Overview
An Abstinence Violation Effect (AVE) refers to the negative emotions someone feels after they’ve been inconsistent with some rule, goal, or commitment.
For instance, if you’re on a diet but you decide to cheat with one Oreo, you might feel that you already failed the diet so eating ten more is no big deal, or even inevitable. If you decide to hit the gym every day, and you skip one because you just weren’t feeling it, you might decide that you don’t have the willpower to get the body you want anyways and give up.
A similar thing can happen with sobriety. Someone who accidentally grabbed an alcoholic beer instead of a non-alcoholic beer might worry they broke their sober streak, so a full relapse or bender is inevitable. This can spiral into a self-fulfilling prophecy where a potential setback or minor deviation from a plan becomes a complete collapse into old habits.
Commentary
“I already messed up, so I might as well give up.”
“I already broke one rule, so I might as well break the rest.”
More than the following description and exploration of the term Abstinence Violation Effect (AVE), the above example might make make things very intuitive. It’s a quick path from this sentiment into believing “I’m just an addict who can’t help but fail” or “I’m just a criminal by nature who can’t fit in with others.”
There are some common strategies to combat an AVE when it comes up, with many of the more recently discussed common solutions coming out of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.
One is to vet thoughts for all-or-nothing thinking, or that either things are all good or all bad, total success or total failure. Someone who relapses after years of sobriety still lived a sober life during that time, and those memories and experiences and impacts are all still real. Each of those days was successfully sober.
In doing so, it might be easier to see a trajectory of progress that continues from past successes, which can pull people out of catastrophizing spirals and into a solutions-focused mindset. Relapses or setbacks can provide more information to identify lifestyle changes that can be made to prevent more setbacks in the future, which can be motivating as a reason to stay optimistic.