Why Relapse Is Not Failure: Learning From Our Mistakes

 In this episode of Doc Jacques: Your Addiction Lifeguard, we take the heat off relapse and put the spotlight where it belongs: what it’s trying to teach you. Doc breaks down the difference between an “accident” and a full relapse, the three common relapse patterns, and how to swap shame for curiosity so you can make one solid course-correction and get right back into structure, support, and forward motion. 

Transcript

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It's time again for Doc Shock, your Addiction Lifeguard Podcast. I am Dr. Jacques Deep Brukert, a psychologist, licensed professional counselor, and addiction specialist. If you are suffering from addiction, misery, trauma, whatever it is, I'm here to help. If you're in search of help to try to get your life back together, join me here at Doc Shock, your Addiction Lifeguard, the Addiction Recovery Podcast. I wanted to be real clear about what this podcast is intended for. It is intended for entertainment and informational purposes, but not considered help. If you actually need real help and you're in need of help, please seek that out. If you're in dire need of help, you can go to your nearest emergency room or you can check into a rehab center or call a counselor like me and talk about your problems and work through them. But don't rely on a podcast to be that form of help. It's not. It's just a podcast. It's for entertainment and information only. So let's keep it in that light, alright? Have a good time, learn something, and then get the real help that you need from a professional. You know, since it's after the holidays, and as I tell uh many of my colleagues and people that ask, what this you know, the holidays must be a tough time for you. And I'm like, no, not really, because people tend to hold it together in the holidays. Uh it's after that it's a problem, because uh that's when all the uh the collapse, as I call it, happens when people start to relapse and all kinds of craziness starts going on. And so that's what I wanted to talk about was w, you know, the the idea that relapsing is failure, and uh why relapse is not failure, and how how do you learn from the setbacks that you encounter in your recovery? So there's uh a problem that happens when people um start using again. And I use two different terms. I use relapse and accident, and they are two different things in my book. Um I know in the AA, the the uh 12-step community, they see anything that passes into your body that's a chemical of choice, that's a relapse, and you restart the clock. But for me, that's not the case. Um I see an accident as not restarting the clock, I see it as part of the learning process. And so there's an emotional impact that can happen when you have a relapse or an accident, and that emotional uh that emotional impact is usually shame, fear, the the feelings that you've ruined everything. Um that's what I get hit with every single time. And so I try to teach people that relapse is not failure, it's a signal that something still needs to be cared for. There's still need that you still need care. Um that thing that's not being addressed or not cared for is the learning experience. Now, differentiating relapse from uh accident. Accident is short term, relapse is goes on for weeks, months. But um the idea that you need to understand the relapsing process, don't excuse it. And it's about learning. And many times I see people feeling very defeated when they get to the point of experiencing relapse, and uh, you know, they could they quit their recovery. So let's let's talk about like why relapse happens. Um there's a there's a moral framing that you got to remove. Like addiction is not a moral failure. So I want you to remove the idea of it being a moral failure, and it's just a clinical reality. It's something that happens. Addiction, addiction is a chronic relapsing condition. You're going to go back to your drug of choice to cope. The brain healing that occurs in recovery, it takes time. And that early recovery uh time is when you're the most vulnerable. I'd say probably within the first three to six months. That's when you're most vulnerable to relapse. And different things affect it: stress, trauma, habit memory, uh, emotional overload. Those are things that can trigger that that thing that makes you need to cope, right? That feeling of I need to cope. So there's an important distinction that needs to be made here. That relapse is is not refusal, it's often an unmet need. So you're not refusing care. You many people relapse in their recovery. Uh they're going to meetings, they've got sponsors, they're going to counseling, maybe they're in IOP or they're in PHP, and they're not refusing care. But often it is just an unmet need of something that you're not recognizing. So the the I want to uh talk about also the um the tr there there are three types of relapse. There's the accidental relapse, and that's where you have like you've you've removed some boundaries, you've got some poor boundaries, there's exposure to drug of choice through friends. Maybe you've got this impulsivity issue that that keeps popping up, many addicts do. And it's often very fast and it's unplanned. You didn't, you didn't, you're not like trying to figure out how to how to make this relapse happen. You're not calculating it out, but um it's a signal. And the signal is that you weren't protected enough from those things. That's the accidental relapse. The experimental relapse, that's the one where you're testing your control. These this is when I start hearing people say, uh there's a part of me that still kind of believes the lie that I can do this, right? So there's this ambivalence you have about your sobriety, your being clean, you're grieving the loss of the substance. Many times I use the language in my practice of I'm I have to say goodbye to an old friend. And that that saying goodbye part, you're still attached to your old friend. And that's when you're gonna have that experimental relapse. Maybe