More than two-thirds of people relapse within just a few weeks after receiving treatment for a drug or alcohol addiction. If you’re trying to break an addiction, finding ways to prevent relapsing should be one of your top goals.
How do you prevent relapsing after your treatment? One option is to learn and apply the best tips for staying sober.
With the right steps, choices, and decisions, you can stay clean after attending an addiction rehab. Here are eight tips that you can use to avoid falling back into drugs or alcohol.
-
Avoid Your Old “Friends”
After you get help for your addiction, you’ll need to make some lifestyle changes. The first one is avoiding your old “friends.” The people you were around before are probably people who use alcohol or drugs.
Learning how to quit drugs requires avoiding the people you once used drugs with. For many addicts, this is a difficult step to take. After all, these friends might be the only ones you have.
If you stop using drugs and stop hanging around with them, you might feel lonely and isolated. A lot of recovering addicts experience these feelings, but there are ways to cope with them.
-
Learn Your Triggers
Secondly, learning how to quit alcohol and drugs involves understanding your triggers. A trigger is something that causes you to relapse and turn back to alcohol or drugs.
If you can learn what your triggers are, you’ll have a better chance of avoiding relapsing. You can learn your triggers while attending rehab. You can also learn them by talking to a counselor.
Here are some common triggers that cause people to relapse:
- Anger
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Seeing alcohol or drugs, or anything related to either
- People
- Places
- Loneliness
- Boredom
Determining your triggers is a critical step for staying sober. If you need help with these, ask someone you trust.
-
Fill Your Schedule With Healthy, Productive Activities
You can also stay sober by staying busy. If you can fill your schedule with healthy, productive activities, you’ll have less time to think about drugs or alcohol.
One good step is to get a job if you don’t already have one. If your job doesn’t require many hours, find a second job or get a different one.
Working out is another good activity you can do to stay busy. When you exercise, it can also help your physical and mental health as you begin living a sober life.
-
Continue Seeking Treatment
It’s also helpful to continue seeking treatment from a drug addiction treatment facility like Hope Rising. Most rehab programs only last for three to six weeks, which isn’t always enough.
After completing a program like this, you can continue seeking help from the treatment center or other places. By continuing your treatment, you’ll improve your odds of staying clean.
For example, you might want to sign up for an IOP course, which stands for intensive outpatient therapy. IOP classes might require going to the center two to three times a week for treatment.
You can pursue a variety of different options with treatment for a drug or alcohol addiction. The goal is to find one that works for you.
-
Attend Meetings
Many addicts find that attending meetings is also helpful for staying clean and sober. Narcotics Anonymous (NA) and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) are the most common types of meetings addicts attend.
You can find NA and AA meetings in most towns and cities. You can also find other types of meetings you can attend for encouragement, help, and accountability.
-
Start Healthy Lifestyle Habits
As mentioned, learning how to stay sober requires lifestyle changes, and you’ll have to be willing to make the right ones. Here are several that you can consider:
Developing a Healthy Eating Plan
Abusing alcohol or drugs can leave your body with physical issues. As a result, you’ll need to focus on becoming healthy again, and a great place to start is by creating a healthy eating plan.
Eating healthy foods can help you regain your strength and physical health, and eating the right foods can also help your brain operate correctly.
Exercising
Exercising is also good for your body and mind. If you can start working out at least a few times a week, you’ll feel better physically and emotionally.
Volunteering
If you have time on your hands, you might also want to find some opportunities to volunteer. Volunteering provides a way to give to others. When you do this, you’ll likely feel better about yourself.
-
Build a Few Good Relationships
Next, you’ll have a better chance of staying sober if you can build one or two solid, healthy relationships. For example, you might want to find a sponsor or accountability partner.
A person like this is someone you can talk to every day. If you feel the urge to use drugs or drink, you can call them. This person helps you by offering guidance, advice, and a listening ear.
After quitting an addiction, you’ll also have the opportunity to rebuild the damaged relationships you have with family members. Addictions tend to hurt relationships, but getting clean gives you the chance to rebuild them.
-
Be Honest and Accountable to Someone
Finally, if you want to stay sober, you’ll need to develop a mindset of complete honesty and transparency. You can’t hide things from the people who are helping you stay clean.
You’ll need to be honest with them and be willing to be accountable to them. If you’re married, this step is vital for working out the problems you have with your spouse.
Follow These Tips for Staying Sober
Breaking an addiction is not easy, but it is worth it. Your life can become so much different and better after getting clean, but you’ll have to focus on staying clean afterward.
By following these tips for staying sober, you might beat your addiction for good.
If you enjoyed reading this, you’ll probably like other articles on our blog. Check it out today.