All week, we’ve been talking about the work needed to maintain sobriety and to help fix or prevent relapses. For many people in sobriety, relapse is a dirty word. Maybe that’s why many people don’t seem to want to discuss it. But as with other problems, discussing relapses might help people deal with them.
Relapses are a normal for people in recovery for drug and alcohol abuse. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) estimates that 40 to 60 percent of people in recovery experience relapses. The organization believes that this number is similar to the number of people who have relapses in other chronic conditions, such as high blood pressure (hypertension), asthma, or type 1 diabetes.
Note that we’re calling drug and alcohol abuse a chronic condition. That means it’s ongoing. That’s one reason people shouldn’t think that one relapse will end their recovery entirely.
People can battle with substance use disorder their entire lives. Just because they’re not actively abusing alcohol or drugs doesn’t mean that they don’t struggle with temptation and other effects of such abuse.
As bad as they might feel about a lapse or relapse, people have to remember that it’s just one lapse or relapse. It doesn’t diminish all of their past accomplishments or erase the possibility of earning future achievements.
We can’t define ourselves by any one action or any one trait. People are complicated. If we dwell on bad things, we might become stuck in that mindset and be unable to change because we might think that we’re not good or capable of doing good. If we only focus on good things, we might forget what we’ve learned and be unwilling to take risks or trying anything new.
Admitting our relapses, working to fix them, and moving on are ways we can move past relapses and other problems in our lives. Relapses can be difficult, but not dealing with them is even more difficult.
