[Guest blog post by SMART Facilitator Rick Kuplinski]
The more you know about urges and understand why they happen, the better equipped you are to cope with them . . . You can learn to recognize urges without acting on them. The more you do that, the easier it gets. Most people who recover from addictive behavior say that, after a while, the urges go away completely as they replace unhealthy behavior with healthy alternatives. (SMART Recovery Handbook, Page 24)
Responsible people keep a fire extinguisher in their homes, along with operating smoke alarms and maybe a sprinkler system. All of this to deal with the possibility of an active fire. But responsible people also take care in myriad ways to prevent fires from happening in the first place.
This is analogous to coping with urges if one thinks of triggers as sparks; thoughts potentially as combustible fuel; and urges as the resulting fire.
Triggers, the sparks, happen randomly in reaction to the things that remind us of our addictive behavior. They could be sights (a flashing neon sign), sounds (ice rattling in a martini shaker), smells (a familiar chemical scent in the air). It can be people, whether they tempt us, enable us or upset us. Places, like where one used to use or buy. Events, like a concert or barbeque. Situations, like a bad day at work. Or associations like the “partying” one has learned to view as synonymous with a holiday season or watching a ballgame, for example.
Thoughts happen randomly in reaction to triggers and can become combustible fuel without proper precautions. And if allowed to become fuel, thoughts feed the flames of full-blown urges that press the mind to feel that one needs to repeat addictive behavior. Once this fire is ignited and fueled, then obviously it is more of a challenge to cope with that than it would have been if the situation were not allowed to progress.
At meetings of SMART Recovery Henderson, we regularly speak of triggers as things that, with motivation, we can avoid or learn to re-associate over time. Thoughts are thoughts, however. They will be with us always and will happen randomly as long as blood continues to flow to our brains. Thoughts cannot be avoided—but it matters BIG TIME what we do with them once we have them.
In our meetings, we talk about not letting ourselves “four-ize” our thoughts. When a trigger sparks a thought, we must take care not to:
Let’s examine each more specifically . . .
Romanticizing: Recalling only the benefits of previous behavior. Think of it as focusing only on the items we listed in the top left quadrant of the Cost-Benefit Analysis Tool while ignoring the costs in the top right quadrant. Similarly, it is losing sight of the anticipated advantages of abstinence recorded in the bottom left and overplaying the disadvantages in the bottom right. (Unfamiliar with the Cost-Benefit Analysis Tool? Then see page 19 of The SMART Recovery Handbook or go to www.smartrecovery.org )
Fantasizing: Unrealistically imagining a newly found ability to repeat addictive behavior without consequence. The unhelpful belief that playing the tape through will miraculously reveal a new and happy ending--in spite of our accumulated wisdom otherwise.
Operationalizing: Hatching schemes. Beginning to plan the when, where, what, how and how much we will drink/use/act out, etc. Combined with the right opportunity it even includes plans for making sure we will be unnoticed or undetected by others.
Rationalizing: Embracing the “eff-its” (which we more accurately refer to as the “eff-mes.”) Telling ourselves that it is “just this one time,” “I deserve this,” or “I can handle this now.”
If we “four-ize” our thoughts, we allow ourselves to become arsonists, rather than firefighters. But, as always, we have a choice in the matter (which is the SMART Recovery way). We get to decide what to do when the spark of a trigger lands on a thought. Do we let that thought become fuel? Or do we do the responsible thing and douse flickers of flame before they become an inferno?
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SMART Recovery is a science- and evidence-based program that provides educational and peer support to those who want to abstain and gain independence from all addictive behaviors, whether or not they involve alcohol or drugs. The program emphasizes building motivation and self-empowerment skills, employing strategies to control urges, managing thoughts at the root of addictive behaviors and living a healthy, balanced life. Go to the “Meetings” tab at www.smartrecovery.org to find an in-person or online meeting to attend.