Relapse Prevention Strategies

The basis of relapse prevention is to become fully aware of how your alcoholism tends to work. What is the process of events that often happens? Once you have a better understanding of these basics, you will then have more ideas about how to make the changes you need.

This is the basis of your Relapse Prevention Strategy

There are many points along the way from when you first experience a 'trigger' that gives you a craving, to when you end up drinking. The initial trigger may be anything - from a club or bar where you always drink, to seeing a friend who you know is always up for a good time. Maybe you've just had an argument with someone close to you, or you're bored, lonely, or whatever it is that usually gets you started on the road towards your favourite drink.

Once you have experienced that, you will probably have a few 'automatic thoughts' about it. These are habitual ways of thinking, many of which you may not be aware of, yet which have an immense power over your actions. A crucial part of beating alcoholism is being able to recognise what your automatic thoughts are. Some examples might be - "I can't cope with this relationship", or "I've got no real friends, I'm useless", or "I can't deal with this anger". Thoughts like this tend to push you in the direction of having a drink. Recognising your own automatic thoughts will take some practice.

These automatic thoughts will produce feelings. Many of the feelings that people drink because of are negative, but not all of them.

As a result of these feelings, you will usually experience a craving, of varying strength, some only brief, some lasting all day. Cravings are a sense of needing to escape from an uncomfortable feeling, or enhance a positive one, by drinking something alcoholic.

From this craving, you will probably be in a state of indecision.

Part of you wants to cut down or stop completely, another part is desperate to just forget about all that and get wasted.

Now you will start to come up with 'permission thoughts'. These are similar to the 'automatic thoughts' that we just mentioned, except that with these, you tend to find an excuse to make it OK to drink. They can come in all shapes and sizes, from the basic "just this time", to "no-one will know if I go and have one somewhere else", or "I've been under such stress lately, I deserve it", or "I can't stand this craving any more, I'll go crazy if I don't have some soon".

Once you've had that 'permission thought', it's incredibly difficult to stop yourself from actually drinking. But it's not impossible. There are things you do in order to get your drink of choice, and even those actions can be diverted into something else. But this really is the last resort, ideally you need to prevent the relapse much earlier on.

This will undoubtedly sound incredibly complicated first time around. That's because addiction is a very complicated process - we are all very complicated people. But it will get easier as you work through it.

Now you need to start making your own relapse prevention strategies

Try to remember a chain of events that caused you to drink recently. Then fill in the form, but try to be as specific as you can.