3 Helpful Strategies For Long-Term Addiction Recovery

When it comes to addiction – or an attempt to cease any problematic behavior – it’s essential to understand that relapse may be a part of ultimate recovery. Truthfully, few people immediately change the way they live in order to conquer non-serving life situations like an addiction. On the first attempt to change, there may be setbacks and even willful resistance. Fortunately, there are some helpful strategies for long-term addiction recovery.

Ultimately, what matters is not the relapse itself, but how you recover from poor choices, and how you set yourself back on the path to recovery. Here are some tips to consider if you or someone you love is in the addiction recovery process.

Strategies For Long-Term Addiction Recovery #1: Tell Someone

Telling a friend, family member, doctor or therapist that you have relapsed is not something anyone wants to do. That said, by avoiding communication, you set yourself up to further damage your path to recovery. By telling someone, you externalize the experience and also have the opportunity to put the relapse into perspective.

You don’t have to go into full details about what happened with the relapse if you’d prefer not to; instead, keep it simple, just saying “I had a cigarette” or “I had a glass of wine”, only sharing more details if you feel comfortable doing so.

Strategies For Long-Term Addiction Recovery #2: Improve Your Overall Recovery Strategy

In the aftermath of an addiction relapse, improving your recovery strategy is a necessary step. This may allow you to add extra strength and willpower to prevent any further relapses. How you do this depends on the issue you are trying to overcome. For example, if you have tried to quit smoking cold turkey, you could instead try a vaping device and the best budget eliquid to assist you the second time around. Maybe cutting back on shopping, gambling, or drinking may serve you better than stopping all at once. Again, it depends on the seriousness of the addiction to determine the course of action necessary to end it.

Essentially, opt for whatever route will make your recovery attempts easier and more successful. The post-relapse period is not the best time to challenge yourself or rely solely on willpower. Do whatever you can to ensure the return to recovery is as straightforward and easily-navigated as possible.

Improve your overall recovery strategy #3: Discover Your Emotional Triggers

Even the strongest people may struggle to overcome emotional triggers when dealing with an addiction. When we are stressed, feeling down, or just plain having a bad day, relapse becomes far more likely. It’s helpful to look for the emotional causes of the regression and seek doable ways to cope with similar scenarios in the future.

A dual-pronged approach of revising your overall recovery strategy – as discussed above – and examining the potential emotional side of the equation tends to be particularly effective, so it’s well worth doing both at the same time if at all possible.

In Conclusion

While the lessons you learn from recovery and setbacks can be somewhat bittersweet, the strength and wisdom you gain will hopefully give you confidence. It’s worth it if it serves your progress toward a stable, secure, and addiction-free future.