You are stronger than you think you are, but transitioning from a drug rehab facility to the real world can open some dark and dangerous doors. You find yourself in the same environment you left but with the added stress of trying to fight the urges and cravings of beginning to use drugs and alcohol again. Rather than undo all your hard work to get clean, here are five ways to help avoid a relapse.

Change Your Friend Circle

Often, the same friends you come home to are the ones who encouraged your drug or alcohol habit in the first place. While it might be hard to turn your back on them, changing your friend circle is often the best way to begin your clean and healthy lifestyle on the right foot. Those same temptations don’t surround you, nor are unsupportive friends there to tempt you back into a life of drugs and alcohol. Instead, surround yourself with friends and family who you know will encourage you to live your new, clean lifestyle.

Communicate with Your Support People

When you go to drug rehab, you’re typically assigned a support person, or people, to help you both while you’re in rehab and when you leave. If you find yourself struggling with everyday life without drugs, make sure you communicate these feelings with either your support people or your family. Don’t isolate yourself and hide how you’re feeling. The more people who know about your battles, the easier it is to stay on the right path.

Avoid Trigger Locations

When you leave drug rehab, it’s crucial to stay away from places you used to frequent to get your next hit or to drink. Pubs, bars, casinos, and friends’ houses can all be triggers for losing your direction and undoing all your hard work. Instead, find new places to frequent, such as cafes with friends or even sports games as social occasions.

Stick with Routine

In a rehab facility, every day is filled with activities to do at particular times, and there’s never a moment to spare. However, once you leave drug rehab, you find yourself making your own decisions with no set schedule in place. For your successful recovery, sticking to a routine is crucial. Whether you have regular working hours or an established series of things you do every day, you’ll find that having every part of your day allocated to something gives you less time to fall into old habits.

Don’t Forget What You Learnt in Rehab

A crucial component of drug rehab is being armed with the correct tools for successful integration back into society. When you make the transition from a facility to normal life, be sure always to remember what you learnt. These new skills can help you focus and cope with the pressures of daily life – the pressures you used to relieve with alcohol or drugs.

Transitioning from a supportive drug rehab facility into a functioning society is a significant step, but it’s also a very challenging one. If you don’t have a long-term prevention plan or help yourself with these tips above, you may be one of the 85 per cent of drug users who relapse weeks or months after rehab.