I maybe I'm not as crazy as I thought. Maybe I'm not really one of them, but I'm different. And that's the unicorn situation. Like sure, you're the unicorn, you're different than everybody else. So those are the experimental relapse, and those are the ones that are kind of that's going into the accident phase as well. Um, I think the accidental relapse is an accidental accident, and the and the uh the experimental relapse is really an experimental accident. A full relapse. Now, the experimental relapse thing can lead to a full relapse, but the full relapse is just really, it's like a return to an old pattern. And it often is tied to your trauma that hasn't been really effectively addressed or treated, your mental health and the and addiction's best friend, isolation. So there's a signal there that's coming from a full relapse, and that's something deeper that needs treatment. The thing, and and it for me as a treating clinician, it's it's really about uh it's about the trauma. And trauma is one that's really tough for people to to grasp and to deal with and scares people a lot of times. They don't want to go back into um thinking about the uh the child molestation or the childhood abandonment or physical abuse they suffered or whatever. And if it's adults, they don't want to go back through the uh the experience of being held up at gunpoint or watching somebody die in front of them or whatever it is. It's gonna be very difficult things. So there's something deeper there that needs treatment, and that's why you you just had a full relapse, you just disappeared. So different relapses mean different things, and they require different responses. So how what what relapse is trying to teach you, I guess, right? It's it's trying to teach you something. That's what I say to everybody. Like, this is a learning experience. So in order for you to see this as a learning experience, just like if you're learning any other skill, whether it's golf, tennis, or flying or you know, anything, shooting bow and arrow, you you don't feel ashamed if you don't succeed right away. And that's what happens with addiction, is there's shame. So you've got to shift that shame over into something else. And that's where you're removing yourself from this deep connection you have to your addiction, and that is to turn it into curiosity. If somebody comes into my office and they're talking to me and they're telling me about their accident, I am very curious about their accident. I am not in any way thinking to myself, oh, this person has failed. Um, geez, I can't believe they even had the nerve to come in and tell me. I'm just immediately very curious about what's what they've just gone through. And so they'll tell me about their experience. Maybe they spend 20 minutes talking about other things, talking around it, and then they'll finally admit that they, you know, they drank or they, you know, used cocaine or whatever they're using over the weekend. And I'm like, okay. Well, what was going on the days before? Right? I'm curious, and that's what I'm I want you to move into is the the curiosity. So the relap messages that are pretty common, trauma not yet addressed. That's that's number one. That's the primary, that's number one. Coping skills you're not are not strong enough yet. The structure is has become loose. Like you went, maybe you went to rehab and you had a lot of structure, and you got out and you went to IOP or PHP, and it wasn't as strong as that structure around rehab, and it kind of loosened. And so then you had the ability to go out and drink or shoot up or grab some fentanyl on the three corner or whatever it is. That structure got loosened. Isolation started increasing. That's a big one because you can't be around the old people that you were around, and so you start isolating, or maybe you don't feel comfortable in social situations yet, and so you start isolating. And then the last one, accountability. And if you're coming into a counselor's office or you're, you know, you're talking to a sponsor or something, your accountability kind of faded, and you found a way to kind of move and dodge around the responsibility thing, and so that accountability started to fade. Any one of those things can be um something that happens. And if your curiosity about your relapse is occurring in your mind, then you're gonna probably go through those five things that you're thinking about uh that that may have triggered some feeling of discomfort. So you don't want to engage in in self-attack, you want to replace that self-attack with better questions around those five common messages that could come from the relapse. And these are the questions I ask my clients too. Like, well, what did you stop doing? In other words, did you stop going to meetings? Did you stop talking to a sponsor? Did you stop your process of recovery that you were engaging in? Um and did you get overconfident? Are you are you a little overconfident, maybe? Uh that experimental phase. And who did you stop engaging with? You pulled away from somebody. And almost every single time, what I hear from people is they stopped going to meetings or they stopped their their sponsor dropped away or something, right? They stopped engaging in that structured portion of it. Now, the fact that they're coming in and telling me tells me that they're still engaging in it. So they still are trying to pursue recovery, but something happened along the way. So the one thing is though, that relapse it means a lot of things. And you're going to ask those questions, but this is what it doesn't mean. It it it's relapse doesn't mean you're weak, that you're incapable of recovery. It doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean everything that you learned is gone. Everything, you know, I'm I had no idea that was coming. Your skills that you learned, they still exist. Awareness about what's going on still matters, and the sobriety timeline still counts. For me, it still counts. Now, if you've gone into full relapse um and you're and you disappear from