Recovering From Addiction: Warning Signs of Relapse

Experts in the fields of addiction and alcoholism have estimated that as many as 90% of all people who become addicted to a substance and then abstain will subsequently relapse at least one time in their life. Furthermore, a large percentage of those people will fall victim to multiple relapses - each usually with more disastrous results than the last. Consequently, relapse prevention is a serious lifelong concern for any person who is in recovery from substance abuse or alcoholism. This means that recognizing and understanding the warning signs of relapse is critical for people who are unwilling to risk their sobriety - and possibly their lives - just to use one more time.

One common myth that only serves to perpetuate relapses is that once a person has completed an addiction program such as residential inpatient treatment or intensive outpatient treatment, they have effectively been "cured" of their addiction or alcoholism. However, this is simply not the case. Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome (PAWS) sets in shortly after detox and can cause a wide range of symptoms for up to two years. These symptoms include depression, inability to think clearly or organize thoughts, inability to solve simple problems, inability to deal with stress, insomnia and severe cravings for drugs or alcohol. PAWS symptoms cause many in recovery to self-medicate as a form of relief.

When a person begins having difficulty coping with PAWS symptoms they often exhibit a series of behaviors that can serve as clear warning signs that a relapse is imminent without some type of intervention. Recognition of these behaviors is absolutely vital in order to properly address them:

* Withdrawal: People who are in danger of relapsing often withdraw socially - especially from other people in recovery or from family members. Self-isolation can be a problem that grows rapidly, but the recovering person might become defensive or simply deny any problem if confronted about this behavior.

* Loss of Routine: While on a downward spiral toward eventual relapse, many recovering addicts or alcoholics lose their daily routine entirely. They might sleep or eat at odd hours, find excessive reasons to shirk responsibilities or call out of work repeatedly, or otherwise change the normal patterns that are essential to maintaining recovery.

* Emotional and Intellectual Paralysis: Being unable to formulate or follow through with plans, thoughts, or feelings is a classic indicator of a possible relapse.

* Over or Under-Reaction to Stress: As a person's recovery plan slowly degrades, their reactions to normal stress might seem extreme and disproportionate, or they might not react at all to severe stress.

* Depression: On the way to relapse people often experience a period of depression, with all of the classic signs including an inordinate amount of time spent sleeping, becoming socially withdrawn, suicidal ideations, lack of hygiene and other not-so-obvious symptoms.

* Compulsivity: Addiction is a disease of compulsion, and just prior to a relapse this may manifest itself by unhealthy obsessions with food, sex, cigarettes or tobacco, or any other fixation.

If ignored or unnoticed these warning signs will almost always lead to relapse. And because a person suffering from addiction might have difficulty addressing these signs, it's vital that the people they are close to are aware of what the signs are and how to address them when they appear. If this sounds like you, then please call us right now by using the links below. Addiction is considerably worsened by successive relapses, so the life of someone you care about may very well depend on preventing that next (or first) relapse.

Click here to speak to a professional addiction specialist from our Florida drug treatment center. We can help you no matter where you are or what time it is.

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Stopping Drinking - 3 Important Things to Remember

1) Do whatever it takes

Always remember that quitting drinking is probably the most important step in your life. Why? Because this means a complete change in your lifestyle, behaviour, social life, health condition, job, family... Actually, in every area of your life. A complete change. It makes you not only feel different, but stopping using alcohol switches your mind, soul and body to another state. It is well known that the alcohol withdrawal symptoms could be drastic, also in the beginning when you are sober only for some weeks or months you could probably feel as in a deadlock. But all those bad feelings eventually goes away, and then you see everything different - your dreams come true, your family members start to love and respect you much more, you experience success in your career and you finally find out what are the most important things in your life.

