Daily Relapse Prevention Checklist

Things That Your Daily Relapse Prevention Checklist Should Include

Preventing relapse is the number one concern for any person in their first year of recovery. Every day may be filled with new challenges to overcome on your road to a long-term drug- and alcohol-free life. A study published in 2000 suggested that in the first year of recovery from substance use disorder, people tend to have a relapse rate of between 40 and 60 percent. Taking every advantage is key to helping you to remain clean and sober. As such, we will discuss the elements of a daily relapse prevention checklist that you should use.

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Therapy Early in the Week

One of the aspects of an addiction recovery daily checklist is to ensure that the week ahead doesn’t cause you unnecessary stress or isolation. If you were to schedule an intense, emotional therapy session on Friday, for example, then it may set you up for a weekend of isolation and overwhelming emotions. As a part of your daily recovery checklist, the best time to schedule such therapy sessions would be when you are able to speak with your sponsor or have follow-up sessions the next day to help you work through potentially-overwhelming feelings it may bring up.

Stress Management and Release

All of our lives have some form of stress to deal with, which can be daily. It can be elements of your life such as an unhappy home, a stressful work situation, or financial problems. Stress builds up when there is no outlet for relief. A crucial part of your daily relapse prevention checklist is time set aside to help deal with the stress that you may experience every day. Whether through quiet reflection while reading the bible, or sitting down in your favorite chair to meditate, you need something that you can do as a part of your daily relapse prevention checklist to help relieve stress.

Self-Assessments

Another element of a daily recovery checklist is an emotional self-assessment. Since relapse occurs in stages – starting with emotional relapse – taking the time to notice an emotional buildup can be important. A simple way to self-assess your emotional levels is to create a list with all of the common triggers, such as anger, fear, self-doubt, frustration, stress, guilt, and shame among others, and then create column next all of your emotional triggers and rank each one on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being extreme levels of that emotion. Identify the sources of the emotional triggers and then work to solve them. It will help you to be aware of your current emotional state, allowing you to better act before the particular emotion gets the better of you.

Identify Exact Triggers

While this may already be a part of your addiction recovery daily checklist or relapse prevention plan, it’s important to always keep on top of your triggers because they may change from time to time, or you may discover new triggers along the way.

Triggers that should be noted in your daily relapse prevention checklist involve people in your live that should be avoided as well as places and things that can cause you to crave substance abuse. If you know that something or someone is a trigger, then you must make avoid it even if it means that someone or something needs to be cut out of your life; your long-term happiness is more important.

If you or a loved one needs help with abuse and/or treatment, please call the WhiteSands Treatment at (877) 855-3470. Our addiction specialists can assess your recovery needs and help you get the addiction treatment that provides the best chance for your long-term recovery.