Alcohol Cravings and Triggers

In alcohol recovery, cravings and triggers are challenges that can threaten your sobriety. Understanding how to manage them is key to avoiding relapse and navigating your recovery successfully.

What Are Cravings and Triggers?

Cravings are intense urges to drink alcohol. Triggers are what precede the cravings. A trigger can be a person, place, emotion, or anything that you associate with alcohol. For example, when you walk into a restaurant and see the bar lined with liquor bottles, it might trigger an intense craving to have a drink. Emotional triggers might be stress or anger.

The Science Behind Cravings

Understanding cravings requires understanding addiction itself. When you use alcohol, it causes a release of dopamine in your brain, which gives you the pleasant buzz that you experience. Over time, your brain becomes accustomed to this dopamine release and doesn’t respond to natural pleasures that would otherwise cause a release of dopamine. Your body and mind naturally crave pleasure, and you’ve come to associate alcohol with pleasure, thus you crave alcohol.

During active addiction, you also became conditioned to using alcohol in certain situations or at certain times, like after work or when you felt stressed. When you experience those situations again, cravings occur because your mind associates the situations with drinking.

The good news is neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is your brain’s ability to reorganize itself and recover normal pathways that allow you to feel pleasure without alcohol. Your brain can also learn not to associate certain situations with alcohol over time.

Identifying Your Triggers

To manage triggers, you first need to identify what triggers your cravings. Understanding common triggers can help you to identify your own, but you should also keep a journal and record when your cravings occur and what directly precedes those cravings.

Common triggers include:

• HALT – Hungry, angry, lonely, tired: Experiencing any of these can lead to cravings in many people.
• Negative emotions can make you want to self-medicate with alcohol.
• Stress is often a reason behind why people turned to alcohol originally.
• Depression or anxiety, which co-occurs with many people who struggle with alcohol.
• Feelings of isolation, which many experience in recovery.
• Difficulty with relationships.
• Certain places or people that you associate with alcohol use.
• Activities that you associate with alcohol use, like gambling, watching sports, or going out to dinner.

Managing Triggers

Your first line of defense in managing triggers is avoiding them. Stay away from people and places that trigger cravings, avoid activities and places where people are drinking, and use stress management techniques. This can work to a certain extent, but it’s unrealistic to think that you can avoid all your triggers all the time, or that you should avoid all of them. For example, you should still be able to go out to dinner at a restaurant even if it has a bar.

Instead, to manage your triggers, you need to retrain your brain by consciously changing your thoughts. For example, when you go to a restaurant, focus on the delicious food you’re about to enjoy or the company of the people you’re with. It takes effort and time, but you can make this change in thinking second nature.

Similarly, if stress is a trigger, find an alternative remedy that you can turn to, such as exercise. Over time, your brain will think “I’m stressed, I need to take a run” instead of “I’m stressed, I need a drink.” Again, it takes time and effort to retrain your brain in this way.

Managing Cravings

Cravings will happen, no matter how well you manage your triggers. It’s normal, so when you have them, understand that it’s just the nature of addiction. The key is to learn to manage these cravings so that you don’t risk relapse. There are several ways to do so.

Find a Distraction

When you feel cravings, take action immediately by doing something to distract yourself. Go for a walk or run, hop on the rowing machine, call a friend, read a book – anything that will occupy your mind. If you focus your attention on your cravings, they will get exponentially worse and put you at risk for relapse.

Use Your Powers of Reason

If negative thoughts or emotions triggered your cravings, talk yourself through those thoughts and feelings. What’s behind your negativity? Is it real? Replace your thoughts with positive ones. If a real problem is causing your negative thoughts and emotions, focus your thoughts on how to fix the problem with positive actions.

Exercise

Exercise causes the release of endorphins, which boosts your mood and reduces stress and anxiety. Have a regular exercise schedule so that it’s always a part of your day. This can help to keep your cravings away. You can also use exercise as a coping mechanism. When you feel cravings, talk a walk or go for a bike ride.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness means living in the present moment and fully experiencing what is happening to you only in that moment. Let your senses be fully engaged in whatever it is that you’re doing, even if it’s just doing the dishes. Doing so keeps you from worrying about the past or the future.  It takes a conscious effort to learn mindfulness, but you’ll find that doing so relieves stress and reduces cravings.

Consider the Consequences

If you’re feeling tempted to give into your cravings, knowing that you’ll feel better in the moment, think forward to what will happen after you drink. You’ll feel guilty, ashamed, and like you have to start sobriety all over again. It’s not worth it.

In Closing

Cravings and triggers can challenge your recovery, but if you are aware of them and understand how to manage them, you can overcome them and navigate your recovery successfully. Bridges of Hope is here for you when you need support. We are dedicated to providing compassionate, comprehensive, individualized care. Give us a call today.