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Road to Recovery

Mistaken Belief #1

Mistaken Belief #2

Mistaken Belief #3

Mistaken Belief #4

Mistaken Belief #5

Mistaken Belief #6

Mistaken Belief #7

Mistaken Belief #8

Mistaken Belief #9

Mistaken Belief #10

Mistaken Belief #11

Mistaken Belief #12

Mistaken Belief #13

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Mistaken Belief #15

Mistaken Belief #16

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 #4: Relapse occurs because addicts drop out of treatment or stop going to AA/NA meetings

Fact: Most people stop going to treatment or AA/NA because they are already in the process of relapse. Discontinuing treatment and AA/NA is often the result of the relapse process rather than the cause.

For relapse prone persons, treatment and AA/NA do not always work. In the AA “Big Book” it says in chapter 5,  “Those who do not recover are people who cannot (italics ours) or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault.” It is likely that these “unfortunates” drop out of treatment and stop going to AA/NA meetings because the relapse symptoms become so severe that it becomes impossible for them to participate in treatment or AA/NA. Relapse prevention does not substitute for but supplements AA/NA. Relapse prevention planning must begin long before AA/NA and treatment is discontinued. We call this the AA/NA plus approach – AA/NA, professional counseling, and relapse prevention planning.

Barbara became very upset when she heard someone at a Relapse Prevention workshop say that discontinuing AA/NA attendance did not cause relapse. She knew many people who had returned to using alcohol or drugs when they stopped attending meetings. It was impossible to convince her that these people may have been in a process of relapse before they stopped going to meetings or that the relapse progression may have been the reason that they stopped attending. “As long as I keep going to meetings,” she said, “I won’t relapse.” Barbara continued to go to meetings, but she never learned to manage the sobriety-based symptoms of addiction and she never learned to interrupt her relapse-warning signs. She never drank, but she did have a nervous breakdown with tragic consequences for herself and her family.

If you see the return to alcohol and drug use as a result of discontinued meetings, you will tend to blame yourself rather than seeking out new possibilities for help. You may continue to go to meetings but do nothing else to interrupt the relapse process. You will continue to try what has already failed repeatedly in the past. You will not leave yourself open to new possibilities, or “go to any lengths” to maintain your sobriety. If you begin to use addictively in spite of going to meetings you will believe that you are hopeless. “This should work. If it does not work it is my fault. There is nothing else I can try; so, therefore, I must be hopeless.”