Research indicates that stress is a key risk factor in individual risk of developing addiction and subsequent risk of relapse after treating addiction. Stressful events can increase the risk of self-medication with drugs and alcohol or impulsivity, especially when individuals don’t have healthy coping mechanisms to deal with stress and addiction. Thankfully, with 90210 Recovery, our team can help.
The Relationship Between Stress and Addiction
Under normal circumstances, stressful events will activate heightened hormones as part of the fight or flight response, making sure that your blood starts pumping and your adrenaline is raised so that you can take action, whether that action is running or fleeing.
You’ve likely experienced this kind of acute stress response when, for example, someone cuts you off on the road and you have to slam on your brakes to avoid an accident.
However, after the next few minutes of driving, all of those feelings start to diminish, and your heart rate slows back down, your breathing goes back to normal, and you don’t feel as tense or alert.
This is how it is supposed to work. Your body and brain are designed to deal with acute stressful situations in exactly this way.
So what happens when you deal with that level of stress on a regular basis?
This leads to chronic stress, which can produce things like depression, physical feelings of sickness with no real cause, and a higher risk of addiction.
Chronic stress can be caused by many things:
- Early childhood trauma
- Genetics
- Problems in your relationship
- Unemployment or financial strain
- Loss of a loved one
You might have a highly stressful job that leaves you feeling completely out of control, or have an issue.
The Science of Stress
The more you struggle with long term stress, the more the parts of your brain responsible for regulation and control will be damaged. This means you are more likely to give in to things like drugs and alcohol, smoking, or overeating to help with your stress levels.
That said, if you are struggling with stress and addiction, you can get treatment. With 90210 Recovery, our team can work with you to develop healthy coping mechanisms that overcome stress and build distress tolerance.
With our residential inpatient program, we can help you better understand the neurobiology of stress and addiction, how both stress and addiction can individually increase the symptoms and risk factors for one another, and the relationship between the two. We can help you find the right level of care with a combination of therapy and holistic treatment.
Find The Help You Need
If you are struggling with stress and addiction, a residential inpatient program can help. The right combination of evidence-based psychotherapy and holistic treatment can give you healthy tools to recognize what factors are personal stress triggers, catch unhealthy negative thoughts and change them, and turn to healthy coping mechanisms like music, art, emotional regulation, and mindfulness.
Call today at (424) 390-7816 to get started tackling stress and addiction.
FAQs
What is the Best Treatment for Stress and Addiction?
The most comprehensive level of care for stress and addiction is a residential inpatient program. With these programs, you can work with trained professionals to get the right combination of medication and therapy. The medication you are prescribed might help with underlying mental health disorders like depression or anxiety, and the therapy can help you with healthy coping mechanisms, identifying triggers, and learning better ways to manage stress.
How Does Stress Make Addiction Worse?
There are many overlapping features in the brain that correlate to both stress and addiction. For example, chronic drug use can change the way your body’s motivational system works, making it harder to apply impulse control and making individuals more likely to relapse. The same systems can be equally compromised by chronic stress, which means both provide the same level of changes to the pathophysiology of many parts of the brain.
If I Lose a Loved One, Will I Develop An Addiction?
Losing a loved one is one of many examples of life events that can put individuals at high risk of chronic stress and addiction. Loving a loved one, dealing with parental divorce, having low parental support, especially in early stages of life, dealing with neglect or isolation, and even struggling in a single-parent family structure are all examples.
However, dealing with acute stress in the form of a negative life event or chronic stress from multiple negative life events does not automatically mean an individual will develop an addiction. Rather, it means that you are more likely to struggle with impulse control, more likely to self-medicate while managing emotions if you don’t have healthy coping mechanisms, and all of this means you are more likely to develop an addiction when self-medicating with drugs and alcohol.
At our facility, we can help you focus on developing healthy coping mechanisms and recognizing when you might be turning to harmful behaviors to deal with difficult emotions.
Does Addiction Cause Stress?
Absolutely. Addiction can create many areas of stress, including legal issues, relationship conflicts, and financial issues. Moreover, those struggling with addiction, who have tried to manage their addiction without professional help, will often face additional stigma and stress levels.
Can Stress in Recovery Lead to Relapse?
The recovery process can be very stressful, especially when you are struggling to overcome addiction and co-occurring mental health disorders. However, that doesn’t automatically mean that you will struggle with a relapse to a higher degree than someone who isn’t experiencing stress in recovery.
At our treatment center, we work hard to give you proper coping mechanisms and tools that can better regulate your emotional responses and build distress tolerance so that you are less likely to deal with relapse when you leave.
Does Stress Lead to Addiction?
It can. Studies show that chronic changes to your brain’s reward system can increase the risk of addiction and relapse and decrease your impulsivity.
