Relapse is the precipitous or gradual slide back into the self-destructive practices and attitudes of addiction. Relapse is usually triggered. The trigger is usually some event that causes a sudden internal fall off of the scaffolding erected by recovery.
The following examples could be experienced as a result of a dire event that has actually happened:
However, such experiences could also be spawned by our own thoughts in reaction to a misperception, a projection, or being triggered into an old, buried hurt or shame.
For example, we could shame ourselves with a thought, or someone could say something shaming. A chance remark by a boss could feel like a severe threat to survival, triggering a flare of relapse as our own fear flames but not denote anything serious from his point of view.
Time and again, the initiating event is quickly forgotten as the slide toward relapse commences. Suddenly, your consciousness shifts from having a recovery orientation to having a comfort-seeking orientation. This shift in orientation causes a shift in behaviors, such as skipping a meeting, putting yourself in a slippery place, or exposing yourself to a tool addiction.
These secondary events then set up the environment of use, whether one’s use will be a substance like sugar or alcohol or a return to an activity addiction like computer game-playing or caretaking.
Later, when we autopsy a relapse, we may identify the secondary event as the causal event, saying something such as, “I shouldn’t have gone into that bakery,” as if the bakery were the stimulus. But a misery addict with sugar as one of the tool addictions knows full well that a bakery is a slippery place with the inevitable outcome of eating a sugar product because of the overpowering stimulation of its sights and smells.
The question really is, “Why in the world did I go into a bakery? I had to know before I stepped through the door that I was setting myself up with nearly a 100 percent chance of succumbing to a product.”
We find the answer by working our way back to the shift in consciousness. What happened before the bakery? What happened before that? We keep going back until we can approach the question: what was it that caused my shift from recovery consciousness to addictive consciousness?
Relapse can be caused, also, by exposure to the addictive substance or activity, by hanging out with people who use your substance or promote your activity, or by frequenting places that push the substance or activity.
You become more vulnerable to relapse whenever you let your recovery support activities lapse. Missing meetings, not talking to a partner in recovery, not talking about your issues at meetings or therapy group, skipping therapy—in short, any way you decrease your contact with other people who carry recovery consciousness—is a setup for eventual relapse. It’s like taking down the safety net and storing it in the basement. The next time you get knocked off the tightrope, you’ll have a hard fall instead of bouncing back. Lapse leads to relapse.
What’s going on in our insides when we let ourselves lapse? Here are some of the possibilities:
All of the above are aspects of forgetting the truth—that we are powerless over our addictions and compulsions and we need other people in order to stay in right relationship with ourselves and others.
Anyone with an addiction is vulnerable to relapse. It’s not inevitable, but lots of people in all recovery programs relapse. It’s really quite normal. If you relapse and start blaming or shaming yourself, that’s actually a part of the relapse.
Remember that a relapse can be prevented or stopped by noticing when you are starting to let your recovery efforts slide or when you are starting to have an attitude of defiance, stubbornness, shame, or hopelessness.
Three telltale signs for a misery addict are an increase in avoidance, self-sabotage, or interest in tool addictions. During their first year or two of recovery, most misery addicts are susceptible to reverting to their old patterns if they don’t maintain conscious efforts toward recovery. For your own progress to last, you need to keep yourself connected to a recovery community.
The minute you notice an increase in self-sabotage, run, don’t walk, to your community (and your sponsor, if you have one) and increase your contact there. You can lose your gains so quickly that your head will spin. Don’t risk it. Don’t risk having to start over. Fix it fast because the deeper you let yourself sink, the more likely it is you will have to start at the beginning to get yourself out of the pit again.
Following are two common characteristics of addiction:
I saw this so graphically when I quit smoking many years ago. I cherished the fantasy held by all addicts that since I had quit, I could now have a cigarette occasionally without falling back into addiction. So I accepted a cigarette. By the next day I was smoking more than before I had quit. (I am grateful to say that I’ve now been abstinent from tobacco for twenty-two years.)
The changes in the brain that come from addiction don’t go away. They stay in place. As a result, whenever the addictive practice is reintroduced to the body, the brain already has the mechanism to welcome it and proceed from there.
Once you let yourself flirt with your addiction again, the slide into relapse will be swift. The next thing that will happen is that some aspect of your self-care or recovery slips. That slip is your visible sign that something has happened. This is the point when you need to get to your community or call a recovering friend fast.
Without action at this exact point, you will be back in your addiction tomorrow.
Once you have lapsed or relapsed, your next most important action is to get back with your recovery community and increase your recovery contacts. Sometimes we feel ashamed for having relapsed, and we feel reluctant to tell other program people, thinking it makes us look like failures. We are not perfect, and no person in true recovery will judge us. We all know how powerful and cunning addiction is and that it is grace and benevolence that has saved each one of us.
Still, your recovery activities are your safety net. If you are meticulous about keeping that process active, then when a dangerous feeling or event comes along, you already have the structure in place to catch you and keep you from falling.