Relapse prevention and how it affects your addiction recovery

Relapse prevention can have a big impact on your recovery efforts. There are two schools of thought when it comes to relapse prevention in treating addiction. 1. One school of thought says that 12-step programs are the best form of relapse prevention. The idea here is that if you immerse yourself in AA or NA, and honestly work the program to the best of your ability, then you’re covered in so far as relapse prevention goes. While this approach has worked for many people, as they have long-term sobriety in a twelve step program, no real reflection on how they need to “prevent a relapse.” Instead, they go to meetings, helping other addicts and alcoholics, and teaming up with a sponsor to work a recovery program. This is not necessarily good or bad is simply a method of preventing relapse . The degree of success of such an approach will likely depend on how a person is willing to devote their whole working life of 12-step program. In other words, if you want to succeed in this mode, you can not drag a few AA meetings and expect your life changes. Instead, you must diligently work the program, stages, and immerse yourself in the model 12 step 2.. Another school of thought says that cognitive therapy to the best strategies for relapse prevention. An example of cognitive therapy would be if a counselor or therapist tried to convince an addict to change their thinking in some way. For example, they might try to RET , or Rational Emotive Therapy, in order to get the client to overcome their irrational belief structures and the limitation that ultimately cause them to drink or use drugs. Another example could simply try to use the thinking or positive affirmations to overcome addiction or to maintain sobriety. Part of the problem with cognitive therapies is that they think we can change our thought patterns at the drop of a hat. This is not how the mind works dependence – Unfortunately, our ways of thinking are deeply rooted and can usually be changed after we have changed our lifestyle and our behavior for a certain period of time. In other words We can not really change our thought patterns without first changing our lifestyles to match. This is one of the major limitations of cognitive therapy when it comes to relapse prevention. 3. A Another school of thought says that behavioral therapies make the best strategies to prevent relapse. The idea here is to obviously change our behavior to prevent future recurrences. The same pitfall seems to be true with behavioral approaches that it is with cognitive therapy. If we are still living in active addiction, then briefly change behavior at the surface does not profoundly affect our dependency or recovery efforts. The problem with a change of behavior is that c This is just a small part of the overall problem. Our thoughts, our emotional responses, our lifestyle and our relationship is damaged and intertwined into the mess we call addiction. Trying to isolate an approach such as changing the Behavior “always falls short because addiction is a problem necessarily complex. Thus, to effectively treat addiction and find a viable long-term relapse prevention, exactly what do we do? The answer to this This is complicated because addiction is complicated. Essentially, the answer lies in the construction of a new creative life in recovery after quitting drugs and alcohol. Passionate living while abstinence is the only viable method for relapse prevention.

Tagged as: Addiction, affects, Prevention, Recovery, Relapse