Relapse prevention plan: a free template you fill in

What goes into a relapse prevention plan

Relapse prevention comes from addiction research by G. Alan Marlatt and colleagues. Its core idea is simple: relapse is rarely a single decision. It’s a chain of small steps, often starting with a high-risk situation you could have seen coming. A good plan names those situations and decides in advance what you’ll do in each.

• Triggers: the times, places, feelings and people that usually come before a relapse.
• Early warning signs: small changes in your routine or thinking that show you’re drifting.
• If-then plans: one concrete action for each trigger, decided now, not in the moment.
• Support: who you’ll contact, and how.
• Your environment: what you’ve blocked, moved or removed so the easy route is gone.
• After a slip: how you’ll stop a lapse from turning into a binge.

Why if-then plans work

Psychologists call them implementation intentions: “If situation X happens, then I will do Y.” They work because the decision is already made when the urge arrives, and willpower is lowest exactly then. Keep them small and physical (“put the phone in the kitchen”), not vague (“be strong”).

A slip is data

The research on relapse describes what it calls the abstinence violation effect: after one slip, people tell themselves they’ve failed completely, and the slip becomes a full relapse. Planning for a slip in advance weakens that spiral. Write down what happened right before it, change one thing in your setup, and start a new count with the sobriety calculator.