Is Relapse Inevitable?
By: Maria Hayes
Tags: Addiction, Recovery, Relapse, Sober Living, Sobriety

Is Relapse Inevitable?

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Something that has been weighing on my mind heavily lately is the subject of relapse. A friend said to me the other day, “I know relapse is a part of recovery and I am so proud of you that you have gone this long in one shot.”

While it was meant as a compliment, it made me really start self-reflecting. Oh my gosh, am I inevitably going to relapse? Is the universe permitting me to do so, since “it’s a part of recovery?” When is it going to happen to me? What if I have a year or two and relapse then? Am I “doing recovery” wrong? Do I have more willpower than others? Does everybody relapse?

The thoughts continued. You can see the rabbit hole that is my mind.

But, after all the thoughts subsided, I thought to myself that it’s not completely true that I’ve done this in “one-shot”. Yes, I have not relapsed since I decided this time to stop drinking. As of today (12/14/2020), I have chosen not to drink for 347 consecutive days. However, I have been “sober-curious” for about 4 years. What I mean by that is, it was about 4 years ago that I truly started to question my drinking, although I subconsciously knew for much longer than that that I drank too much.

I tried here and there for those 4 years to “take breaks” from drinking; which usually lasted for about a week. Usually just the work week (Monday through Friday), but even that was hard to stick to. Occasionally I would try 10 days and that was a big one for me… I was so incredibly proud when I would go for 10 days with no alcohol. At that point, you would think that I would have admitted to having a problem, but nope. Well, you’d think after jail, or driving blacked out, or fist fighting, or the numerous concussions I obtained, or the waking up and not knowing how I got there, or driving into a bean field and flattening four tires, or sleeping in a police station in metro Detroit, (you see where I’m going with this…), you’d have thought I would have admitted to maybe having an issue with alcohol. But nope. My stubbornness is not my best trait.

Statistically, less than 20% of people who complete a drug and alcohol treatment program remain clean for an entire year and 90% who recover from alcoholism are likely to experience at least one relapse within four years according to recoveryways.com. I cross-referenced these statistics against about 8 other websites and pretty much found the same thing. It was disheartening, to say the least.

As of right now, I am choosing to not be a statistic. And that’s all I can do. The adage of “one day at a time” is yet again showing up in my daily mantra. I cannot future trip about what I might do in the future. I can choose every single day, every single minute, to not pick up that drink. And that’s all I can do. I do understand that with relapse, comes shame and guilt. And if it happens to me, then I will deal with it at that time. But for now, for TODAY, I must remind myself that I do not permit myself to drink just because statistics say I’ll fail.

Instead, I’ll keep my hands busy and my mind focused on something else. Sometimes I’ll go for a walk, paint, write, read, knit, color, bake, cook, clean, the list goes on. Whatever you need to do to get your mind off grabbing your drug of choice, then you do that. Let’s be rebels together and avoid the statistics.