Key Takeaways
- Family support in recovery is one of the best relapse prevention strategies for helping your loved one achieve long-term sobriety.
- Relapse isn’t a sudden event, but typically occurs in three stages: emotional, mental, and finally, physical relapse.
- Relapse warning signs include poor self-care, mood swings, glamorizing past substance use, lying, making plans to relapse, and more.
- Our Defining Wellness Relapse Program can empower you or your loved one to stay the course with your recovery or get back on track if you’ve relapsed.
You’ve worked hard on your sobriety. Or perhaps your loved one has finally started turning things around in an addiction treatment program. And then a relapse happens. No one understandably wants this to occur in the recovery journey. But in hindsight, relapse is usually not a sudden event. There are often relapse warning signs leading up to it taking place.
Relapse is always a risk in the sobriety journey, which is why it’s important to proactively learn to recognize the early signs of relapse. Even if you’re a family member or loved one, understanding relapse warning signs can make all the difference in preventing it before it happens.
Relapse Prevention and Family Support in Recovery
It’s a tough reality in addiction recovery, but it’s true: relapse is a common experience. According to numerous studies, about 40 to 60% of people with an addiction will experience a relapse within the first year after treatment, shares EBSCO. Other studies have shown relapse rates as high as 70% within the first 90 days following treatment (and even more than 85% within one year), according to Current Psychiatry Reports.
Consequently, your proactive awareness of relapse is one of the best relapse prevention strategies you can take, hands down. And for family members especially, your family support in recovery is vital in helping your loved one continue to make progress with their long-term sobriety.
According to BMJ Open, family involvement in addiction recovery can reduce potential harms (such as relapse) and also improve treatment entry, completion, and outcomes for a loved one coping with addiction. Your involvement, encouragement, and support throughout the process actually strengthen your loved one’s recovery.
Addiction recovery can be a lonely experience, after all, so having family to walk alongside can be very impactful. Family members like you can also help reduce stigma and other recovery barriers just by the words you use to discuss your loved one’s situation, as well as by pursuing addiction recovery education to better empathize with their struggles. And by seeking addiction recovery education on what’s involved in relapse, you’re empowered as a family to respond early to any relapse warning signs (and actually help instead of enable) before the situation worsens.
Addiction Recovery Education: The Stages of Relapse
As mentioned earlier, relapse isn’t something that usually happens impulsively and instantaneously. In reality, relapse occurs in stages. Educating yourself on how relapse plays out can help you better recognize it as it’s happening in the moment.
If a relapse is on the horizon, the first inkling of it begins inwardly on an emotional level. Then it occurs mentally, and finally, the physical action of relapsing takes place. In practice, these three stages of relapse look like:
- Emotional relapse: You may not be thinking about returning to substances, but your emotions are setting the stage to revert back to addictive ways.
- Mental relapse: You may begin to think about going back to your preferred substances, even if you don’t want to. Eventually, you may start formulating real plans to take up these substances again.
- Physical relapse: More than a momentary lapse, you actively return back to your addictive substance and start using as you did previously.
Recognizing Relapse Warning Signs: Your Recovery Checklist
Each stage of relapse carries its own specific warning signs. And if you’re seeing the signs, you can step in and help reverse course before your loved one moves further towards relapse. That’s why we’ve created a recovery checklist of the early signs of relapse in the emotional, mental, and physical stages.
Before getting into this list, it’s important to remember that we share this list with compassion. Addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease, which means relapse can happen to anyone, including you or your loved one. And relapse doesn’t mean failure when it happens. It also doesn’t mean that your loved one is relapsing out of spite or a lack of care about their sobriety.
Even when a relapse occurs, there is still hope for change and lasting healing, and you as a family member can help make that an eventual reality for your loved one. With that said, here are some common relapse warning signs to know:
The Early Signs of Relapse: Emotional Stage
1. Self-Care Decline
Self-care is a healthy recovery practice and a relapse prevention strategy in its own right. Exercising, eating right, and getting good sleep all help you achieve positive overall wellness.
But when your loved one is starting an emotional relapse, their self-care habits will noticeably change. They may be sleeping more or hardly at all. Perhaps they’ve changed their appetite and food preferences. You may also notice poor hygiene, such as wearing the same clothes, no longer combing hair, or leaving messes around the house.
2. Mood Swings
You may recognize some noticeable variations in your loved one’s mood. After all, they’re likely dealing with some negative emotions behind the scenes. They may be more easily irritated, angered, or even anxious. They could also oscillate towards moments of happiness and cheerfulness that go beyond the norm. You may also see periods of sadness and feeling low, as if they’re depressed.
3. Avoidance and Isolation
Emotional relapse, like addiction, can lead to social isolation. Your loved one may start missing social events or enjoyable activities to stay at home. Maybe you see them lost in thought, seeming emotionally numb, or acting checked-out. They may begin to shirk responsibilities at home or work, as well as skip out on recovery practices, meetings, therapy sessions, etc.
The Early Signs of Relapse: Mental Stage
1. Glamorizing or Minimizing Past Substance Use
Harder to notice on the surface, but your loved one may begin to reminisce about their past substance use, the places they used, or the people they used with, shares GoodRx. Consequently, they may glamorize said substances, doubting whether they were really bad at all and minimizing their negative effects. They could start visiting places where they used in the past.
2. Lying
Your loved one may noticeably lie to others about what they’ve been up to, places they visited, or reasons for their actions. This is likely to cover up any thoughts, feelings, or behaviors that would indicate that they’re considering using again.
3. Planning to Relapse
Your loved one has gone from thinking about relapsing to making plans to do so. You may find online research on their computer or phone about places to buy drugs. Maybe you see an appointment on their calendar to meet a friend who uses. Your loved one may start saying things like, “I’ll only drink on weekends,” as they rationalize substance use.
The Early Signs of Relapse: Physical Stage
At this point, your loved one is actively using again. Maybe you notice alcohol in their refrigerator or on a pantry shelf. Or you find them at the bar after work. Perhaps you discover drug paraphernalia in the house. They may show the familiar symptoms and signs of substance abuse again that you remember from the past.
Our Defining Wellness Relapse Program: Empowering Long-Term Recovery
Relapse is certainly a possibility in the recovery journey, but with proactive help, it can be prevented. At Defining Wellness Centers in Mississippi, our addiction treatment programs empower those struggling with substance abuse to achieve whole-person recovery.
Not only can we help your loved one heal from the root causes of their addiction, but our Defining Wellness Relapse Program can empower your loved one with ongoing support to maintain their long-term recovery goals. We can even help them get back on track if they’ve relapsed.
Our Family Program also equips family members like you to come alongside their loved one’s sobriety journey (and help you find your own healing, too). To learn more about our treatment programs, contact us today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between a lapse vs. relapse?
A lapse is a momentary slip-up. You briefly revert to substances one time. Realizing what you’ve done, you stop your substance use and resume your recovery practices. A relapse on the other hand means your slip-up isn’t momentary. Instead, you continue to abuse substances in the same addictive patterns you once did previously.
What should you do if you relapse?
If you’ve relapsed, don’t beat yourself up. Instead, seek the immediate support of your therapist, support group, or clinical team. When you’re back in a safe, sober condition, take some time to reflect upon the relapse warning signs that led to your relapse. Then, revise your coping strategies and recovery plan accordingly to keep relapse from happening again.