain abstinence from drugs or alcohol. For that reason, it is important to develop a strong support system. With support, you can safely continue to learn practical coping strategies and sober living skills to prevent a substance relapse. Aftercare services at Hawaii Island Recovery can also help you recover from an unwanted relapse.
What Are the Three Stages of Relapse?
It’s essential to recognize that each stage of relapse presents its own unique set of risks. According to the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine (YJBM), a relapse is not a sudden occurrence. A relapse is a gradual process made up of three distinct stages: emotional, mental, and physical relapse.
Addiction treatment may have helped you learn to recognize the early stages of relapse. However, daily life factors such as work-life stress, academic overload, or relationship problems can make you lose sight of recovery. Staying educated on addiction and understanding the warning signs of relapse can increase your chances of recovery success. To illustrate, recovery is a lifelong process. You will continue to grow and hit both small and big recovery milestones.
If you have had a relapse, you may have lost sight of the three stages of relapse. During an emotional relapse, you may not have thought about using, but may have remembered the last time you used drugs or alcohol, yet still have no desire to repeat past addictive behaviors. However, denial is a big part of a substance relapse.
Your emotions or certain behaviors may have set you up for relapse down the road. If you have reached mental relapse, you may have experienced a war in your mind. Part of you had the urge to use, while part of you did not. Your cognitive resistance to relapse may have faded over time, and your urge to use grew. This may have led to a physical relapse that was attached to a great deal of guilt and shame.
Following Basic Rules to Aid in Relapse Prevention
Talk therapy and holistic care practices, including mind-body relaxation, can help you develop strong coping mechanisms for relapse prevention.
Staying dedicated to aftercare services can significantly improve your ability to maintain lasting sobriety. Although the three stages of relapse, emotional, mental, and physical, can trigger substance use, following a few basic rules can help aid in relapse prevention.
Helpful rules to follow in recovery include the following:
- Continue to make positive changes to your life that foster a sober lifestyle
- Remain open and honest with yourself, recovery team, close friends, or family, so you do not fall behind
- Ask for help from others when needed to reduce stress
- Practice self-care daily to safely decompress from everyday life
- Remember not to bend the rules to prevent worsened guilt and shame
What Triggers a Substance Relapse?
Everyone’s background leading up to substance use disorders or co-occurring mental health conditions is truly unique, and therefore so is the reason they may relapse.
Addiction treatment may have gone smoothly, and early recovery might have too. However, a relapse can still happen years later in your recovery journey. You may have established a structured routine, strong support system, or received aftercare services, but various life factors can trigger a relapse in late recovery.
For example, acute, chronic, or complex trauma can negatively interfere with your addiction recovery progress. Impulsive behaviors linked to co-occurring mental health conditions or unmanaged cravings can also trigger a relapse. An injury, accident, or sudden death in the family can worsen depressive symptoms or trigger a substance relapse. Relationship problems, legal separation, or divorce can also trigger a relapse.
Additional life factors that can trigger a substance relapse include the following:
- A job loss
- Chronic stress
- Peer pressure
- Losing access to treatment services
- Work pressure
- Physical Illness
Why Is Early Recovery a Vulnerable Next Step?
During early recovery, you may experience intense cravings and withdrawal symptoms, which can lead to a high risk of relapse if not managed properly. The changes in routine and lifestyle can also create feelings of uncertainty and anxiety, making it challenging to cope with stressors without the previous coping mechanisms used, like substances.
Even with close monitoring and continuous support from a compassionate recovery team, a relapse can still occur. Your life may have felt unstructured from the start, as you haven’t rebuilt your life yet or met long-term recovery goals. The thought of repairing relationships with loved ones that may have been damaged due to your active addiction may have brought great feelings of fear, guilt, or uncertainty.
You may have experienced great fear of addiction or mental health stigma from family, peers, or even some health practitioners. Early recovery can also be a lonely next step, leaving you feeling disconnected from society as a whole. The start of addiction recovery typically requires you to make a series of positive changes.
