Key Takeaways
- Relapse doesn’t mean failure; it’s a normal part of recovery.
- Neuroscience, behavioral dynamics, and environmental factors can contribute to relapses along your recovery journey.
- When you experience a relapse, it’s important to take healthy steps to get back on track, such as debriefing what caused your relapse, adjusting your recovery plan, and maintaining hope.
- Defining Wellness Centers’ addiction treatment programming offers the tools you need to navigate relapse successfully and maintain your recovery.
When you’re in addiction recovery, experiencing relapse is no doubt discouraging. You may even feel like all your recovery work has been done in vain when it happens. But relapse doesn’t mean failure. In fact, encountering relapse as part of recovery is very common to those coming out of addictions.
On the surface, relapse may also seem simple. However, it’s actually more complex than you think, and you can learn a lot from it as a result. Once you understand the science behind relapse and its stages, you can better prevent it in the future, as well as learn how to come back from setbacks in sobriety well.
Relapse Doesn’t Mean Failure – You Need to View Relapse as Part of Recovery
As we’ve said, relapse doesn’t mean failure, but you honestly may feel that way in the midst of it. However, 40 to 60% of those in addiction treatment relapse at some point, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. All that to say, you’re not alone when it happens to you.
Addiction’s relapse rate is strikingly similar to other chronic diseases like asthma and hypertension. Experiencing relapse with asthma isn’t viewed as failure, and neither should it be with addiction. The bottom line is that addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease. Consequently, relapses are bound to happen. And when they do occur, they don’t negate your prior progress.
As part of the recovery journey, relapse also takes place in a process of steps, not as one isolated event. These relapse process stages include:
- Emotional relapse: The first of the relapse process stages, emotional relapse takes place when you experience emotional instability and don’t utilize healthy coping strategies in response. This leaves you vulnerable to relapse.
- Mental relapse: You begin to rationalize or even glamorize past substance abuse, while still wanting to stay sober. As these thoughts persist, you may experience cravings, minimize the consequences of your addiction, and start imagining yourself using again.
- Physical relapse: You physically take substances again, either impulsively or by fulfilling a mental coping plan that you’ve had for some time.
Relapse Recovery Science: Why Relapse Happens in Addiction
If you’ve dealt with a relapse, you’re likely wondering how you arrived at this point in the first place. The answer to your question isn’t rooted in simple self-discipline issues. Why relapse happens in addiction is more nuanced, involving your environment, behaviors, and even relapse recovery science.
The Neuroscience of Relapse in Addiction
Behind the scenes, addiction is about more than behavior changes. Your brain changes, too, as it develops a chemical dependency on the steady supply of dopamine substances provide. Consequently, your brain has to adjust to your substance’s absence in recovery, leading to changes in reward pathways, craving circuits, and stress systems. All of these adjustments can leave you vulnerable to reverting back to addiction (you’re brain’s used to it, after all).
Exposure to addiction triggers can also drive you to relapse. These may be social or environmental cues that remind you of your substances, such as seeing someone using or visiting a bar, shares American Addiction Centers. If you’re not prepared, you may get triggered and impulsively start using again.
According to the Journal of Health Service Psychology, the changes that your brain experiences due to addiction can also cause you to have low stress tolerance. Any future stress combined with self-efficacy struggles that people in recovery often experience (i.e. “I can’t cope”) can leave you returning to substances to feel better.
Psychological & Behavioral Dynamics
Internally, it’s easy to adapt an “all or nothing” approach to recovery. That means even a lapse or minor slip-up can generate substantial guilt. With this line of thinking, you’re unfortunately more likely to feel overwhelmed and eventually abandon your recovery goals in favor of short-term relief. Called the Abstinence Violation Effect, this experience can lead to relapse, shares the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.
With an addiction, you’ve also developed behavioral coping patterns that are hard to break. When you experience a bad day at work for example, you may naturally want to drop by the local watering hole afterwards to recover. Without new healthier coping mechanisms in place, it’s common to revert back to your addictive substances.
Addiction is often rooted in underlying past trauma that hasn’t been addressed. Co-occurring disorders like anxiety, bipolar disorder, or depression can also contribute to substance abuse. While your trauma or mental health challenges remain untreated, you’re likely to relapse with addictive substances to cope with your comorbidity symptoms.
Environmental & Social Factors
The environment where you live can also influence your potential to relapse. If you’re regularly exposed to high-risk settings that include addiction triggers and stressful life events, your relapse vulnerability remains high unless you make changes to your environment.
