My Top Addiction Triggers

And how I've learned to resist them.

Photo by Hanson Lu on Unsplash

One of the strategies that helped me most to get sober was to identify my addiction triggers. Whenever I felt an urge to take a drink, I’d try my hardest to figure out what had caused the craving.

Sometimes, I couldn’t come up with an answer. A lot of cravings, especially during the first few weeks of sobriety, really do seem to pop up out of nowhere.

Other times, however, I was far more successful. Even cravings that initially felt random often had a clearly identifiable cause.

Discovering these triggers was important for two reasons:

• First, it allowed me to address the underlying cause of my craving, rather than dwell on it (and risk a relapse).

• Second, it helped me to avoid the triggers, and as a result, reduce the number of cravings that I experienced.

This can all sound a little vague when speaking about it in the abstract, so in today’s newsletter, I’m going to share some of the specific triggers that I identified, and the steps that I took to address or avoid those triggers.

This is my personal list, so not every trigger is going to apply to every person reading this. However, I think that by focusing on the real cravings that I experienced, this will be more helpful than a bland, generic list.

I hope that even if you aren’t experiencing the exact same triggers as I did, my list will still help you think about how to respond to your cravings.