How to avoid addiction relapse triggers after graduating from drug or alcohol addiction treatment center.

Where does a drug or alcohol craving come from? Why do people in addiction recovery, after giving up drug abuse, suddenly start to think about, and obsess over, their drug of choice?

The answer lies in internal triggers and external triggers. There are many common addiction triggers that can lead to persistent thoughts and images of substance use.

In this article, we will discuss internal and external triggers for addiction. We will also provide some examples of internal and external triggers, including emotional triggers in recovery.

Identifying a relapse trigger, and learning how to deal with it, is an important step in the relapse prevention process. It is still possible to prevent relapse and a return to addictive behavior after cravings have begun, but it is better to prevent the craving in the first place.

Addiction treatment programs provide addiction therapy that includes a relapse prevention plan designed to help the individual understand emotional triggers. By learning to avoid external triggers, and to accept and not act on internal triggers, it is possible for the recovering addict to maintain sobriety long-term.

What is an external trigger?

An external trigger is a person, place, or thing that brings back an intense memory of drug use. The memory could come back in the form of a physical feeling.

One common trigger source that is particularly effective at causing distress and drug cravings is smells. There is a wide variety of smells that can serve as a common relapse trigger.

For example, one person told me that the lavender smell present in many soaps and lotions triggers thoughts of drug use and cravings for their drug of choice. Somehow, the lavender smell was associated with the person’s substance use, and now serves as an external trigger.

Places where a person purchased drugs also act as triggers. If a former drug user used to meet their dealer at a particular corner gas station, that gas station may become a powerful trigger.

An easy way to deal with the gas station or corner store trigger is to avoid that location, if possible. If there are many alternative routes to get around that do not take you past a location that triggers you, you should avoid those locations.

Should I delete my drug dealer’s phone number?

Does the answer to this question seem obvious to you? You might be surprised at how people find excuses to hold on to connections with people who threaten their recovery.

A patient once told me, after testing positive for fentanyl and not heroin, that he had to go warn his dealer. His dealer believed that he was selling pure heroin, so it was important to warn him that his supply was now contaminated with fentanyl.

When the patient first started to explain the need to visit his drug dealer to warn him, it almost made sense. Wouldn’t it be a service to the community to let this drug dealer know that he is unknowingly selling toxic fentanyl?

Yet, the person who is new to recovery must think of themselves first. Nothing should come ahead of their addiction recovery.

I explained to the patient that he had no obligation to warn his dealer. In fact, I explained, that the dealer likely already knew that he was selling fentanyl as heroin to his customers, putting their lives in danger.

The clear answer to the question about deleting the dealer’s number is yes. Delete all phone numbers, phone contact records, social media connections, and anywhere else that makes it possible to reconnect with the dealer.

The ideal situation for a person in long-term recovery is that they reach a point where they no longer know where to get their drug of choice. Cravings come and go, so if you don’t know where to buy drugs, you will be over the craving long before you think of a way to find a drug connection again.

How do internal triggers differ from external triggers?

As you can guess, internal triggers come from within. You can avoid all the external triggers in your life and still have internal triggers that make you think about drug abuse or alcohol abuse again.

Internal triggers can be thoughts and emotions. While you may imagine that only negative feelings would serve as triggers, positive feelings can also lead to drug or alcohol cravings.

Some people were driven to drug use by emotional pain in their lives. Others turned to substance use because of boredom or to enhance pleasurable experiences.

Some internal trigger examples are as follows: a person who used cocaine or meth to enhance sexual experiences may find themselves with a sex addiction and sex-related triggers. It can be very difficult for a person who is triggered by sexual thoughts and feelings to learn to handle these feelings without having drug cravings.

For someone who has suffered from physical or emotional abuse as a child, opioids may become their drug of choice, because opioids help to suppress emotional pain. A heroin addiction treatment center would likely provide family therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy to help the client to learn to address emotional pain without the need for opioids.

How can someone working to overcome substance abuse learn to live with substance abuse triggers?

Imagine attending a cocaine addiction treatment center where they teach you about the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. You learn about how to identify your higher power and how to accept that you are powerless over your addiction.

The steps are about understanding yourself, making positive changes, and learning to help others. The 12th step can be applied by helping an addict who has relapsed to return to recovery.

During your stay in rehab, they bring you to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. There is an old joke that rehab costs $30,000 to learn that meetings are free.

What happens to the recovering cocaine addict who suffers from reoccurring internal triggers? They stay away from people, places, and things, which takes care of the external triggers, but they are still haunted by the thoughts and feelings that bring on drug cravings.

In a traditional substance abuse treatment program, they may recommend sharing about your feelings in group meetings, to get things out in the open. Keeping secrets about thoughts and plans to get high again, as they say, will eventually lead to relapse.

Additionally, a modern rehab will approach substance use disorder from a scientific perspective, where individual therapy sessions utilize cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, and dialectical behavior therapy. One-on-one mental health treatment can provide new tools to learn how to live with internal triggers. To learn more about how to defeat these triggers, contact Dr. Mark Leeds.