When you’re exploring addiction treatment services, it’s important to pursue comprehensive, holistic treatment. Treatment programs like this often include both evidence-based and experiential addiction treatment methods. And among those, cold plunge therapy is one of the key experiential modalities you may encounter. But what makes cold plunges so effective, and how do they integrate into a holistic substance abuse treatment plan?
What is Cold Plunge Therapy?
Cold plunge therapy has its roots in utilizing cold plunge baths or cold plunge pools for personal wellness, which has been a common practice in Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Finland for centuries. The physical and mental health benefits of a cold plunge in many ways translate into addiction treatment, which make it an ideal form of experiential therapy.
In cold plunge therapy, a cold plunge tub is filled with cold water, usually around 50 degrees Fahrenheit. When the water is ready, you submerge yourself in the cold plunge tub for a fixed period of time. This may be a few seconds or a minute at the most. After you get used to the cold plunge tub, you may work up to longer durations, but no more than five or 10 minutes typically. Your cold plunge immersions can also take place in short spurts, involving you sitting in cold water, getting out for a quick break, and then stepping back into the cold plunge pool or tub again.
The goal of cold plunge therapy is to take advantage of the natural responses your body generates when exposed to the cold. Not only does this form of therapy help you better understand how physical conditions affect mental health in the addiction process, but cold plunge therapy also benefits your overall well-being, putting you in a better state to achieve recovery.
Benefits of Cold Plunging in Addiction Recovery
Temporarily submerging yourself in cold water is a straightforward process on the surface. However, cold plunge therapy actually has a number of benefits in the holistic addiction recovery process. Some of the most impactful addiction recovery benefits of cold plunge therapy include:
Enhanced Mood
One of the key benefits of a cold plunge is its ability to naturally improve your mood, believe it or not. Though that may be the last thing on your mind when you accidentally jump into a cold shower, taking an intentional cold plunge can cause your brain to naturally generate the release of dopamine (which helps you experience pleasure and reward). This is particularly helpful when your brain’s dopamine receptors have been negatively affected by addiction. As a result, you’re in a better mood, which helps in navigating recovery. Plus, you relearn that you can experience pleasure without the use of addictive substances.
Reduced Stress
With an addiction, you’ve conditioned yourself to cope with stress, anxiety, and other negative feelings by using drugs or alcohol. But cold plunge therapy can actually retrain your body’s stress response over time. As a result, you’re able to keep your stress levels under control when you encounter anxiety triggers and other potential stressors that once led to addictive behaviors.
A Mental Reset
It’s easy for your thoughts and feelings to overcome you when you’re in the throes of addiction. That’s why a cold plunge can be particularly beneficial: it naturally gets you out of your head. The cold water can provide a mental reset that takes your focus away from compulsive, unhealthy, and consuming thought patterns. When that happens, you’re able to gain better mental clarity and focus on your recovery, without negative, habitual thinking getting in the way.
Physical Health Benefits
There are actually a number of physical health benefits of cold plunge, both during addiction recovery and for your long-term wellness. These can include:
- Increased circulation
- Enhanced metabolism
- Improved immune system functioning
- Rebalanced autonomic nervous system
- Reduced pain and sore muscles
- Reduced inflammation
- Increased energy levels
- Improved sleep quality
Holistic Addiction Treatment: Why it Matters
As we mentioned earlier, it’s important to seek holistic addiction treatment when you’re wanting to finally break free from alcohol or drug abuse. But why? Addiction in many ways is more than just trying to break a bad habit. It can negatively impact you physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. It’s also often rooted in past trauma, starting out as an unhealthy coping mechanism before spiraling into the addiction that it is today.
With that said, solely treating the outward symptoms of your addiction doesn’t work in the long run. You have to get beneath the surface of the problem to heal. Even combining physical treatment of addiction (such as medically-supervised detox therapy) with traditional talk therapy isn’t typically enough, as it leaves certain aspects of your addiction untouched. You may still have bad habits and underlying trauma in the background, setting you up to fail down the road. And then you eventually relapse, putting you back where you started and in need of addiction treatment again.
