Why a Change of Environment is so Important for Those in Recovery

One of the most fundamental principles of addiction recovery is the need for recovering addicts to change their environment, not associate with the same people, and not go to the same places they frequented when using drugs and alcohol.

Logically, it makes sense for someone building a drug-free or alcohol-free life to remove substance-using social groups and substance-related environments from their day-to-day interactions. Now, new research backs up why this approach is crucial to recovery.

What the Research Shows

Addiction recovery is a lifetime commitment, not something that can be done over a few short weeks and then forgotten about. For years, addiction experts have encouraged those in recovery to change their environment, move to a different city, reenter school, set off on a new career path, and, critically, get around like-minded people and positive social groups.

Research published by the University of Guelph provides insight into the biological basis for why a change of environment is critical to addiction recovery. According to the study, environmental cues activate areas where memories are processed, triggering the brain’s emotional and stimulus-response systems. Memories of drug use in certain environments or around certain people can be triggered when recovering addicts find themselves again in that environment or around those individuals they once used drugs with. Once triggered, those memories can create a risk for relapse.¹

According to the study, simply walking past a bar where one used to drink alcohol or sitting down for a chat with someone with whom the individual once used drugs can be enough to trigger the brain’s emotional and stimulus-response systems. Once in such an environment or around such a person, the recovering addict may experience a resurgence of memories of drug use moments or evenings of excessive drinking. Such reinvigorated memories may push the individual toward a relapse.

The researchers noted that, while it was still unclear how a recovering addict might be able to overcome powerful environmental stimuli, what was clear was that certain environments are acutely harmful to recovering addicts and should therefore be avoided. University of Guelph psychology professor and study co-author Francesco Leri spoke to this point. “Stimuli in our environment such as buildings, objects, and places are normally fairly innocuous. When they’re associated with drugs of abuse, they can become modifiers of memory function.” Other researchers on the University of Guelph team also pointed out how, when an environment is associated with drugs, it creates a “double whammy effect” where the memory effects of drug-related environmental cues reinforce stimulus-response mechanisms.

One of the researchers laid it out this way, using nicotine as an example:

1. Walking by an area where one used to smoke.
2. Recalling the times when one smoked in that area.
3. Remembering feeling good while smoking in that place.
4. Feeling compelled to smoke again, creating a risk for relapse.

According to the researchers, if recovering addicts can reduce or eliminate the number of times that “Walking by an area where one used to smoke” occurs, such individuals can significantly reduce their risk for relapse.

Change Your Environment, Change Your Future

People who use drugs and alcohol and cannot stop on their own need to seek help at qualified residential drug rehab centers. If you know someone in this current predicament, please do everything you can to help them get into a drug rehab program.

For those already in recovery, those who have completed treatment and are newly sober, creating a new environment is crucial to continued sobriety. Just as one’s environment may have led to or contributed to addiction, that same environment may prompt a relapse. One’s family, friends, home city, social networks, favorite locales, hobby places, and workplaces may all be factors that are associated with substance abuse. A recovering individual should limit or eliminate their interactions with such places and people if they are indeed risk factors.²

Creating a new environment can look different for different people. Recovering addicts might take their recovery into their own hands by moving to a new state, going back to school regardless of their age, getting a new job, moving across town, and creating new, healthy friendships. Regardless of how a recovering addict changes their environment, the critical point is that those in recovery do put in the work to walk away from old “stomping grounds” and social groups they used drugs with or drank with.

It’s time to create life anew, which means changing one’s environment for the better.

Sources Cited: