Anyone who has ever been to rehab, or to any kind of recovery center, will know that there is often a potential issue about having to go back. The main goal of any addiction recovery service is to ensure that you are never seen there again, but this requires that you are also putting a lot of hard work into your drug recovery, even long after you have left the facility.
So how can you maximize your chances of never having a relapse and having to return to a drug rehab facility? There are actually a number of healthy habits that you can make use of which should help you to prevent drug rehab relapse, and in this article we are going to go through a number of them that you may want to consider, if you yourself have been in rehab before and you want to make sure you never have to go back.
Understanding Habits
One of the first things you will need to do in order to make sure you are successfully overcoming your addictions is to understand habits and how they work. After all, habits are an important part of how you become addicted, so the more you understand them, the easier it is to overcome your addiction. But the other main reason is that you actually need to use habits – good habits – to ensure that you are keeping yourself away from the substance in question after you have left rehab.
There are three stages to habit formation, and it’s important to get to know each as well as you can if you want to start building up some good habits that will hopefully keep you away from your addiction in the future.
Recognizing Your Triggers
First of all in this process, you have something called the cue. This is basically the initial trigger that causes the behavior in question, and it can actually be pretty much anything at all. In terms of your addiction, your cue was probably something stressful a lot of the time, but it could also be anything else – such as the end of a meal reminding you about the possibility of having a cigarette. It’s important to see your cues for what they are and to find a way to respond to them differently. This is the essence of good habit building.
Forming a Routine
The next stage in the forming of any habit is the routine. This is just another word for the habitual behavior itself, the way in which you respond to the cue. In addictive cycles, this will normally be the act of taking the drug. When you are trying to replace that with healthier habits, it will be more about replacing it with a different behavior altogether.
On a simple level, that could be something like having something else pleasurable instead. But it might also be something else entirely. When you are purposefully building a good habit, it will of course be something healthy that you do here.
Choosing Good Rewards
When you are addicted to something, the reward part of the habit cycle is the benefit that you get from carrying out the routine. Normally, this will be the good feeling that the drug gives you, and that the whole routine has been leading towards.
Of course, later on will come the crash, but right now your brain is satisfied that it has got what it wants. If you are trying to build a good habit, you’ll want to choose a reward that is obviously good for you, while still being enjoyable enough in some way that you want to do it again in the future – otherwise the habit is unlikely to stick.
Identifying Habits
If you want to change a habit, you first need to be able to identify your habits overall. This can be harder than you think, but it mostly comes down to developing a certain mindfulness, as well as observing yourself as you go about your life and being as honest as you can about waht you see in your own behavior. If you can do that properly, you are going to find that it is much easier to see the habit forming – and identify those that might have been in place for a long time.
It can be helpful to write down your habit, as well as jotting down the potential triggers that you have identified, so that you have a much better sense of what they are and you can remember them when you look back in future
If you think you need help with this, don’t hesitate to contact the Findlay Recovery Center as soon as possible.
