It Was an Accident, Not a Relapse — Here's Why That Matters

You slipped. It happens. But before you burn down everything you've built — let's talk about the difference between an accident and a relapse, because they are not the same thing 

Transcript

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This is Doc Jock, your addiction lifeguard. If you're here, you already know that addictions are brutal, recovery is hard, and the road between them is longer than anybody tells me. I'm Dr. Jock DeProte, the licensed professional counselor and addiction specialist. This podcast exists for one reason. Walk that road with no sugar coating, no magic pills, just the truth about what recovery really looks like. Quick note, this show is for information and entertainment only, not professional treatment. A real human being is. Now let's get to it. You slipped, you used, and now everyone's calling it a relapse. But what if that word is doing more harm than good? The language we use in recovery shapes how people recover. That's what I believe. So let's talk about that today. And the use of the language that we use in recovery and more specifically the use of the word relapse. You know what typically in the recovery community, especially if you're going into the rooms, AA or NA, one of the A's, if you use, they consider that a relapse, and you got to pick up your 24-hour chip. And I can understand that thinking because the zero tolerance for usage is part of recovery. But in my practice, I kind of work that around a different way. So there's the word relapse, but there's also an accident or a lapse. My position is it's depends on what's going on there. It's a brief, isolated incident, that's an accident. It's not a character failure, it's not a return to active addiction. But the danger of all that or nothing labeling is that leads to how calling it a relapse can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And that's what I find in my practices. A lot of times people, they kind of surrender to the idea that they've relapsed and they're just going to continue. Kind of like they gave that surrender to the addiction in the first place. So this is why language matters in recovery. And that's why my language is slightly different than what perhaps you may have heard in the past or you hear when you're in uh in the rooms. Shame. Shame is one of the addiction's most powerful fuels, and the word relapse loads people up with it. And that shame is what drives the further person to move more into that relapse. If you have an accident, the word accident implies something that can be learned from and moved past. Relapse is kind of like a failure, frankly, and you're starting all over again. And that's what we certainly experience in the rooms. And there are times when you do relapse and you do need to pick up that 24-hour chip. But a relapse implies you're back at square one. And that's rarely true. Now, I'm not saying that if you relapse and it goes on for weeks and months, you're starting over. Yeah, you are starting over. But are you really? Because haven't you learned from that relapse? So what an accident looks like versus what relapse looks like is really important to distinguish here. An accident is a brief, kind of unplanned, followed up by immediate recognition and recommitment. Those are the calls I get when somebody says, I've been drinking, and my first question is, for how long? And that's when they give me the answer. The second question I ask is, of course, where are you and what are you doing? And let's, you know, let's talk about it. But an accident, it's brief, it's unplanned, it's followed by immediate recognition. You understand that you're doing it, and then the recommitment to recovery. Relapse is very different. It's a pattern, a return to habitual use and a loss of recovery footing. You're losing your way. You're losing your footing. So you got to be honest about the self-assessment that you do with which one you're experiencing. The recovery journey is not a straight line, it's a zigzaggy crossing over itself, up and down kind of journey. So you're gonna run into bumps, but you're not running into bumps without excusing them. That becomes a problem. That's when you're kind of moving towards that relapse. The difference between compassion and enabling is when the addict understands that they've relapsed, but they really have relapsed, they're gonna experience some shame and some regret and some anger. So for the addict and their support system, you gotta distinguish between an accident and a relapse. And I am very clear with that with my clients. And I am also very clear with that with the families of my clients who may be experiencing this person as having an accident here or there. In my clinical experience, what I've seen happen is that people are shamed and then they go right back into it. They'll just head right back into that addiction, as opposed to supporting the person after they've had a slip. The all-or-nothing thinking is the problem. But I do understand why the loved ones of addicts have a problem with that. Because they can't really distinguish it. All they see is the retraumatization in their mind that's happening to them when they see the usage. And that's what happens with the families. But what do you do if you're an if you're an addict and you've had an accident? What do you do? Well, don't isolate. That's when addiction starts coming rushing back in. That's what the enemy wants. It wants you to just surrender. So isolation is addiction's best friend. And that's when that happens. That addiction wins. You got to call your sponsor, got to call your counselor, call your support system immediately. What I tell my clients is when you have that accident, I want you to call me while you're having it, or while you're thinking about it, or right after you've had it. Don't come in here a week after and tell me about it because there's really