2) Reward yourself

As mentioned before, it's fully understandable that drinking cessation is not at all an easy process. To feel better and to celebrate your first success in this unpleasant journey, try to reward yourself. This doesn't mean that you need to find a 'new addiction' instead of your drinking activities. It will be great if you just, for example, saved the money you would normally spend buying drinks at the bar, and use it to do something you have dreamt of for a long time - buy some new clothes, change your style and appearance a bit to fit your new lifestyle, please your closest people with something cute, or probably save even more money and finally buy that car you have ever wanted!

3) Find like-minded people

For some people, most probably the biggest obstacle in quitting drinking is their drinker friends. Actually, you need to treat them and their habits from a negative point of view when you are trying to quit this destructing behaviour pattern. Some of us will just ignore our friends' calls on Friday night when they're trying to pull us out of the home for a drink, but for some this method simply will not work. The best approach for this situation is actually trying to find a different social group for yourself. Yeah, probably it might seem impossible in some cases, but, trust me - if your friends can't respect your choice to stay away from alcohol, they're actually not your friends. In such case, just try to change the environment where you spend your leisure time, for example, find some social groups online who are trying to do the exact thing as you do - quitting drinking.

Find out more tips on How to Quit Drinking more easily on my blog.

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Why Addiction Is a Disease - Not a Symptom

Any person who has ever lived through addiction can tell you first hand that addiction is a serious disease that requires intensive treatment. However, there are a host of "alternative" treatment centers cropping up all across the country that postulate that this is not the case. Instead, they view addiction as merely the symptom of an underlying disease or condition, and that if the underlying condition is treated, the addiction will be cured. But while dual-diagnosis conditions are common, most of these only serve to exacerbate each other and neither actually causes the other. This is an important consideration because it is only by approaching addiction as a disease that it can be successfully treated. When treated as a symptom, relapses are inevitable.

Addiction is considered a physiological disease because it meets the same requirements as other disorders and diseases, including a great deal of terminal illnesses. This is important to note because unabated addiction is 100% fatal. The basic requirements which clearly classify addiction as a disease include:

*The symptoms are the same across many different types of substances. For instance, whether your drug of choice is cocaine or alcohol, the general symptoms are always the same

*Addiction is chronic and does not subside without treatment

*Addiction symptoms are progressive, resulting in death

*Just as other diseases surface repeatedly, addiction results in an extremely high occurrence of relapse

*Addiction and alcoholism are treatable

Addiction is typically diagnosed by a series of behaviors as opposed to physical symptoms or any type of medical testing. These behaviors can be summarized as repeated failures to control the substance abuse despite severe consequences. This means that an addict will lose control over a substance, obsess over it, and continue even when they know that there is imminent danger or risk of life-changing consequences.

Many experts believe that addicts and alcoholics are genetically predisposed to the disease of addiction, and most are also in agreement that some environmental factor is usually required to trigger the initial addictive event. Once this process has begun, addiction truly becomes a neurological disease. This is because the process of developing tolerance, physical dependence and outright addiction builds neurological pathways in the brain that are permanent in nature. This means that even after a person stops using drugs or alcohol, those pathways still exist and they demand to be "fed".

Of course, the only thing that feeds these neurological pathways is active addiction - using drugs or alcohol -after all, that's exactly what they were built for. By the time addiction has reached this stage, the afflicted individual suffers from an uncontrollable urge to obtain and use their drug of choice. It is not an issue of free will or behavioral control; addiction is a physical, neurological disease for which there is no known cure - only treatment to manage it.

Just as a person wouldn't treat a terminal illness at home, an addict or alcoholic should be able to expect to get help at a professional facility just as they would with any disease. The most difficult part of the disease of addiction is that an addict will almost never get help on their own because the very nature of the illness will not allow the sufferer to believe they are afflicted by it.

That's where you come in. If you know someone who needs help for addiction or alcoholism, then please do everything that you can to help them get the right treatment as soon as possible. Their life may depend on it. You can start right here with our Florida drug rehab. For serious and fast action, use the links below now for our extremely successful residential inpatient treatment program.

Click here to learn more about addiction: http://www.recoveryfirst.org/

Click here to check your insurance for a powerful drug rehab program.

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