Maintaining a sober life after struggling with substance abuse problems can be difficult. Even with some addiction treatment, there’s always a risk of relapse. Learning relapse prevention skills can help you or your loved one stay on course and maintain sobriety years after they’ve left addiction treatment.
How Much Of A Risk Is Relapse?
Recovering from addiction can take years, even an entire lifetime. For that reason, it’s classified as a chronic disease. Like any other chronic diseases, relapse is not only possible, it’s very likely.
The relapse rates for addiction are near the same as the relapse rates for hypertension and diabetes. It’s not uncommon for around fifty percent of patients to relapse during or after going through treatment. People going through their first year of treatment are more likely to turn back to substance abuse than those who are later in their recovery. No matter where someone is in their recovery process, though, relapse is still possible.
Even if someone relapses later in their recovery, it can still be dangerous. Because the body has become accustomed to going without drugs or alcohol, it will take less to have their body respond to it. People who use a lot of a substance in one sitting will end up overdosing because their body isn’t used to that volume any longer. For some, that overdose could lead to their death.
How Relapse Prevention Skills Can Help Patients Stay Sober
Addiction treatment revolves around changing destructive habits and behaviors that lead to substance abuse. Since those behaviors also involve physical and chemical changes in the body, altering those can take a very long time. It’s possible for life stresses such as family issues, career changes, and monetary problems to negatively impact the recovery process long before someone has fully recovered.
Relapse prevention skills are put in place to help patients stay on track during their recovery. Through proper addiction treatment programs, patients are able to learn how to recognize stressful stimuli, avoid stressful situations, and handle situations that may return them to drug use. These skills may have to be learned over a series of treatment programs throughout various stages of the recovery process. However, a foundation for one’s recovery must be started at the very beginning in order for patients to have the most success in their addiction recovery. That means starting with a quality detox program.
Preventing Relapse Starts With Going Through A Detox Program
No matter how long someone has been using, going through a drug detox is a necessary part of treatment. Not only can detox programs provide patients with a foundation to their recovery, but they can also help people through the tough withdrawal process.
Some people who wind up relapsing do so because they’re unable to get through the withdrawal symptoms associated with the first stage of addiction treatment. Substance abuse causes the body to weaken over time. Quitting drug or alcohol abuse suddenly will cause the body to go into shock. The stress of not taking the addictive substance can cause physical pain, severe health problems, or even death.
Serenity House Detox & Recovery can provide you or a loved one with the comfort that’s necessary during withdrawal. Along with that, we provide individualized care that will help build the foundation necessary in order to keep you from relapsing. We offer one-on-one therapy, gender-specific therapy, and other programs to all of our patients. They can start recovery in a way that’s best suited for them, no matter what substances they’ve struggled with in the past.
You can learn the skills you need in order to attain lasting sobriety. Call Serenity House Detox & Recovery at 866.516.8356 and start your addiction recovery today.