nothing that can be worked on that's as strong and as important as when it happens in real time. So I want you, if you've had this happen, I want you to get with your sponsor and talk about it. Go tell your counselor. If you've got a well-trained addiction counselor, they need to know and you gotta activate that support system. Listen, everybody in their phone needs two or three or four or five phone numbers that they can call when it's happening, because you've got to be able to have somebody with you kind of walking you back from that ledge. But you got to get honest about that. You also need to get honest about what triggered it. Nobody just has an accident for an accident's sake. It happens for a reason. You were thinking about something, you were feeling something, maybe it was something earlier in the day. Maybe it was the day before, maybe it was a relationship problem or your own disappointment about something. But something triggered it. And that's the important part of like when you're in that moment thinking about it and you reach out to your counselor or your sponsor or your support system, you can talk through, you can process what's going on. But then you got to have some recommitment without drama, without that self-destruction. You got to have the ability to say, you know, okay, I'm gonna, I it's the old thing about, you know, I fell off the wagon, I'm gonna get back on. But without the drama, and if it's an accident, there shouldn't be a lot of drama around it. You're gonna probably feel really horrible when you do it. Uh, usually my clients do. They they have that accident, they come in, they're full of shame, they tell me about it. But I I'm like that my reaction to it is okay, you had an accident. All right, let's talk about what led up to it. It's funny because they expect me to probably react badly, maybe tell them I can't work with them anymore, or just you know, heap some more shame on them. Shame on you, you couldn't do it. And I don't. And it's kind of puzzling to my clients because they that's what they've gotten used to. And if you're listening to this and you're a family member of somebody that has an addiction, listen, this is what you used to give them. And it's just a cycle. That's what addiction does. It create it repeats in cycles. So there's drama, there's self-destruction, then you're pulling that person out of the gutter and you're trying to start all over again. So you got to be able to make that commitment, re-re-commit without that. So let's just try to make that happen. Family members and friends, they respond in that moment, and that's it's either screaming and yelling, or attacking, or compassion and understanding. But that that moment matters enormously. Overreaction, that usually can push somebody deeper into their shame and back into using, because that's again, that's what they're used to. So support looks like accountability, but you're not punishing the person. Punishment will result in defensiveness and rejection and the feeling of sadness. In other words, they're going back into isolation. So if if you experience that yourself, isolating, now you're right back at it. If you're a family member and you and you start attacking that person and and criticizing them, there's too much reaction, you explode, that sounds like punishment and it's it's rejection. So when an accident happens, you gotta be prepared for it, whether you're a loved one or or you're an addict, because it's probably gonna happen. But there's a time when an accident starts becoming something more. You gotta be honest with yourself. The line between an accident and a pattern is kind of small. It's a it's a thin line. An accident picked up and you used once that day. Maybe it bled into the other day, maybe it went on for two days, and then it stopped. And that fits into the category for me as an accident. It's not a full-blown relapse because the person stops and they come, they start talking about it, they admit it to somebody that they've committed to as part of their recovery community or their therapist or whatever. That's an accident. It does escalate, and that's when you need to really start working on listen, man, go back to treatment. Go back to treatment. Maybe you need to increase the number of times you're going to meetings. If you cut back on your meetings and then you had an accident, and the accident scared you pretty good, and it looked like it was going to be going on for longer than a day or two, you need you, you you pulled away from your support. Maybe you didn't go get a counselor. You were supposed to get a counselor to process because usage is about processing. That's what you think you're doing when you're using. And if you're not getting a counselor that can help you process stuff and you took away your drug of choice, where are you processing? Well, you're not. So you're gonna go right back to using. But you got to do something, right? Get back into the recovery community. If you don't do those things, you're doomed to failure with recovery. Now, there are times when people will be kind of hardcore cases. I've had them. I've had them where they have relapsed multiple times, two, three, four, five times. That's fine. They needed extra support. They needed something more than they were getting. Maybe they've had a few accidents. When an accident happens, there's always learning around it. What didn't I do? What didn't I pay attention to? What in the world did I miss? Like, why did I do that? It made no sense. Well, that's the part that you need to work on, the making sense part. It's not about losing your recovery that's the problem. It's about not being able to process the feelings about whatever you're feeling. And we use because we're uncomfortable. I keep saying that over and over again. And when we are using, we're uncomfortable, we think we're processing those uncomfortable feelings. And if you can just go ahead and work on