Peer influence and social stressors don’t help either. According to the Journal of Substance Use and Addiction Treatment, family disputes, as well as addicted friends and family are strongly associated with relapse. Instead of supporting your recovery, your loved ones can hinder it. This, combined with living somewhere that lacks aftercare support and long-term monitoring, can increase your chances of relapsing.
Recovery After Relapse: How to Come Back from Setbacks in Sobriety
When a relapse happens, it isn’t the time to give up. Instead, it’s important to prioritize learning from relapse in recovery so you can get back on track with your sobriety goals. Coping after relapse in healthy ways is very doable, and you can soon find yourself refocused and recommitted to your recovery. Here are some key steps you can take to resume your recovery after relapse:
1. Back to Safety: Your Immediate Response
When you relapse, your natural response may be to punish yourself as if you’ve failed. However, it’s much better to respond with self-compassion, understanding that relapse is part of recovery. Immediately seeking the safety of clinical support is a must, such as additional therapy and even medical care if you’re concerned about the potential for overdose.
2. Debrief and Analyze What Happened
As much as it may be hard to do in the moment, it’s important to review the chain of events that contributed to your relapse. You need to think through the relapse process stages you experienced, taking note of any emotional, mental, or situational triggers you encountered. What warning signs were missed? What relapse prevention strategies came up short? This is your golden opportunity to learn from your relapse and apply it to your future recovery, so it’s best to debrief and analyze your relapse with your therapist or accountability partner.
3. Adjust & Strengthen Your Recovery Plan
After assessing what led to your relapse, now’s the time to course correct your current tactics to reduce the chances of it happening again. Think through the science behind the relapse prevention strategies you have in place. Do you need to make changes? This may involve incorporating new coping tools and lifestyle adjustments. Adding or reinforcing routine interventions can also be helpful, such as:
- Adding new therapy appointments to your calendar
- Taking medication to help with cravings or triggers
- Seeking stronger peer support, such as joining a support group
4. Maintain Hope & Resilience
Lastly, you can take steps to reframe the narrative of your recovery journey. Instead of dwelling on the mistakes you made, make time to review real relapse stories of recovery, either online or with your therapist. Remind yourself that many successful recoveries involve setbacks, including yours.
As you embrace hope, you can also work on reinforcing your self-confidence and self-efficacy. Remember, you can achieve lasting recovery. By focusing on this mindset, you’ll develop resilience to stay the course when future challenges arise.
Evidence-Based Relapse Prevention & Recovery
Whether you’re preemptively wanting to avoid relapse or recovering after it happened, there are evidence-based strategies you can adopt to help your recovery journey. Evidence-based strategies are those backed by proven science and are often pursued alongside professional help. Some of these strategies include:
- Utilizing a Relapse Prevention (RP) model of recovery, which identifies external and internal addiction triggers and develops healthy strategies to cope
- Participating in clinical aftercare programming, ongoing therapy, and support groups
- Embracing mindfulness-based or relapse-resilient approaches
- Incorporating medication-assisted treatment when applicable
- Joining recovery programs that offer step-down levels of care
Relapse & Recovery at Defining Wellness Centers
At Defining Wellness Centers in Mississippi, our addiction treatment programs view relapse as a part of your recovery journey, not a moral failing. Through evidence-based treatment and modern wellness technology, we offer tools and protocols for navigating relapse in a healthy way, such as reassessment, intensified support, and peer engagement. As a result, relapse resilience becomes a major aspect of your long-term sobriety.
Relapse is painful, but not fatal to your recovery. It’s clear that relapse recovery science points to the potential for growth in the long run. Setbacks are simply chances to refine your path. If you or someone you love is in danger of relapse, contact us today for help in defining a treatment plan to get back on track.
Sources
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
Treatment and Recovery: Drugs, Brains, and Behavior — The Science of Addiction. National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2024.
Recovery Centers of America.
What Is Relapse — and What It Is Not. Recovery Centers of America, 2023.
American Addiction Centers.
Understanding Drug Relapse and Recovery. American Addiction Centers, 2023.
Sinha, R.
Chronic Stress, Drug Use, and Vulnerability to Addiction. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 1141, 2008.
Tiffany, S. T., & Wray, J. M.
The Relapse Process and Relapse Prevention. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, Vol. 18, 2022.
Li, Y., Luo, J., et al.
Relapse Prevalence and Predictors Among People with Substance Use Disorders: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders Reports, Vol. 14, 2023.