Remember to HALT: A Strategy to Prevent Relapse

Giving up drugs and alcohol when you have an addiction or a dependency, is hard. However, it can be even more challenging to maintain sobriety. Preventing relapse requires a conscious strategy, one that you can return to when life’s pressures lead you toward temptation.

Fortunately, there is one proven to work time and time again, and it has a helpful acronym: HALT A strong word that will prevent relapse.

What Does HALT stand for? Does HALT prevents relapse?

The Letters in HALT stand for the four most common physiological and psychological triggers that lead to a relapse. These are:

1: HUNGER

Alcohol has a natural association with eating – the temptation to order a glass of wine with dinner can seem so natural. However, hunger is perhaps best understood in its metaphorical sense. Hunger can describe a craving for connection, for sensation, for something to stave off the boredom of trying times. Replacing this hunger with more nourishing activities, including exercise, hobbies, and safe socializing, will help.

2: ANGER

“Drowning your sorrows” is a cliché for a reason – it can be painfully true. Anger, frustration, sadness – these extremely traumatic feelings can cause desperation for release. Too often in an addict’s history, they’ve reached out for release via habit-forming substances. Breaking that pattern is one of the vital elements of recovery. Fortunately, there are therapeutic strategies to address anger, depression, and anxiety.

3: LONELINESS

When you miss someone painfully or lack emotional closeness in your life, alcohol, and drugs can serve as a mood-altering substance, distracting you from that absence. This is an unsatisfactory solution, providing only a temporary release. Recovering addicts need trustworthy people to reach out to at times of deep loneliness – sponsors, friends, family, or counselors.

4: TIREDNESS

Like hunger, tiredness can be understood both literally and figuratively. Exhaustion can lead a busy person to reach out for stimulants to artificially sustain concentration, resulting in an inevitable crash. Tiredness can also exemplify the state an addict reaches when they feel too fatigued to keep up the daily fight against cravings. A nihilistic feeling of “so what” intrudes and resistance is dangerously eroded.

How Can HALT Helps Relapse Avoidance?

Let’s assume you’ve been through a residential detox program and you’re finally ready to face the world clean and sober. It can feel immensely unfair that while other people can incorporate drugs or alcohol into functional lives (although this is frequently a façade) you cannot. The temptation to slip back into old patterns of behavior can emerge, particularly when life’s pressures intrude.

This is where reminding yourself of the trigger states inherent in HALT can be useful and prevents relapse. Rather than thinking “I need a drink,” you realize that you’re merely in thrall to one of the four above states. Once you realize that, you can reach out for support, or take steps to address the negative emotions you’re experiencing.

Here are some of the alternate strategies you might adopt when experiencing a HALT trigger:

Hunger: Exercise can be a great source of natural, mood-improving endorphins. Reaching out to friends, sponsors or counselors can also help. Spending time with supportive family or friends in environments without intoxicants is great too.

Anger: Anger management courses can help limit episodes of rage. Other negative emotional states may require longer courses of behavioral modification, such as CBT.

Loneliness: It may seem obvious, but reaching out to close friends, even when you feel like hiding from the world, can provide significant relief. Developing hobbies and activities with new groups of sober friends can be transformative.

Tiredness: Rest, relaxation, and sleep will renew your energy levels better than any stimulant. Get earplugs, and blackout curtains, and ensure your room is at the right temperature. Take a trip to the country and your sleep will usually improve. If it does not, and you suffer from clinical insomnia, then do seek medical intervention. Inform your physician that drug interventions are to be avoided.

If you need further advice on any aspect of relapse avoidance, don’t hesitate to get in touch.