There are many intense emotions that can serve as a trigger for someone in recovery. All the same, intense emotions can increase the risk of drug abuse for someone who’s never struggled with addiction in the past. Extreme loss and pain often associated with grief is one of the key emotions that can worsen drug abuse.
Grief can not only make it more likely that you turn to drugs and addiction for self-medication, but can exacerbate mental health disorders like depression, lead to rumination, and increase the risk of relapse for those who are already in recovery.
How does this work exactly?
How Grief Can Worsen Drug Abuse
When you are grieving, over something like a move to a new city and loss of things familiar, loss of a loved one, or even loss of your old life, it can worsen addiction.
Exactly how grief can worsen drug abuse is based on the cycle of rumination.
Rumination is a cycle of negative thoughts that are triggered by grief, pain, and depression. When an individual gets stuck like this they end up ruminating over things like:
- What could have happened if they had acted differently/not moved/spent more time with their loved one
- The pain of not having a thing or person
- Replaying old memories
This type of dwelling or ruminating becomes a dominant, cyclical mental process and significant grief can make it difficult to break from that process.
The strong emotions of longing, anger, or sadness associated with grief lead to that preoccupation with loss and often result in the typical “what if” thinking or avoidance mechanisms where you try to revisit thoughts about the loss in order to process it.
All of this stems from a change in brain chemistry. Grief actually impacts the areas of your brain that control emotional regulation and memory so it becomes decidedly more challenging for you to control intrusive thoughts or regulate your emotions when you are overwhelmed with grief.
Addiction and Grief
This change in brain chemistry means that you are more likely to struggle with cyclical rumination, be less likely to break from it, and more likely to struggle with intrusive thoughts that seem to be outside of your control.
For many people this leads to self-medication with drugs or alcohol to try and numb these feelings. But, over time, habitual drug and alcohol use can build up a tolerance and lead to dependence or addiction.
Someone who is in recovery might find that they are much more likely to relapse for the exact same reasons, turning back to drugs and alcohol during a time of significant grief. Drugs and alcohol might help quiet thoughts like “Now that I have moved away I will never see any of those friends again and I’ll never find people like them here,” “If I had listened to what they said they might still be here” or “I can’t stop replaying how they died in my head. I see it when I close my eyes.”
Getting Help for Grief and Addiction
If you are struggling with grief and drug abuse, Ava Recovery can help. We offer individualized, evidence-based treatment for those in need, including services for both drug addiction and mental health issues.
With our depression treatment, clients can get help for drug abuse and co-occurring depression stemming from significant grief and loss. Tackling both at the same time is the only way to ensure complete recovery. Only addressing physical addiction without tackling the emotional grief and psychological pain means a higher chance of relapse.
But with Ava Recovery, our staff is here to offer individualized care so you can process your grief in a healthy fashion, get out of the cycle of rumination, and begin to rebuild your life.
Our goal is to address the unique needs of every client with things like:
- Amenities: We ensure a comfortable stay during your treatment with an outdoor pool, gourmet meals, yoga, and en-suite bathrooms
- Location: We are situated on a beautiful campus that makes it possible to escape the chaos of your grief and dive into the world of walking paths and sunrises.
Let us help you with your addiction today by calling our care admissions team or texting 24/7.
Call (833) 755-1288 or text (512) 399-2115 today.
