Key Takeaways
- The home recovery environment can generate addiction triggers that can leave your loved one vulnerable to relapse.
- Potential relapse triggers in the home include family dynamics, people who use, sensory cues, social media, and traumatic memories.
- You can pursue family recovery strategies to ensure your home supports your loved one’s recovery instead, such as removing substances from the house, setting boundaries, encouraging open communication, and more.
- Defining Wellness Centers offers recovery treatment programs that help your loved one prevent relapse and achieve lasting sobriety.
Home is where the heart is, as it’s said. You’d expect your home to be your safe place. But after coming out of addiction treatment, the real world can actually be a very challenging place for those in recovery. And of all places, your home and its unique environmental factors can be ground zero for relapse triggers that can pull you or your loved one back into old addictive patterns.
The good news is that families can help transform the home into a supportive, low-risk recovery environment for their loved one. By pursuing the right home recovery support strategies, you can help strengthen recovery continuity and take an active role in your loved one’s ongoing wellness.
Addiction Relapse Education: Environmental Relapse Triggers at Home
When your loved one completes their addiction treatment program, that doesn’t mean their hurdles are over. Getting sober from drugs or alcohol isn’t a one-time event. You don’t just quit substances and never struggle with the temptation to use again.
Instead, recovery is a lifelong process. You always continue to work at it. Why? Because addiction triggers don’t quit in the real world. They continue to pose a risk for future substance abuse when you go back home and start living your life again. And without a proper relapse prevention plan in place, your loved one can soon relapse on their own if they’re not careful.
These relapse triggers aren’t as simple or isolated as a visit to the neighborhood bar or encountering a drug dealer in the back alley. Many are more subtle and widespread. And, as mentioned earlier, they can exist in the home environment, the very place where you’d think a recovering loved one would be safe from it all.
According to the British Journal of Pharmacology, environmental stimuli are powerful mediators of cravings and relapse in substance use disorders. Such environmental factors in the home that can trigger a relapse include:
Harmful Family Dynamics
Family members can provide impactful home recovery support to their loved one in recovery, but they can also cause stress and other negative feelings. There may be leftover relational strain between your loved one and family members in the fallout of addiction. Unknowing family members can also ask hurtful questions about their loved one or pass harsh judgment that doesn’t help. These dynamics can drive your loved one to seek substances again to cope.
People Who Use
Have any heavy drinkers in the family? People who drink or use drugs in the home can create a difficult, triggering recovery environment for your loved one. Even if it’s as innocent as having some alcoholic beverages for a holiday gathering or birthday party, these scenarios can cause anyone in recovery to spiral. Certain friends and family who use themselves may also pressure or encourage a loved one to use again.
Social Media
Social media is ubiquitous these days, but it’s readily accessed at home. Consequently, it’s easy for your loved one to use their idle time at home to scroll social media. Eventually however, social media use can lead to unhealthy levels of comparison as they see carefully curated images of success among their peers. Such comparison can generate feelings of shame, stress, and anxiety, relapse triggers in their own right.
Traumatic Memories
Many addictions are rooted in unresolved past trauma. And that trauma can be tied to experiences in the home, especially childhood trauma associated with adverse childhood experiences. Unless this trauma is healed with trauma-informed treatment, the home and the people inside may drum up traumatic memories that cause your loved one to seek substances to self-medicate. These intrusive memories are unwanted and distressing, often existing as flashbacks of a traumatic event, shares the Mayo Clinic.
Sensory Cues
Sights, smells, and sounds can be powerful reminders of past substance use. Maybe it’s regularly passing by the liquor store on the way home. Or a certain smell around the house that’s associated with using. Perhaps it’s a song played at home that was the go-to for getting drunk. Though subtle, these sensory cues can be prevalent in the home environment and can easily become relapse triggers.
Family Recovery Strategies to Improve the Home Recovery Environment
Considering the challenges of the real world post-treatment, it’s important for families to take an active role in their loved one’s recovery. This often means familiarizing yourself with your loved one’s relapse prevention plan and helping them follow through on it.
At the same time, you can be proactive in transforming the home environment into a space that aids and supports your loved one’s long-term sobriety. Here are some practical strategies you can take to build a safe recovery home environment:
Purge Substances and Declutter
One of the most important strategies you can take is to remove all substances from your home, including beer, wine, drugs, and even old prescription medications (and lock up any meds you’re using). Any substance paraphernalia should not remain. While you’re purging substance-related material, be sure to declutter the house; a clean environment helps to reduce stress.
Set and Honor Healthy Boundaries
According to Stanford University, boundaries help you build trust, respect, and safety in relationships. It’s likely your loved one has boundaries they want to establish in their relapse prevention plan. Not only should you honor those in support of their recovery, you may want to set your own boundaries to provide structure and safety for everyone involved.
Encourage Open Communication
To foster a healthy family dynamic in the home, open communication needs to be the norm. Create an environment where you, your family, and your loved one in recovery can share their feelings, concerns, and views without fear of being judged. Prioritize empathy and understanding. It may be worthwhile to have scheduled times to discuss recovery progress as a family.
Make Space for Recovery Practices
Effective home recovery support may also mean rearranging things around the house. Familiarize yourself with your loved one’s recovery practices and make spaces in the home where these new rhythms can be carried out. Create desk space for your loved one to journal, carve out a quiet corner for mindfulness medication, or turn the garage into a home gym for exercising.
Stock the Pantry With Healthy Foods
Self-care is the practice of looking after yourself using the knowledge and information available to you, shares the Global Self-Care Federation. It’s also a key recovery discipline. And nutrition is one of the main aspects of self-care. With that said, ensuring your house regularly has nutritious, healthy food available is low-hanging fruit (no pun intended) for creating a supportive recovery environment.
Remove Any Leftover Relapse Triggers
As you’re doing all of the family recovery strategies above, go back through the home and make sure there aren’t any leftover relapse triggers you may have missed. Remember the sensory cues that could exist; it may be best to talk with your loved one about anything present that reminds them of using. It’s not worth keeping in the home if it will lead to your loved one’s relapse.
Holistic Relapse Programming at Defining Wellness Centers
By taking family ownership of recovery support in the home, you can create the environment your loved one needs to pursue lasting sobriety. And if your loved one is just starting their recovery journey, our Defining Wellness Relapse Program can help.
Our treatment philosophy takes a holistic approach to addiction recovery. We use both time-honored and innovative therapies to prevent relapse, renew a sense of purpose, and support overall wellness. If you’re ready to see profound personal transformation and healing in your loved one, call us today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What goes into a relapse prevention plan?
A relapse prevention plan will be unique to your situation and recovery goals. It’s often created with the help of your treatment team, recovery mentor, or therapist. With that said, many relapse prevention plans will include:
- The “why” behind your desire to stay sober
- A list of your recovery goals and lifestyle changes you want to make
- Your addiction triggers
- A list of healthy coping strategies when triggers arise
What if my home simply isn’t a supportive recovery environment?
If your home environment is unhealthy and will regularly expose you to relapse triggers, you can seek alternative accommodations. A supportive environment is crucial, especially in your early stages of recovery. Many cities and treatment centers offer temporary sober living homes as an option for you. These homes are often peer-run with others in recovery and staffed by treatment professionals.