PAWS
What does PAWS stand for?
Post-Acute Withdrawal Syndrome
A person, place, feeling, or situation that brings on an urge to use is called this.
What is a trigger?
Step One involves admitting powerlessness over alcohol or addiction and recognizing that our lives had become this.
What is unmanageable?
These personal limits help protect your time, energy, safety, and recovery.
What are boundaries?
Opioid overdose can cause this life-threatening condition, meaning breathing becomes dangerously slow or stops.
What is respiratory depression?
PAWS can make it hard to fall asleep or stay asleep, causing problems with this basic need.
What is sleep?
HALT reminds you to check whether you are hungry, angry, lonely, or this.
What is tired?
Step Nine involves making these directly to people we harmed, except when doing so would injure them or others.
What are amends?
This communication style allows you to state your needs clearly and respectfully without threatening or putting others down.
What is assertive communication?
Cocaine can restrict blood flow to the brain and increase clotting, causing this emergency even in younger people.
What is a stroke?
Trouble concentrating and remembering things during PAWS is often described by this two-word term.
What is brain fog?
Calling a sober friend, taking a walk, and practicing deep breathing are examples of these.
What are coping skills?
This step calls for a “searching and fearless moral inventory” of ourselves.
What is Step Four?
“If substances are being used at the gathering, I will leave” is a boundary because it focuses on this person’s actions.
Who is myself?
Methamphetamine can cause this condition, meaning dangerously elevated body temperature.
What is hyperthermia?
PAWS symptoms can come and go. Stress and poor sleep can make them do this.
What is worsen or flare up?
Isolating, skipping treatment, and romanticizing past substance use can be examples of these signals that relapse risk is increasing.
What are warning signs?
Step Six focuses on becoming ready to have defects of character removed. Step Seven adds this action.
What is humbly asking a Higher Power to remove our shortcomings?
Covering up someone’s substance use or repeatedly protecting them from consequences can cross the line from support into this behavior.
What is enabling?
Severe alcohol withdrawal can cause this medical emergency involving profound confusion, agitation, and sometimes hallucinations.
What is delirium tremens, or DTs?
When PAWS symptoms increase cravings, reaching out to sober supports and using coping skills helps reduce the risk of this.
What is relapse?
After a lapse, thinking “I’ve already messed up, so I might as well keep using” describes this effect, which can turn a lapse into continued substance use.
What is the abstinence violation effect?
Step Eight involves listing those we harmed and becoming willing to make amends. Step Nine involves making them. This step asks us to continue taking personal inventory and promptly admit when we are wrong.
What is Step Ten?
Saying, “I care that you’re upset, but I’m not responsible for fixing your feelings,” sets this type of boundary.
What is an emotional boundary?
When cocaine and alcohol are used together, the body produces this additional psychoactive substance.
What is cocaethylene?