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Road to Recovery

Mistaken Belief #1

Mistaken Belief #2

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Mistaken Belief #17

 By: Terry Gorski with additions by: Lee Jamison

A MISTAKEN BELIEF IS SOMETHING THAT YOU BELIEVE TO BE TRUE AND ACT AS IF IT WERE TRUE WHEN, IN FACT, IT IS FALSE.

Mistaken Belief #17: Successful recovery from addiction requires continuous abstinence from the time of the initial commitment to sobriety.

Fact: Most addicted people are unable to maintain permanent abstinence the first time that they try. Once they are convinced that they are addicted, it sometimes takes an “episode of use” before they learn how to be sober.

This information is not meant to give you permission to periodically use alcohol or other drugs. As we have said, once you start using addictively you cannot be sure what will happen to you. You might die in the course of your next binge. This information is simply meant to present you with the reality that if an “episode of use” occurs, it is going to be your response to it that will determine whether or not you will ultimately recover, end up in jail or prison or ultimately die from your addiction.

Alan Marlatt in a recent book, Relapse Prevention, calls the initial return to addictive use a “lapse” and distinguishes this from the destructive return to loss of control, addictive use (a life threatening “episode of use”).

Once addicts have an initial lapse they can do one of two things. They can interrupt it by getting help to return to abstinence and by learning from the experience how to stay sober in the future. Or they can convince themselves that it is hopeless and continue to use destructively until the loss of control leads them to full-blown life threatening “episode of use.”  If they believe that they are hopeless or that they have failed totally because they have lapsed, they will give up and not continue their efforts to recover and attain continuous sobriety.

Relapse prevention planning involves learning how to develop an early intervention plan that will allow you to intervene in your lapse process before it becomes a life threatening, full blown, “episode of use.”

In this way many people also learn valuable lessons about what triggered them into addictive use. They identify the mistakes that they made and the weaknesses in their recovery program and they improve as a result. There is always hope if you are willing to come back to your self-help group and to your professional treatment program to sort out what went wrong.

The higher the level of self-criticism and self-punishment we put on ourselves, the more likely addicted persons are to continue their  “episode of use” until they do serious damage to themselves. It is far more productive if we recognize our “lapse” or “episode of use” for what it is, a symptom of our addiction. A “lapse” or “episode of use” is an indication that we somehow failed to manage our recovery (what we tried before didn’t work). There is more work for us to do. The sooner we interrupt the “lapse” or “episode of use” by getting ourselves back into treatment the better off we are going to be.

If you are out of control when you begin to use or drink, you will need the help of other people to stop early. This help is called intervention. Intervention is simply a term for the process of helping someone who is out of control and resisting the help that they need. By training other people in your life to intervene should you return to addictive use, you can cut your “lapses” or “episodes of use” short and get back into treatment and on the road to wellbriety. The time to set up this intervention plan is early in your recovery.

Misconceptions about relapse can cause you problems no matter how sincere your beliefs. The fact is that you can choose to change your mistaken beliefs, and when you do, you will change the consequences of those beliefs.

 Relapse is a process not an event! Recovery is a pathway not a destination! You CAN do it! We Wish You The Best of Luck!