What Triggers a Substance Relapse in Late Addiction Recovery?
Major life changes, boredom, and sometimes even overconfidence can trigger relapse in late recovery.
Although a relapse within the first year after completing early recovery is a common occurrence, certain triggers can attract the three stages of relapse. Oftentimes, if you have established a solid career, home ownership, a healthy support system, or repaired relationships with loved ones, it can be easy to feel “cured.” Family or friends may assume you are back to your old self before addiction became a problem. This is the part where you may have subconsciously bent the rules or gradually felt less dedicated to your once-structured routine.
Work issues, financial pressures, or relationship problems due to ongoing stress can creep up over time. Balancing everyday tasks or tackling daily priorities can be overwhelming without even noticing it. Stress may just seem like a bad day rather than a chronic issue. When you feel as if you have everything under control, it can be easy to socially drift away from supportive networks and fall into the three stages of relapse.
The Guilt and Shame Involved with Physical Relapse
Obsessive or uncontrolled thinking about using drugs or alcohol alone or with old friends can lead to a physical relapse. When a physical relapse occurs, it is common to experience intense feelings of guilt or shame almost instantaneously.
You may have felt immediate guilt or fear following a lapse and thought your family or friends could not possibly forgive your addictive behaviors. If you have experienced a physical relapse, you may have felt damaged by your addictive behaviors and or undeserving of achieving everlasting happiness.
Choosing not to tell your loved ones about your substance relapse, each day forward can feel increasingly inauthentic. Carrying a secret can feel like a burden and intensify your urge to continue to abuse drugs or alcohol because you may not feel deserving of long-term addiction recovery. However, everyone deserves to heal.
The Link Between Mental Health Stigma and a Substance Relapse
The link between mental health stigma and substance relapse is significant and complex. Stigmatization of mental health issues can lead individuals to feel ashamed or reluctant to seek help, causing them to self-medicate with substances for relief.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), even if you are receiving addiction treatment or aftercare support for substance use disorders or co-occurring psychiatric conditions, discrimination or stigma can impact your overall well-being. Hurtful stereotypes or negative attitudes toward your condition can gradually destroy your self-esteem. If mental health stigma is left unaddressed, it could be easy to internalize negative judgment from family, friends, or others in general. Lacking effective life skills to overcome stigma, you only put yourself at an increased risk for worsening depression, various anxiety disorders, suicidal ideation, relapse, permanent disability, or even death.
However, addiction and mental health stigma are one of the primary reasons some people refuse to move forward with aftercare services. Mental health stigma or discrimination can be embarrassing and make you feel like an outsider. Addiction or mental health stigma dehumanizes people. Keep in mind that substance use disorder is, in fact, not a moral failure. Whoever discriminates against you or your loved one may lack a full understanding of addiction or poor mental health.
The Significance of Family and Peer Support for Long-Term Recovery
Family and peer support play a crucial role in long-term recovery from substance use disorders.
Early recovery can leave you feeling isolated, and boredom in late recovery can put you at a heightened risk for a substance relapse. For this reason, receiving social support is crucial for preventing a relapse. You may have created a strong support network or have been involved with a sober community. However, consistently reaching out to a sober community can strengthen your support system for relapse prevention.
Family and peer support are essential to your recovery journey. Immediate family members in your home can periodically check in with you. Therefore, family and peer support are critical to stay on track to lasting sobriety. Individual family members can also look out for warning signs for relapse, transport you to and from treatment, provide emotional support as needed, or assist with medication management. Family can be of help during an emergency as well. Peer support can allow a safe place to confide, provide a greater sense of belonging for reduced isolation, and share learned coping mechanisms so you can achieve a more positive recovery outcome.
The Value of Aftercare Support for Lasting Sobriety
Knowing that a relapse can happen in both early and late recovery, proceeding with a continuum of care services is crucial to achieve continued stabilization.
