Coping Skills
When someone chooses to stay present with their feelings, notice their breath, and observe thoughts without judging them, they are using this kind of coping skill.
What is Mindfulness?
These drugs speed up the central nervous system, increasing heart rate, alertness, and energy, with examples including cocaine, methamphetamine, and caffeine.
What are stimulants?
Stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine cause this neurotransmitter to flood the brain’s reward pathway, producing intense euphoria, energy, and focus.
What is dopamine?
This fellowship's "Big Book" describes alcoholism as a spiritual malady requiring a psychic change through complete deflation of ego, rigorous honesty, and conscious contact with a higher power.
What is Alcoholics Anonymous?
In Terence Gorski’s model, this first stage of relapse involves poor self‑care like neglecting sleep, nutrition, exercise, and meetings, often without conscious awareness of rising stress.
What is emotional relapse?
This coping skill from DBT means fully acknowledging reality as it is in the present moment—even when you don’t like it or think it’s fair—instead of fighting it with “this shouldn’t be happening.”
What is Radical Acceptance?
These substances slow down the central nervous system, causing relaxation, drowsiness, and reduced anxiety; alcohol, benzodiazepines, and barbiturates are common examples.
MDMA (ecstasy) primarily depletes this neurotransmitter, leading to mood crashes, depression, and impaired emotional regulation after the high wears off.
What is serotonin?
This Buddhist-inspired program uses meditation, mindfulness, and the Eightfold Path to support recovery from addiction.
What is Recovery Dharma?
This second stage in Gorski’s model involves internal struggle, thinking about using, bargaining (“one won’t hurt”), and planning a slip while trying to fight the urge.
What is mental relapse?
This coping skill involves noticing automatic negative thoughts like “I always mess everything up” and deliberately replacing them with more balanced, realistic thoughts such as “I made a mistake, but I can learn from it.”
What is cognitive reframing or cognitive restructuring?
These novel psychoactive substances, often sold as "research chemicals" or "legal highs," are structurally modified analogs of controlled substances designed to exploit loopholes in drug scheduling laws while binding with higher affinity to target receptors like 5-HT2A or CB1.
What are designer drugs?
Depressants like alcohol and benzodiazepines increase activity of this inhibitory neurotransmitter, leading to relaxation, drowsiness, and impaired coordination.
What is GABA?
This science-based, non-12-step support group teaches self-empowerment tools like CBT and motivational techniques for any addiction.
What is SMART Recovery?
This relapse prevention technique asks people to imagine using a substance, then picture the immediate high followed by all the painful consequences that come next, to strengthen commitment to stay sober.
What is 'play the tape through'?
This set of coping skills, often taught in DBT, includes techniques like cold water, paced breathing, and intense exercise to quickly bring down extreme emotional arousal.
What are distress tolerance skills?
Drugs like ketamine and PCP fall into this category, causing feelings of detachment from reality, dissociation, and anesthesia-like effects.
What are dissociatives?
Drugs like heroin and fentanyl bind to these receptors in the brain and body to block pain signals and create feelings of euphoria and relaxation.
What are opioid receptors?
Founded in 1951 by Lois Wilson (wife of AA cofounder Bill W.) and Anne B., this 12‑step fellowship for friends and family of alcoholics emphasizes detaching with love, understanding enabling behaviors, and applying the Serenity Prayer to manage codependency and emotional chaos caused by another's drinking.
What is Al-Anon?
In Marlatt’s model, building this belief in one’s ability to cope with high‑risk situations is crucial for preventing relapse.
What is self-efficacy?
This exposure‑based technique gradually confronts a person with their feared triggers or cravings in a controlled way, helping them learn that urges will peak, plateau, and pass without needing to act on them.
What is urge surfing?
Commonly known as "bath salts," these drugs act primarily as norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitors, producing intense stimulation, paranoia, and agitation by flooding monoaminergic synapses similar to methamphetamine but with higher risks of psychosis.
What are synthetic cathinones?
Chronic opioid use leads to tolerance and dependence by causing this process in the brain, where neurons adapt to the constant drug presence and require more to function.
What is neuroadaptation?
This peer-led, sober active community—founded in 2006 in Boulder, Colorado, now with chapters nationwide—requires a minimum of 48 hours sobriety for free access to group fitness classes like climbing, yoga, running, and weightlifting, fostering recovery through physical activity and social connection rather than traditional meetings.
What is The Phoenix?
Relapse is sometimes included as a stage in this model, which includes other stages such as precontemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance.
What is the Stages of Change Model?