my office for two months, we're gonna have a different conversation. But it's it's I want you to I want you to be able to have some self-esteem, some dignity, and and don't start abusing yourself because you you couldn't do it. You just got to do a course correction. This is not getting hung up on the coral reef and your your ship is now doomed and it there's a shipwreck. You're floating on the water, you're just reorienting, and you get back into that flow of direction of recovery. Okay. So the the most dangerous part for you and the in this relapse, there is this problem of things that can that can really compound the issue, the the dangerous part of recovery that can start to grab uh grab hold. Secret, uh I can do this by myself, and isolation. I know for a fact when I'm working with somebody and they miss a session, and they're coming in every week, sometimes twice a week, and they miss a session. I'm like, okay, what what's why are you missing this session? I had this, I had that, I couldn't, you know, I couldn't come in. Okay, fine. Then the next session, they miss that one. I know if it's in the first four months of recovery and somebody has missed two sessions, the first one might be legitimate. Maybe they were they were saying they were sick or their child had, you know, was sick and had to stay home from school, whatever. Okay, that's fine. The second miss right after that, and I hear like no reason given. I know that actually what's going on is that they are relapsing and they're just afraid to say anything. So they want to keep it secret. Maybe they even come into my office and they don't say anything. They don't say anything for a couple sessions, you know, because they think they're gonna fix it on their own. So relapse doesn't end recovery. The silence does. And honesty. Honesty is is the thing that is the early preventing prevention for uh the deeper damage. Be honest. You're gonna get hurt really bad if you just try to do it on your own, because you're not gonna be able to do it. And and what do you do after a relapse? You know, so if secrecy is the enemy and isolation is is you know the enemy, it's it's the the tools of the enemy at least. What do you do after a relapse? Number one, you have to have community around you, and you have to open your mouth and say something. So you gotta tell one safe person the truth. And a safe person is your sponsor or somebody that's in your community of peers that have gone through this and are trying, you know, they're they're walking the path of recovery with you, uh, can be your counselor, but somebody safe is generally somebody that's in the program. And the secrecy part is they feel the person who who relapses or has an accident, they feel their own shame. Other other people in the recovery community are not making you feel shame. You're doing this yourself. You think you have failed, and so you're going to keep it secret. So the safe person is not ever gonna know if you don't say something. But you know, I'm gonna say probably 99% of the time, I will say to somebody that when they tell me that they drank, um, and many times I have to just ask them, Did you drink or did you get high this week before they'll tell me? And thankfully they do tell me. But when they do, I'll say, Well, does anybody else know? And it might be a loved one that knows or nobody. And I'm like, Well, did you go to meetings? No. Well, why'd you stop going to meetings? Well, because I used. And I don't I don't want to go and I don't want to say anything. And uh well, this is completely counterproductive, but this is your own internal shame that's driving the decision to not say anything. So you have to re-enter that structure, and you got to do it immediately. So when I tell people who have said to me, I had an accident or I drank, I got high, relapsed, I'm like, okay, I want you to I want you to go to a meeting tomorrow. Well, I don't normally go to meetings tomorrow. No, I want you to go tomorrow, though, because you know, if they're in my office late, um I go tomorrow. I know it's an out-of-sync meeting for you, but find a meeting. Just go to re-enter that structure immediately. You got to reduce the the uh the resistance to getting the help you need, okay? And and it's really kind of funny. I tell people early in their recovery, and they never believe me, as I'm trying to help them with their shame, I'll say, you know, every single person in recovery has had these accidents and these relapses a hundred percent of the time. Every single person in recovery has done this. So when you're saying that you did it in front of people that have done it, they're going to, they're gonna actually help you and they're gonna support you, and they're gonna embrace that. You're just like they are, and that's an important thing to try to take on. Okay, a third, a third thing to take into account. You gotta reduce the the access and exposure to whatever it is you're using. I go through this exercise with people when they're first in recovery. I say, get out your phone. Okay, everybody that you you use with or that is a dealer for you, I want you to block their phone number. And they say, okay, and they go through and I say, it's like maybe they look at me and they go, now it's like, yes, right now. So they'll go through, they'll they'll block them all. And I say, okay, now I want you to go through and I want you to delete them all. Delete them? Yes. If you block them, they can't reach you. If you don't delete them, you can reach them. Then I want you to, if you, if your phone has a uh, you know, if it's like text messaging or something, you gotta go in and you gotta delete the trash, empty the trash so that you it all access to it is gone. So your exposure is gone. Don't go to these places that you, you know, people are drinking if they make you feel uncomfortable, have that conversation with people all the time. Don't go where it's being used, stay away from those people, and cut off your own access. Ask for help that you don't want to ask for. Think about that. Ask