Why do alcoholics and drug addicts in recovery relapse? That’s the million dollar question. There is so much research and so much you can read about the subject. Ask 20 people in recovery who have relapsed why they relapsed and you will get 20 different answers: “I stopped going to meetings.”
“I thought I could use/drink just that one time….”
“I started thinking maybe I wasn’t addicted afterall.”
“I was hanging around people who were drinking/using and it just wore me down.”
“I thought I could smoke weed, but not go back to heroin/opiates/alcohol/cocaine/insert-drug-of-choice-here.”
“Alcohol was never my problem, so I don’t know why I end up using meth again when I drink.”
“I was depressed and didn’t seek any help for it.”
“I was feeling angry/frustrated/grief/depressed/betrayed/hopeless/lonely/insert-emotion-here and just said ‘f$%* it’ and bought a bottle/bag/rock/hit.”
“I was on vacation and figured no one would ever know.”
“I came across something I had stashed away and forgotten about one day.”
“I read an article about people who once drank alcoholically and returned to controlled drinking.”
“I just wanted to celebrate.”
“I got tired of trying so hard to NOT drink/use.”
“I was only 34 when I quit… now I’m 54 and thinking maybe I wasn’t really an addict afterall… maybe I was just going through a bad phase at the time.”
“I just decided I wanted to get high.”
“I forgot I was an alcoholic.”
“I didn’t think it all the way through before I made a choice to drink/use again.”
“I was prescribed opiates for pain and started taking more than I was supposed to.”
“I thought I could live with someone who continued to drink/use.”
“I thought I’d been sober/clean so long I could probably handle it now.”
And so on and so forth and blah, blah, blah. The reasons are endless. The excuses are creative. The thinking is insane.
I’ve heard people say that relapse is a part of recovery. I’m not entirely sure what I think about that. I don’t think relapse MUST be a part of recovery. I know people who have quit only once… and they’ve never relapsed. I know people who have quit for a time and then relapsed and never quit again. And then I’ve known even more people who have quit, relapsed, and quit again. To me, that seems to indicate there are all sorts of paths in recovery, all of them somewhat normal. It tells me that relapse doesn’t HAVE to happen, but it CAN and DOES for some people.
Psychiatrist George Vaillant (Harvard) has done some of the most extensive, long-term studies of alcoholics and drug addicts. He has stated that “staying sober is not a process of simply becoming detoxified, but often becomes a work of several years or . . . a lifetime.” I think at any time during that process (i.e. during the lifetime of a person in recovery) relapse is possible. All it takes is one of the 20 excuses (or derivatives thereof) listed above. It doesn’t have to happen, though, for while staying sober/clean is a process, so is relapse!
Another expert in the field, Terence Gorski, describes relapse as just that…A PROCESS… a process that can end in drinking/using again or a process that can be diverted prior to reaching the point of drinking/using again. He says there are distinct steps along the relapse process:
1. Getting stuck in recovery
2. Denying we are stuck
3. Acting out other (other than using/drinking) compulsive behaviors
4. Experiencing a trigger or triggering event
5. Becoming dysfunctional on the inside (in one’s thinking)
6. Becoming dysfunctional on the outside (in one’s decisions)
7. Losing control, feeling out of control/hopeless
8. “Addictive thinking” takes over (“maybe I could use just one,” or “I’m no happier sober than I was when I was drinking,” or “my old friends understood me better and I miss them,” etc)
Gorski claims that nearly half of people who get to #8 in the relapse process start using again. The other half consists of either 1) Those who recognize the relapse process for what it is (either at #8 or prior) and seek help or turn things around and change something in their lives in order to remain sober/clean or 2) Unfortunately, and all too often, there are those who refuse either option and believe that suicide is the only viable option.
If you’ve been in recovery for any length of time, you’ve attended funerals for both those who returned to active addiction and for those who didn’t return to using/drinking, but couldn’t find their way out of the relapse process described above.
So all of that is the research and opinions of those who study addiction and recovery for a living. I do not study addiction and recovery for a living. I have lived addiction and/or recovery for most of my life, though, so in that way I, too, am an expert. It took me 9 years to get and stay clean after my first introduction to recovery. I kept thinking I was different. I continued to believe I could control my drinking/using. I desperately tried to prove that I was not an alcoholic or an addict. I failed miserably.
And miserably, I failed.
A little over 19 years ago I stopped trying to exercise control over something I couldn’t control. I stopped trying to prove I was “normal” and could drink or use drugs like those who did have control. In the past 19+ years there have been many, many times I have entered into the relapse process outlined by Gorski above. There have been times I’ve gone as far as #8 in the process. Fortunately I fell into Gorski’s group that sought help to turn things around and get out of that miserable relapse process before returning to using/drinking. Because of those previous 9 years of struggling to put together any substantial clean time or sobriety, I think I have an understanding of relapse and empathy for those caught up in the cycle of relapse that I might not otherwise have. That understanding and empathy doesn’t mean I condone relapse any more than it means I condemn it. I just accept that for some people, it is a detour on their path to freedom.
I’m Maze and I’m an addict.
2017
(republished with permission from Conscious Contact)
