The Addiction Cycle: What Are the 5 Stages of Addiction?

Join 40,000+ People Who Receive Our Newsletter Get valuable resources on addiction, recovery, wellness, and our treatments delivered directly to your inbox. We offer relapse prevention techniques and resources to help you better understand why you relapsed in addition to helping you prevent another relapse in the future. Almost half of all people that are in recovery relapse at least once. Instead, look for ways that you can get the help that you need to get back on the right track. While yes, relapsing means failing to stay sober, it is important to remember that relapse is a part of the overall addiction process. It’s also important choose the correct cycle of addiction to remember that if you do relapse it is not an indication that you failed or that you are a failure.

What Are the Stages of an Addiction Cycle?

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Physical Health Consequences

These risk factors include depression, social issues and problems, enabling family members or peers, abuse or neglect, family history of substance abuse or other mental disorders. For Treatment.Your healthcare provider will use medical information about you to provide you with medical treatment and services. Your health care provider may disclose medical information about you to doctors, nurses, technicians and other personnel who are involved in providing you medical treatment. The Company will only collect information that you voluntarily submit.

choose the correct cycle of addiction

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Their diverse expertise ensures our resources and product are innovative, evidence-based, and effective. They guide our mission as accomplished individuals dedicated to improving the landscape of addiction recovery and mental wellness. Additionally, the Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid (GABA) system is crucial in understanding addiction, especially in the context of substances like alcohol or benzodiazepines.

Mental Health Resources

The next stages dependence and addiction are characterized with cravings for the substance, inability to maintain daily responsibilities, spending extra time seeking out the substance and using.. At the withdrawal stage the person experience symptoms such as fatigue, anxiety, irritability, nausea, tremors. Addictive substances are first introduced to people in many different ways. It can happen through something Sobriety as common as starting a new prescription drug to manage pain, through peer pressure to try an illicit drug, or even celebrating one’s twenty-first birthday with an alcoholic beverage. Regardless of what exactly led to the first encounter, the Mayo Clinic describes several risk factors that might lead someone to have a higher risk ofaddiction.

Levels of Care

To ensure we provide accurate and trustworthy information, our writers follow strict editorial guidelines. You will have free access to the Service’s providers without restrictions to waiting periods, notification periods, etc. upon activation of your membership (except for hospital discounts). Providers have long recognized that relapse is a process rather than an event. It causes a person to take drugs repeatedly, despite the harm they cause. The reasons to experiment with drugs can vary widely, but two common reasons are because of either curiosity or peer pressure. People may also be prescribed medication, such as opioids, by their doctor.

The Addiction Cycle: What Are the 5 Stages of Addiction?

The stages of addiction typically involve initiating substance use, developing dependence, and eventually becoming addicted. This cycle can repeat through relapses, but it can also be broken with the proper support and intervention. Join our global mission of connecting patients with addiction and mental health treatment. Our advisory board brings together leaders in behavioral health, technology, and business.

  • It causes a person to take drugs repeatedly, despite the harm they cause.
  • Jessica graduated from the University of South Florida (USF) with an English degree and combines her writing expertise and passion for helping others to deliver reliable information to those impacted by addiction.
  • In the first stage of addiction, initial use, an individual takes the substance for the very first time.

Each stage of addiction involves complex interactions between brain circuits and behaviors. The addiction cycle describes the process every addict experiences, from initial use and abuse to addiction and relapse. Our state-specific resource guides offer a comprehensive overview of drug and alcohol addiction treatment options available in your area. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), addiction is a chronic brain disorder that affects an individual’s sense of pleasure, motivation, and memory. While there are psychological, biological, environmental, and social factors that can play intoaddiction, it is well-known that a large portion of the risk for addiction https://www.picale.store/alcohol-skin-damage-the-effects-of-alcohol-on-your/ stems from genetics. You may request to delete any personal information and to de-authorize the collection of personal information in the future by sending us an email at

Breaking the Cycle of Addiction

choose the correct cycle of addiction

Once the individual has reached this phase of the cycle, the brain has made significant changes in response to the substance. It can no longer produce the same mental or physical effects and, as a result, the individual further increases the dosage and the frequency of use to bring about the feelings that they are seeking out. It is at this point of the addiction cycle that the brain has made a physiological change, usually involving a decrease in brain chemical production or a loss of brain chemical receptors. Over time, this physiological change leads to the next phase – dependence and addiction.

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