How Travel Can Promote Sobriety

It’s an understatement to say that recovering from alcohol addiction or substance abuse is hard. That’s why recovering addicts are wise to use any tool at their disposal during their recovery journey, including a team of medical and mental health experts, a supportive community, and safe, comfortable surroundings — but could it also include travel?

According to Nicholas Mathews, co-founder and CEO of Stillwater Behavioral Health, a dual diagnosis treatment facility in California, travel can promote sobriety in many ways.

Travel enables you to shed the past

First and foremost, traveling to a new location can give an individual recovering from addiction a chance to escape unhealthy patterns and environments.

“There are benefits to traveling for people in the early stages of addiction recovery,” Mathews says. “One of which is the opportunity to break away from habitual behaviors. Addicts and alcoholics are very much creatures of habit, so traveling and getting away can help by changing their environment, making it easier to break those habits.”

As Mathews explains, traveling to new places tends to throw ingrained routines to the wind. It also allows people to shed the unhealthy relationships or situations that could promote a return to their former lifestyle.

“The mental health benefits of getting away and going to a comfortable environment include removing any external reasons why you might not stay sober, whether it’s a significant other, a job, or something else,” Mathews says. “In my experience, anytime anyone has relapsed, they generally blame it on something external. By getting away and placing themselves into a safe and comfortable environment, recovering addicts can fully let their guard down and remove many of these external factors that could cause someone to relapse.”

But these aren’t the only ways traveling can benefit people in recovery. Mathews likens recovery to self-reinvention, which benefits when one gains distance from the person they used to be.

Travel enables you to reinvent yourself

“Meeting new people and experiencing new places allows you to reinvent yourself,” Mathews points out. “More importantly, if someone is trying to reinvent themselves, staying in the same environment triggers constant reminders of their old behavior. Traveling to escape those memories can prove tremendously valuable.”

Indeed, a classic 1998 study followed two groups, one of which received a conventional relapse-prevention program, while the other experienced a three-day experimental camping adventure. The researchers found that the participants in the travel condition enjoyed better results, writing, “there was significantly greater reduction at posttest in autonomic arousal, frequency of negative thoughts, and alcohol craving in the experimental group, which were not present at pretest. Moreover, we believe that there was significant reduction in stress in the experimental group, but this must be inferred indirectly.” 

Perhaps most importantly, when the investigators recontacted their participants 10 months after the study concluded, 58 percent of those who were in the conventional program had relapsed. By comparison, to only 31 percent of those from the camping trip had relapsed.

Why does travel have these beneficial effects? According to neuroscientists, travel can change the very pathways your brain’s neurons follow.

Travel reshapes your brain

Studies have shown that travel encourages neuroplasticity, the brain’s capacity to change and grow. For instance, the research of famous American neuroscientist Dr. Michael Merzenich demonstrates the many ways the brain benefits from getting out of its comfort zone and exploring the unknown.

Traveling to new destinations involves seeing new sights, hearing new sounds, learning new facts, and eating new cuisines — all of which often inspire the brain to develop new neural pathways. Novelty ignites the brain, which is forced to adapt to whole new circumstances.

When the brain becomes malleable, such as during periods of travel, the individual gets a chance to form new habits and thought patterns while separating themselves from old ones. As a result, the person’s mood can improve, and they can find it easier to choose different behaviors and better coping skills. 

These findings have important implications for people in recovery. Selecting a recovery program out of state and traveling to a new place may help begin the process of shedding maladaptive ways of thinking and behaving.

How can travel support your recovery?

According to Mathews, while travel isn’t necessary for recovery, it can be helpful.

“You can get sober anywhere as long as you’re willing to put in the effort, such as participating in therapy or a recovery community like a 12-step group,” he says. “But if the environment is more welcoming and comfortable, then you can fully decompress and relax while simultaneously doing the work. We find that the work is more effective because fewer external distractions are pulling you away from the recovery program.”

Recovery from alcohol addiction and substance abuse is a highly challenging and lifelong process, so anything that makes the work even a little bit easier is worth consideration. For this reason, people who want to get sober should weigh how travel might factor into their plans. 

When you leave the people and places that have kept you dependent on alcohol or drugs, you aren’t running away. You’re running toward your true, better self.