Relapses are terrifying for most. Both the idea of a relapse and the dread felt after a relapse rank high among a recovering addict’s worst experiences, alongside hurting others and going through an overdose. While relapses are not always life-threatening, they can bruise and batter a person’s morale, and leave them feeling like their journey has been all for naught.
To overcome relapses and move past them – and even learn to avoid them in the future – two things must happen. First, it is important to unlearn the fear of a relapse. Second, it is important to completely reframe and rethink what it means to relapse and see the experience from a different point of view.
To clarify: a relapse is when a recovering addict uses again, thus breaking their sobriety streak. However, it is far too easy to lose sight of why sobriety matters, and instead focus solely on the number on a chip or on a calendar. By taking a different approach to the meaning of a relapse in the grand scheme of things, a recovering addict can recover much faster and relapse less often.
Why Relapses Happen
Relapses happen for a myriad of reasons. Most involve stress. Everyone has a limit for how much they can take before they break, and for people in early sobriety, even the slightest burden can feel several times heavier due to the weight of staying sober. Relapses commonly occur early on not out of a lack of conviction or experience, but because it is the hardest part of the journey, especially without the right support.
However, relapses do not magically occur after some form of mental threshold is reached. While many events contribute to the build up of a relapse, there is always one specific event that triggers it. These triggers change, because most people have several. It could be something that reminds you strongly of the old days, such as a specific place or song, even something as simple as the route you take on your way to work. Or it could be something else that sets you off.
Before relapses occur, there are countless temptations and moments where the question – to use or not to use – comes to the forefront of the mind. This is normal in early recovery, when cravings are still at their strongest and the memory of being high is still freshly burnt into the mind. Cravings subside the longer the brain gets a break from drugs. Ideally, that break should last forever – but when it does not, drug use primes the brain for another session, thus making relapses doubly difficult to escape as they demoralize the patient and make it more alluring to use again.
Identifying Triggers
One way to start avoiding relapses is figuring out exactly what your triggers might be. This is mostly for the first few months, to help you focus on sobriety and minimize the chances of another relapse. Ideally, it should not take too much time to adjust to recovery and find a stable place in life. Sober living homes are ideal for this, as they give tenants a place to stay with responsibilities and communal chores, within a temptation-free environment.
Eventually, you can reintegrate triggers into your life without worry, although it is up to you to know when that time comes. Until then, consider what went through your head before the relapse. What memories and thoughts remind you most strongly of your time as an addict? What tempts you the most? What keeps you distracted the most?
Find a way to live your life without evoking excessive stress and unfortunate memories, at least for the first few months of your recovery.
Nurturing a Support System
Knowing what endangers your sobriety the most is helpful, but you cannot live your life tiptoeing around everything. There will be times when you must take a risk and risk getting hurt – from going into an interview looking for a new job, to asking someone out for the first time in a long time. However, you should not bear your burdens alone. Having a solid support system can alleviate a lot of pain – friends and family can help reassure you and give you hope, rather than perpetuating negative feelings and pity.
If you are not on good terms with your family and do not have any friends, it is high time to make some. A good place to start would be through group therapy, at meetings and other places where recovering addicts come together to support each other. This way, you can learn more about addiction through one another and find new and interesting perspectives on similar struggles and situations.
Back to the Basics
Sometimes, relapses are a result of going off-course from what recovery originally taught you. Most addiction treatment programs focus on helping addicts get back on their feet, which can involve anything from helping them build the confidence to get out into the world and find their place in society, to helping them discover new hobbies and pastimes to manage stress and find ways to fight the cravings.
Use what you learned while in treatment or talk to a professional and seek out outpatient treatment or sober living communities.
It’s Not Over
Find your triggers, get help from friends and family, seek out professional therapy, and understand what a relapse looks like. But that is not all. Your arsenal would not be complete without this vital piece of understanding: a relapse is not the end of the journey. Some people dread relapses and frame them as failures – testaments to your inability to stay clean no matter how hard you try.
This is the wrong approach to a relapse. The right approach is to brush off the dust and put one foot after the other into the stir-ups and ride off toward the future. Do not let a single relapse overturn weeks, months, and years of hard work.
It is not over. In fact, in most cases, it has just begun. Relapses happen early on in recovery, and recovery is a lifelong journey. With time, you will learn not to fear relapses, and see them instead as opportunities to learn more about your triggers, your addiction, and how best to deal with it. By learning from previous relapses, you gain the knowledge needed to avoid them in the future, and lose the fear created by tying your success as a sober person to your lack of relapses and mistakes.