Relapse Prevention in Euless, TX

When you become addicted to drugs, you can never take sobriety for granted again. Drug addiction creates changes to the circuitry of the brain. Once addiction sets in, sobriety is no longer the natural, default state; instead, substance abuse becomes the natural state. Sobriety is, then, always something that you need to work at to maintain. This change of personal reality can be very hard for patients to internalize. As we tell them here at our rehab for relapse prevention in Euless, however, once you begin to understand and work with the idea, preventing the slide back into substance abuse is no longer a challenge.

All you need to do is to retrain your mind, accept your new reality, and do the work that's needed. With this one change, you can be sure that you will never revisit substance abuse again.

What Triggers A Relapse

Close to 8 out of 10 of all people who come out of drug withdrawal treatment in Euless experience relapse or a return of drug abuse, in six months. The change in baseline natural state that drugs create is the reason for such lapses. It's important to understand how this happens.

It all comes down to something called the brain's reward pathway. It is an area of the brain whose task it is to incentivize life-supporting activities. The brain's reward circuitry is designed to reward such activities with feelings of pleasure, contentment and satisfaction.

Drugs and alcohol are able to stimulate this very part of the brain, to create these feelings in abundance. Stimulating this brain area, however, has the effect of making the mind see substance abuse as a survival-enhancing activity.

Since drugs make the brain believe that they are wholesome, other behaviors reserved for wholesome activities become attached to drugs, as well. The brain looks for every opportunity to try drugs, memorizes every environmental cue to do with drug use, and helps bring up thoughts of drugs when these cues are experienced. This makes quitting addiction difficult, because the mind is powerfully reminded of drugs at every turn.

An important way to prevent relapse is to understand the different ways in which weakness for drugs can reoccur, and to your best to train against them, or to avoid them entirely. This is an important part of drug or alcohol relapse prevention in Euless.

Relapse Prevention Therapies

A number of specialized therapeutic approaches help addicts work towards long-term freedom from their cravings. In therapy, addicts share not only their feelings about drugs, but the challenges they face in life, as well. Therapists identify various areas of vulnerability, and help patients improve. The greater a patient's mental strength, the less the tendency to seek the escapism of drugs.

In general, relapse prevention treatment programs for addiction treatment in Euless aims to improve the following areas of psychology: excessive guilt, a tendency to mentally exaggerate the negative and overlook the positive, a tendency to lose hope, an absence of motivation to do better, an inability to refuse offers of drugs from friends, and an inability to recognize the ways in which the mind works to lead to drugs, among other things.

A number of highly effective therapeutic approaches are able to help. Therapists may apply cognitive-behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, moral reconation therapy, art therapy and many other forms of intervention to help patients with.

The idea, with relapse prevention, isn't simply to change a habit. It is to remake and rebuild the person. The aim is to help address multiple areas of problem psychology.

Finding the Right Rehab

While relapse prevention therapy can be very successful, it does need great expertise in a rehab and in therapists to put into effect. The success of such a therapy largely depends on the attitude adopted by the rehab and the skill of the therapist. Often, it can also depend on a third, more nebulous quality -- a personality match. Patients tend to click with certain therapists better than with others. It's important to look out for this magical quality.

We tell our patients looking for drug relapse prevention in Euless that it's important to audition several different relapse prevention programs and rehabs to find a place that is the best fit for their needs. We help patients audition services, as well. If you'd like to experience the way we handle relapse prevention in Euless, you're welcome to give us a call at (877) 804-1531.