To fully understand relapse prevention you must first define relapse. Most people would have you think using your drug of choice is a relapse while in reality that’s just using. A relapse happens far before you use drugs or alcohol again and the sooner it’s identified the better.
Define Relapse
The definition of a relapse is: a deterioration in someone’s state of health after a temporary improvement.
Sure using again fits this mold; Although, for most addicts and alcoholics drugs aren’t the problem they’re the solution. They’re merely a symptom of a condition that is causing them to be miserable. If an addict could be equally happy without the substance, they’d have no problem getting sober. Because of this, relapse should be defined is regression into the state of misery that caused the addict to use drugs in the first place.
Why is this important?
Now that you took the steps to define relapse, you will be able to identify the relapse long before you use drugs again. Once you use drugs it’s really hard to combat the inherent mental obsession that can lead to physical dependency. However, if you can identify the misery that causes you to use than you can prevent having to combat the power addiction has over you. The best advice for relapse prevention is realizing you got sober to be happy, not miserable. When you’re getting restless, irritable, or discontent you’re relapsing as this will inevitably lead to using. Addicts tend to be long fuses with big bombs and when the bomb goes off we drink the poison expecting the world to suffer. It’s much easier to defuse a bomb than repair the damage it can cause.
Relapse Prevention on Steroids!
Now you can move forward and get better at relapse prevention. Because you define relapse as returning to a state of misery, you can learn from relapsing without having to repair excessive amounts of damage. When you’re miserable ask yourself what you can do different. Keep trying new things. Never give up and stay sober one day at a time!
I hope this article helped you with relapse prevention! Below is a video from the author of this article, subscribe to his channel for video content!
Philip Markoff (Associate of Science) is an online influencer and thought leader on addiction education; he is known as his alias “CG Kid” who’s obtained a large audience primarily on YouTube as a vlogger and journalist. His current sobriety date from polysubstance chemical dependency is June 9th, 2013.