However, holistic addiction treatment fills in these gaps that other addiction treatment methods don’t. It treats you as a whole person, addressing your mind, body, and spirit in the addiction recovery process. Not only does this allow you to heal the root causes of your addiction, it equips you to stay healthy long after your treatment ends.
Cold Plunge Therapy and Holistic Addiction Treatment at Defining Wellness
A holistic substance abuse treatment plan will often utilize a variety of therapies to personalize your treatment to your unique needs. At Defining Wellness Centers for example, we incorporate both evidence-based treatment modalities and experiential therapies (including cold plunge therapy) into your addiction recovery care, such as:
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)
- Motivational interviewing (MI)
- Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR)
- Psychodrama
- Music therapy
- Group therapy
- Mindfulness meditation therapy
- Equine therapy
- Physical Fitness and nutrition
- Outdoor therapy
Though we may utilize multiple therapies in both inpatient and outpatient addiction treatment, the goal is that each would integrate into a complete approach that leads to your total healing. But how does cold plunge therapy in particular integrate into other treatment modalities offered in our comprehensive addiction treatment programs? Let’s take a look at some of the therapies mentioned above:
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
One of the most common and best-studied forms of psychotherapy according to InformedHealth.org, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) involves gaining clarity on your thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs so you can change those that are false and distressing. Cold plunges can aid your CBT experience by helping you achieve better mental clarity and focus to identify and change your thoughts that lead to addiction.
Motivational Interviewing (MI)
Motivational Interviewing (MI) is all about addressing and resolving uncertainties and insecurities in your life, motivating you to take action in a positive way and move towards your goals. Taking a cold plunge can complement MI well by helping you learn how to build resilience in the face of challenges and uncertainties, allowing you to stay motivated to achieve sobriety.
Mindfulness Meditation
When you’re practicing mindfulness meditation, you intentionally focus on staying present in the moment, remaining calm, and clearing your mind. Similarly, cold plunge therapy resets your mind, distracting you from negative patterns of thinking as you stay in the present moment of enduring the cold water. Utilizing both these therapy modalities together strengthens your ability to stay focused on your recovery and overcome any emotional challenges as you heal from addiction.
Group Therapy
Addiction thrives in isolation, which is why group therapy can be so effective in helping you overcome substance abuse. With group therapy, you’re encouraged to be vulnerable about your struggles, learn from others’ perspectives, and receive support from your peers. And cold plunge therapy can help strengthen each group therapy session by offering a shared experience for you to process and learn from together with others in treatment.
Equine Therapy
Equine therapy takes you out of your comfort zone through participating in horse-related activities such as grooming, feeding, walking, or riding your horse. It teaches you important emotional self-regulation skills and builds your self-confidence. Cold plunge therapy integrates well into equine therapy by providing an additional experience that enhances your self-regulation, keeps stress at bay, and teaches how to navigate challenges in the moment—setting you up for long-term success in recovery.
Physical Fitness and Nutrition
The mind-body connection is an important aspect of addiction recovery. Cold plunge therapy excels at helping you understand its importance firsthand as you learn how physical conditions affect mental health. Armed with this knowledge, you’re better able to approach the physical fitness and nutrition requirements of holistic addiction treatment, leading you to heal physically and mentally from addiction.
Ready to Achieve Lasting Recovery?
When you’re wanting to break free from addiction, cold plunge therapy as part of a holistic addiction treatment approach can help you accomplish your sobriety goals. At Defining Wellness Centers in Brandon and Ridgeland, Mississippi, our comprehensive treatment programs can put you in the best position to heal your mind, body, and spirit. And with our dual diagnosis treatment capabilities, we can address any co-occurring mental health disorders at the same time. If you’re ready to get started, contact our team today.
