15 Ways Local Rehab Centers Prevent Relapse
Recovery from addiction is a long term, and sometimes, life long process. At any point in time, you may be tempted to fall back into your old environments, old habits, relationships, or behaviors.
The following, are 15 ways local rehab centers prevent relapse and help you tailor a plan to maintain your abstinence long after you leave the formal rehab program.
1. Understand How Addiction Works
Addiction is not a character flaw. According to the NIDA, “Addiction is a brain disease that affects multiple brain circuits, including those involved in reward and motivation, learning and memory, and inhibitory control over behavior.”
2. Cope with Cravings
Cravings tend to subside after remaining abstinent for an extended period of time. Local rehabs teach you how to cope with cravings without having to use.
3. Recognize Emotional “Triggers”
Even when not thinking of using, negative emotions can make you vulnerable to relapse and local rehabs help you to find alternative ways of dealing with these negative emotional states.
4. Recognize Psychological “Triggers”
Psychological “triggers” can be a driving force for relapse. Local rehabs teach you how to avoid thinking or fantasizing about using.
5. Avoiding Environmental “Triggers”
Local rehab programs help you incorporate recovery into your life.
Local rehabs teach you how important it is to avoid those people, places, and things that remind you of using to prevent relapse and help you developing coping mechanisms for when you can’t. Doing this closer to home can help you truly visualize these triggers and make a plan to cope with them. It will help reduce the potential impact having these environmental factors around again after rehab can have because you will have stayed within your environment in the first place.
6. Analyze Consequences
Every addiction has consequences and local rehab helps you to realize those consequences of past use as well as those that may occur should you relapse.
7. Improved Mental Health
Mental health disorders commonly co-exist with substance abuse disorders and local rehabs can treat these disorders, in continuum, for maximum relapse prevention effectiveness.
8. Cope with Stress
Stress is a “trigger” that is often unavoidable no matter how emotionally stable you are. Local rehab can teach you relaxation techniques and other skills to help in stressful situations.
9. Control Impulsiveness
Local rehabs teach techniques to help control impulsive thought, behaviors and actions that may set you up for relapse.
10. Improved Physical Health
Local rehabs promote education, nutrition, counseling, medical referrals, and assistance to help you improve and maintain optimal physical health to prevent relapse.
11. Cognitive Therapies
Cognitive therapies help you improve your cognitive efforts to remain abstinent and make wise decisions regarding your recovery.
12. Behavioral Therapies
Behavioral therapies help to recognize and change negative, drug seeking, behaviors to those that are positive and non-substance related.
13. Group Support
Group support helps you to realize you are not alone in your recovery and provides opportunities of learning and encouragement from those who are undergoing similar circumstances and are willing to help.
14. Counseling
Counseling helps to bring underlying issues to the forefront and sometimes, just talking things out helps you to understand and deal with them more effectively.
15. Family Support
Local rehabs provide ways to involve the family so they can support your recovery and recover themselves.
-
Journaling During Inpatient Drug Rehab and Its Benefits -
During drug addiction treatment, counselors almost always encouraged patients to keep a journal or a private account of their thoughts and feelings. This act has many benefits, especially for those in inpatient drug rehab. Self-monitoring is actually just as important as attending counseling sessions in many ways and can help patients become much more in ...
-
What If My Family Won’t Support My Treatment? -
So, you are researching inpatient drug rehab and you are looking at the importance of family therapy in these programs. But, what if your family is opposed to both your treatment and to any participation in therapy? Nothing can take the wind out of your sales faster. How can you succeed when it feels like ...
-
Don’t Freak Out: 5 Ways to Combat Anxiety During Inpatient Drug Rehab Treatment -
While the physical effects of recovery can be distressing in their own right, the psychological turmoil can be equally unsettling. More often than not, people going through inpatient drug rehab treatment experience intense feelings of anxiety as the brain tries to adapt to a drug-free state. Fortunately, inpatient drug rehab treatment encompasses a range of ...
-
5 New Trends in Inpatient Rehab -
Everything changes these changes include inpatient rehabilitative care. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a number of advances have been made over the past few years. Many of these advances like the use of Suboxone for opiate addiction are well publicized and already in use across the country, but addiction treatment is not ...
-
How Intervention Drug Rehab Services Can Help Your Addicted Loved One -
Approaching an addict about seeking treatment is a touchy matter and needs to be thought out carefully in order to be effective. An intervention specialist can ensure that this process goes as smoothly as possible.