Entering recovery is a beautiful and often exciting thing. The journey has been filled with peaks and valleys that have challenged and inspired resilience. You join a growing community of individuals who have put in the work to reach early and long-term recovery. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), 7 in 10 (72.2 percent or 20.9 million) U.S. adults are recovering or in recovery from substance use disorder (SUD). However, on your recovery journey post-treatment, it is important to remain aware of and manage cravings and triggers throughout recovery.
You can get caught up in the excitement of early and long-term recovery. In the excitement of recovery, you may overlook the tools you learned in treatment to manage cravings and triggers. Recovery is a lifelong process, so cravings and triggers do not go away or end with your treatment program. The challenges of cravings and triggers can remain with you and disrupt your well-being when they are left to fester. Therefore, understanding your cravings and triggers can be invaluable to helping you maintain your recovery throughout your life.
At Driftwood Recovery, we know that fostering healthy attachments through connection is vital to building a strong foundation in recovery. Recovery is not something that should be done alone. Rather, recovery should happen within a community to guide you through the successes and challenges of recovery. With an attachment-based approach, you can find the connection and support you need in a sober community to thrive. Through our alumni program, you can find a sober community built on compassion, understanding, and guidance no matter where you are on your recovery journey.
Yet, you may still worry about the thought of continuing to have cravings in recovery. Having concerns about how you will maintain your recovery independently with cravings is understandable. However, you are not alone in your recovery or the stumbles and leaps you may make along your journey. You have a vibrant alumni program here to help you navigate this next leg of your recovery journey. Therefore, increasing your understanding of cravings and triggers can help you learn how to sustain your recovery in your daily life.
What Are Cravings in Addiction?
According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), cravings are a strong, urgent, or abnormal desire for a particular substance or activity. Many types of cravings exist, including food cravings. However, cravings related to addiction can be significantly devastating in active addiction and recovery when left unaddressed. As noted in JAMA Psychiatry, drug cue reactivity and craving are an important set of underlying mechanisms and predictors of drug use and relapse.
Cravings encompass a complex psychological phenomenon in which you experience a seemingly insatiable desire to consume the addictive substance or substances. Yet, what drives cravings to reengage with substances in recovery? For many people, cravings are often associated with cues or triggers. Therefore, addressing the relationship between cravings and triggers can provide insight into how cravings and triggers together can impact your recovery.
The Relationship Between Cravings and Triggers
First, understanding what triggers are can highlight the significance of their relationship with cravings. According to Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, a trigger is a stimulus that elicits a reaction. Moreover, as a key element of cravings in addiction, triggers are the stimuli that trigger or activate drug-related memories.
The activation of drug-related memories connects to the same reward anticipation and craving response that occurred during active addiction. Most often, triggers are thought of as external stimuli that induce a reaction. However, triggers can also be enacted internally as well.
While everyone has triggers that are unique to them, some of the cues that can trigger cravings include:
- External triggers
- Locations you associate with past substance use, like bars, clubs, and other places where you used substances
- Holidays and celebrations where substances like alcohol are readily available
- High-stress situations and relationships like work stress, low income, and family conflicts
- Internal triggers
- Boredom
- Challenges with mental health like depression and anxiety
- Physical discomfort or pain
Looking at the external and internal triggers showcases the many ways cravings can develop or reemerge from triggers.
Impact of Cravings and Triggers on Recovery
When triggers are ignored or unknown, it can increase cravings and your risk for relapse. Although it can feel scary or overwhelming, cravings are a normal part of recovery. Thus, recovery and relapse prevention is less about preventing cravings and more about learning how to effectively respond to cravings and triggers. Therefore, being aware of your cravings and triggers allows you to develop healthy coping strategies to reduce and process your cravings without relapsing.
Ways to Manage Cravings and Triggers
Cravings and triggers do not have to be the end of your recovery. With support, you can build tools to effectively address cravings and triggers in your life during and post-treatment. Listed below are some of the ways you can learn to identify and manage your triggers for cravings in your daily life:
- Keep a journal of your triggers
- Set healthy boundaries with your loved ones
- Identify and build a care plan for unavoidable high-risk situations
- Reach out for support from your support network
Thus, tips on managing your cravings and triggers highlight the value of your sober community in alumni to help you navigate recovery.
The Value of Continuing Support at Driftwood Recovery
At Driftwood Recovery, we know access to a peer-driven network can give you the tools you need to sustain recovery in the face of cravings and triggers. With a strong and vibrant sober community, our alumni program offers the value of shared experiences, accountability, and encouragement to guide you as you learn to live independently. It is important to remember that independent does not mean alone. Through our alumni program, you are never alone as you lean on and act as a source of support for your community.
Unaddressed triggers can contribute to cravings that can increase your risk for relapse. However, relapse from cravings and triggers can be prevented or diminished when you are aware of the external and internal cues that trigger your cravings. With greater self-awareness, you can identify and build a plan of care to manage your triggers. Learning how to manage triggers to minimize addiction cravings in recovery can feel daunting, but with support, you can build the tools you need to sustain recovery. Therefore, through our active alumni program, you can find guidance, accountability, and encouragement in a community of peers who are taking their own unique but shared journey toward recovery. To learn more, call Driftwood Recovery at (512) 759-8330 today.