Relapse Prevention in Lebanon, PA

Making up your mind to enter drug or alcohol detox, successfully completing a course and enjoying freedom from cravings and withdrawal symptoms for the first time, can be a wonderful thing. It's important to not forget for a moment, however, that at this stage, sobriety tends to be fleeting in nature. Following detox at a drug and alcohol rehab, the mind tends to be highly vulnerable to relapse. The vulnerability never actually goes away; it can be especially great the first five years. For those diagnosed with co-occurring mental health disorders such as depression or anxiety, or a psychological disorder such as anger, the risk of relapsing tends to be much greater. Luckily, there is treatment available. For anyone serious about seeking freedom from addiction, detox needs to segue into therapy. It isn't hard to find excellent therapeutic relapse prevention in Lebanon. Signing up after detox is the best possible way to ensure that the momentum gained in detox is not lost.

What Is Relapse Prevention?

Ideally, programs for addiction treatment should be built into any comprehensive drug rehab in Lebanon; it shouldn't be treated as a separate program to sign up to after detox concludes. When presented in this way, many people simply choose to not participate. While they may not realize it, ignoring relapse prevention puts their sobriety at great risk.

The aim of relapse prevention is to help recovering addicts understand the ways in which their resolve may soften and the way in which attraction to drugs may return. Called relapse, this process is medically well-understood. It's possible for recovering addicts to understand how it operates, and to learn ways to avoid it.

Their triggers: An addiction trigger is a powerful associative memory. It is in the nature of the brain to associate highly pleasurable or painful experiences with concurrently occurring environmental cues such as sights, sounds, smells, feelings or people. The aim of such association is simple -- in the future, it helps the brain look for clues in anticipation of pleasure or pain.

In the case of drugs, the intense pleasures involved tend to be associated with many triggers. When the addict comes by any of these triggers, the brain is powerfully reminded of drugs and begins to crave them. In therapy, participants learn ways in which to identify their triggers and learn lifestyle habits that help them steer clear of them. From stress to high emotion, old friends to familiar hangouts, participants learn to go out of their way to avoid these triggers. Trigger management is a very important way to avoid relapse.

Thought management: Cravings can come on in spite one's best efforts. When a recovering addict finds himself in a bad mood, often, cravings take over. Thought management therapy helps prepare participants for what to do in these cases. In therapy, participants go through detailed cognitive-behavioral therapy to help learn to not automatically act on their thoughts. They learn to mentally go through possible outcomes of their actions before they embark on them. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a highly evolved therapeutic approach that helps with a number of automatic and self-destructive thought processes that harm addicts.

Relapse prevention in Lebanon also helps recovering addicts avoid the trap of all-or-nothing thinking. It often gets in the way when a person in recovery, in a moment of weakness, takes a drink or a shot of a drug. Often, when this happens, the all-or-nothing cognitive distortion kicks in -- they tend to believe that all is lost and that they may, as well, completely give up.

In addiction therapy and drug rehab in Lebanon, patients learn to tell the difference between lapse and relapse. A lapse, they begin to see, is simply a learning experience that they can recover from. It is in their hands to keep a lapse turning into a relapse.

Making the Family Part of Treatment

The best relapse prevention programs are designed to make sure to involve family members in the treatment that they offer addicts. The reason for having family involved is simple: a supportive family is an excellent indicator of long-term sobriety. Friendly family is able to exert influence on a loved one, and powerfully motivate them to stay away from drugs.

Therapy that involves the family involves them in one-on-one counseling, group therapy, and educational programs. It also makes helps patients and their families by helping smooth over tensions and emotional distancing that may have occurred.

It's important to see addiction for the chronic mental illness that it is; it shouldn't be treated as something that can be got rid of with a couple of months of medicine or other quick treatment. With patience, perseverance and a quality program for relapse prevention in Lebanon, you can always overcome addiction. Call Lebanon Drug Rehab Centers now for help (877) 804-1531.