Hawaii Island Recovery is a fully integrated program in Hawaii providing medically supervised detox, evidence-based treatment, holistic and experiential therapies, and aftercare services for substance abuse. Balancing daily life and responsibilities with accountability, camaraderie, and continued access to treatment providers and aftercare services can help prevent relapse and facilitate a fulfilling, sober life.
At Hawaii Island Recovery, you’ll have the chance to build lasting relationships with peers and expand your recovery community. We encourage active participation in sober activities, which helps sustain lasting recovery. Sober activities might include participating in 12-step programs, attending community events, alcoholics anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings, and volunteer work. HIR aftercare planning is an important part of the recovery process.
Aftercare services help to ensure that you have complete access to all of the resources necessary to comfortably navigate your life in recovery. Services may include:
- Continued addiction coaching
- Consultations with an addictionologist
- Continued psychotherapy and experiential therapy
Maintaining Aftercare Support for Relapse Prevention
Sustaining follow-up care can significantly reduce your risk of experiencing a substance relapse.
If you have struggled to stay dedicated to your addiction treatment program in the past, maintaining aftercare support might equally be challenging for you. Lack of motivation, low self-efficacy, having an inadequate social or emotional support, or a negative effect can hinder your ability to maintain aftercare support. However, if you make positive changes in recovery, different avenues of support can help you stay on track to lasting sobriety.
Benefits that can come from maintaining aftercare support include the following:
- Can help you target the early warning signs of relapse
- Helps you manage your triggers
- Provides stress management
- Helps you track your recovery progress
- Increases your ability to live an independent way of life
What is Holistic Therapy?
Holistic care, such as the therapies at Hawaii Island Recovery, can provide natural healing opportunities.
Practicing holistic modalities can work to reduce the risk of treatment side effects and provide a whole-person approach to care. For example, holistic therapy addresses your physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. Holistic methods can also assist in restructuring a negative mindset and improving relationships with loved ones. If you stay dedicated to holistic care, you can develop healthy boundaries with others and gain life stability through community support.
Additional benefits that can come from receiving holistic care include the following:
- Addresses the root cause of your addiction
- Improves emotional regulation
- Strengthens your coping skills
- Increases resilience
- Provides whole-person healing
Overcoming Stigma with Holistic Treatment at Hawaii Island Recovery
Knowing that responding to addiction and mental health stigma can be a great challenge, professional support can help.
The team at Hawaii Island Recovery understands the negative impact of discrimination and stigma. For that reason, they provide several holistic treatment options to ensure you safely overcome stigma. Holistic healing methods like yoga and meditation can help you find true self-awareness and relax during distress. Nature-based therapy is also a unique, holistic option to partake in. Like yoga and meditation, immersing oneself in nature has long been a way of finding peace, balance, and serenity. Nature-based therapy takes this long-honored truth and incorporates it with the concepts of psychotherapy.
This “connectedness to nature” also applies to interacting with seascapes like the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Ocean has long been held sacred by those who have lived on Hawaii’s Big Island, and we honor that sentiment at Hawaii Island Recovery by utilizing it to help you recover your sense of self.
Holistic activities associated with exercise and nature therapy can heighten psychological benefits for reduced depressive symptoms and increased positive affect. Hawaii Island Recovery also provides cultural programming, including getting out to the island and connecting with the people within the community who make it such an amazing and unique place to be for ongoing healing.
The Importance of Combining Comprehensive Support and Holistic Care in Recovery
Prolonged stress often triggers a substance relapse.
Talk therapy can be a great treatment option to sustain lasting sobriety. Moreover, combining both comprehensive support services with holistic care at Hawaii Island Recovery can further enhance your path toward healing. Compared to utilizing either approach by itself, both avenues of support can improve long-term recovery outcomes. For example, basic aftercare can teach you sober living skills while providing comprehensive support. Whereas holistic outpatient treatment methods can teach mind-body practices for stress management.
Here at Hawaii Island Recovery, we don’t just believe in putting down the drink or the drug (though, of course, this is the first step). We believe in transformational long-term success. Additionally, we also believe in being bold and daring and experiencing all that life has to offer. Call us at (866) 390-5070 for support.