for help that you don't want to ask for. If you are resisting the idea that I, you know, I can't bring myself to ask that's when you need to ask. So take take the steps of cutting off access and then ask for help. Here's here's another one for you. Make one corrective change. Make one. But don't make a bunch of promises to yourself. I'm never gonna do that again. I can't believe I'm so stupid. I'm gonna make sure I don't do this. That's an emotional promise. Make one course correction, make that change. And then you're gonna go back to reducing the access and exposure, and you know, going one course correction can be go tell somebody that that you trust, like that safe person. Accountability is not punishment, it's structure. Boundaries protect recovery, they are structure. So if you engage in those things, you will be more, you will have a chance of actually getting there. And you got this is important in that first year. Man, you have got to do these things, otherwise, you're never gonna get there. So, what are you trying for? You're trying for perfection. Are you a person like me who grew up with an abusive childhood household and perfection is you know the goal of everything? Inadequacies will not be tolerated. Well, persistence is what you're actually going to try to do. Perfection. Recovery is ugly and it's messy and it's not perfect. But if you can get to a point where you are stable in recovery, you're not going to. Stumble as much, but many people in stable recovery do stumble. They don't fall down, they stumble. So your recovery is built through honesty and adjustment, endurance, perseverance. Use those as your building blocks instead of perfection. You're not starting from zero if you have a relapse. It is a lesson that you're learning about your own recovery, and it teaches you about what you have still a need to work on. So you're just restarting the process with more insight, with more knowledge through these experiences. And when you are trying to understand how to deal with something, experience gives you knowledge. You don't just because you're you're an expert in addiction doesn't mean you're an expert in recovery. You're an amateur, less than an amateur in recovery. You don't know how to do it at all. But the experiences give you knowledge. The knowledge is where you get wisdom. So when you walk into the rooms and you're talking to somebody and they're, you know, 10 years into recovery, 20 years into recovery, those people have wisdom. And they got wisdom because they had a whole bunch of experiences that gave them knowledge. They didn't go from experience to wisdom, they didn't go from walking in the door with knowledge or wisdom. They walked in with nothing. They went through experiences and experiences and experiences, and they gained knowledge. And when they got enough knowledge, they got wisdom. That's what you're trying for. And it is not perfect, and nobody does it exactly the same way each time. So I want you to understand that relapse is not the end of the story. It is part of the journey. Accidents are not the end of the story. They're part of the journey. The question is not did I relapse? The question is, what am I willing to change now that I've had this accident or this relapse? What am I willing to change? You have to get support. No one, and I mean no one, gets into recovery on their own. That's fiction. It doesn't it just doesn't happen. So you've got to get professional and peer support. Find a way to get yourself into a counselor. Find yourself strong enough, even if you don't want to do it, to go to meetings and raise your hand and say something in the meeting. Just anything, anything that's bothering you or whatever's on your mind, say it. You also need to let it be known that you're looking for a sponsor. And what I tell people many times, the best way to find a sponsor is just stand up in the meeting when everybody's, you know, they're throwing out their stuff. Just say, I'm new to this and I need a sponsor. I'm having trouble finding a sponsor. People will come up to you after the meetings and they will tell you, hey, I can help you with that. I'll we love helping people get into recovery, those of us who are in recovery. We love it. So let us help you. So find a way to get the help. Be open, be honest, understand accidents, relapses, they're two different things. And it is part of the process. It's not the end, it's not fatal. Everybody goes through it. You are going to go through it. You might go through it a bunch of times. I think the record for the number of times that I've had for somebody that was trying to get sober from alcohol, and they actually went through some kind of formalized treatment process was 27 times. I could not believe that. And they started listing all the places they'd been to and completed 27 times. And I was like, wow, that's a lot of experience right there. And they were trying, and they were still in my office 27 times later. I got to give them credit. They were trying. This is a uh recovery is a game for uh champions, not people who are defeatist or perfectionist, and those who were willing to stand up and keep trying over and over and over again. So keep trying, don't give up. And remember, relapse is not failure, but it's a learning experience. Well, that's it for this episode of Doc Shock here, Dixon Life Guard. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did, like, subscribe, tell other people. Um, if you spread the news, we can maybe spread the recovery. If you are in need of help yourself, you can go to a rehab, you can reach out to a counselor if you need to, go to an emergency room, start from there. But wherever you go, you're gonna need to engage. Go to meetings, get the support you need. There's just absolutely no reason for you to end your life because you're trying to preserve your addiction. That's just crazy talk. Don't you know? You can also reach out to me through my website. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, and until the next one, this is Doc Shock saying, See ya.