Nowadays, finding our phones before our feet find the floor each morning may be totally commonplace. It’s entirely possible to consume images of wars, jury verdicts, or storm warnings before sitting up, stretching out, and taking a sip of coffee. Sure, constant scrolling is almost completely normalized (we invented a word for it in 2018, “doomscrolling”), but it may still trip up those of us who struggle with substance use disorder (SUD).
A relapse—a return to substance use—means using something you’ve been working to stay away from. It might be one slip or a longer stretch, and almost everyone with SUD goes through it. But at St. Gregory Recovery Center, we view relapse not as a strike against you, but rather a chapter in your recovery story.
Everyone’s relapse triggers can look a little different, but there are a few that tend to show up again and again:
- Seeing or thinking about people and places tied to when you were using
- Developing or managing a new health condition, especially one that requires habit-forming substances to manage pain
- Celebrating holidays, birthdays, religious dates, or other big days
- Undergoing life shifts (a job ending, a relationship changing, a loss)
- Feeling stress, anger, fear, guilt, even joy, if using was once part of celebrating
Habitual scrolling is closely related to that last example: stress. Maureen Salamon, executive editor for Harvard Women’s Health Watch, notes that while doomscrolling isn’t a direct cause of stress, it is a part of how we handle it. The act of scrolling can be understood as a stress response, something we do to reduce feelings of chronic anxiety or overwhelm. It’s something our St. Gregory counselors in Iowa have heard a lot since social media gained a pervasive presence in our lives.
But what if it’s also adding to the chronic stress we experience daily—not just helping us cope with it?
Doomscrolling and Why It May Contribute to Relapse
The American Brain Foundation (ABF) defines doomscrolling as the inability to stop taking in bad news on a never-ending feed, one that your algorithm keeps restocking with whatever you interact with most.
In some ways, doomscrolling is a habit-forming substance in its own right, simply due to its effects on the brain. The ABF reports that scary headlines can light up your amygdala, which then pings your hypothalamus, prompting your body to release adrenaline and cortisol. You’d normally come back down afterward, but the feed serves the next alarm, so the coming-down part never quite arrives. Repeating this process continuously can contribute to high blood pressure, weaker concentration, poorer decision-making, and more emotional dysregulation.
In 2024, Harvard Health reported this constant doom state leaves you hyped up in the worst way, potentially generating headaches, tight shoulders, lousy sleep, a shorter fuse, and foggy thinking. Harvard’s experts have also noticed that women, children, and people with a history of trauma can also experience a more intense version of these effects.
All of these effects can make it harder to stay on track in recovery. Of course, an hour of scrolling isn’t automatically undoing your recovery. It may just make cravings a bit harder to ignore when they pop up.
How to Cut Back on Doomscrolling
- Create space between you and your feed by keeping your phone off your nightstand, stash it in a drawer at work, or park it an arm’s length away at dinner.
- Take back control of your feed by muting accounts that wind you up, turning off notifications you don’t need, leaning into local news, and flipping your screen to grayscale.
- Fill up breaks in your day with more meaningful activities, like taking a walk, reading, meeting up with a friend, or volunteering. You may even consider asking our team about yoga or other wellness activities you can take part in.
- Speak to a professional at one of our Bayard or Des Moines locations about any feelings of distress that doomscrolling brings on. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help you catch the thought that reaches for the phone. You could also explore dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) with us, which helps you regulate the negative emotions that can come with being chronically online.
You Deserve Quiet Time in Recovery
Doomscrolling isn’t a direct threat to recovery, but it could be a trigger for you if it cranks up stress, affects your sleep, or scatters your focus. Small, consistent scrolling boundaries, maintained day after day, may help you feel more centered and less stressed.
If you’re in recovery or supporting someone in residential treatment in Bayard, you’ve already done harder things than putting down a phone. But if you catch yourself sliding into an unproductive headspace where doomscrolling makes substance use seem more attractive, we would love to support you when you contact us.