what is making me feel uncomfortable, that's really hard to do when you're by yourself. And so that's why you need to be processing this stuff with a counselor. You know, if you're looking for a counselor that really understands addiction, you're going to get somebody that probably has been there themselves, most likely they have. And if they have, they understand that sense of powerlessness that re that that leads to isolation. The isolation you leads to continued usage. And in those times when you're isolated and you're continually using, and that false idea of you think you're processing things, you think you're you're working through your issues when you're not, they will understand that. And that's one of the things that I look for when I'm trying to refer somebody out to a counselor. Maybe they're moving, or maybe a family member is is you know reaching out to me and they're saying, Hey, you know, I'm I'm in Texas or I'm in, you know, Tennessee, and I I don't, I'm not sure what to look for, uh, or or if my son or my wife, my husband, or whoever, who's looking for a counselor, how do I know if they have a good counselor? You have a good counselor when you have somebody who understands addiction. And by that, I mean that they understand the chaos that can occur with addiction, the destruction that can occur with addiction, and they do not panic or become opinionated about things, they just face that destruction with the client. I I have seen at times clients who come in and maybe they're not quite ready. They're toying with the idea of recovery, they're pre-contemplative, they're not even contemplative. They're thinking about thinking about it. And those are the ones that they're kind of just testing the water. You know, it's it's I think that I'm ready, but I'm not sure. And they might come in to see me. It's interesting. I'll have people that will come in and see me for months before, sometimes before they even admit they're using. I I remember years ago, I had a client who came to me because he had a problem that wasn't didn't have anything to do with drugs. And he it was depression and he had a little anxiety. And he never mentioned usage, he never talked about drugs. He and I saw this gentleman for six months, and after six months, he came in and he said, I have something I need to tell you. Like, okay, and he said, Uh I go on these binges with drugs, and I was kind of shocked. I because I had no idea. And I said, Binges? What do you mean? And he goes, Yeah, it happens about every three or four months. And he said, I know I came in here because I was trying to work on depression and a little anxiety, but I, you know, I I actually have a drug problem. And he proceeded to tell me about his drug problem. And he would go on these these benders for two or three days. He would spend all of the money in his account, so he had no money at the end of it. He would get triggered because the person who was his get high buddy would call him and say, Hey, I got some extra money and I'm I'm gonna I called up my dealer, and I wanna, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna meet with him tonight. Do you wanna do you wanna come with me? And he would always fall for that. He would always do it. And in the process, he would completely he would spend every dime he had with the uh dealer in a hotel in a uh motel room, and he wouldn't tell anybody he was doing it, and his significant other would have no idea what happened to him, and then he would just reappear after spending three days getting high nonstop with the dealer and this get high, buddy. And it was it was terrible. He was so full of shame that he couldn't bring himself to admit that, even though he specifically found a counselor that was an addiction specialist, me. And I was kind of thrown off by it because I wasn't expecting it for one, but two, it was the level of his inability that he to say anything about it that he said for so long. So when we got to the point where he would, you know, we started working on what was happening, and there was a lot of trauma and you know, in his background. But when when I got to the point where he was able to work through these problems and he started processing them without getting high, then it was the matter of like what's a what's an accident look like for somebody like that? If he's if he'd go on and use for you know days at a time locked in a motel room, what does an accident look like? Well, the accident was a secondary drug of choice. And so he would drink. And at least he wasn't using the drug of choice, which was an actual narcotic, but his drinking confused him because that was his way of having an accident without actually having a full relapse. So those kinds of accidents are easy to spot because it's not the sec it's not the primary drug of choice, it was a secondary drug of choice. But it's still an accident. Now he never actually went through the full blown relapse while he was working with me. However, he did after he stopped working with me. So he did actually lose his recovery and he had to start all over again. And he kind of ignored the accidents. He he he just refused to acknowledge that these were the times when he would have actually been using his primary drug of choice, but he couldn't bring himself to do that. So he would drink for a day and get drunk, and we couldn't I could never get him to be convinced that this was an accident. He'd say, No, I was just drinking with my friends. I said, Yeah, but you're drinking till you're drunk. What are you doing? And he was missing the point of he has an issue of he's not processing his emotions and his feelings. And so then we started working on those. And so yeah, I think it was a total of about five years maybe of him being in and out of my office and working on these things until he finally got there. But he did get there, but it didn't happen until he started putting together, oh, I'm having an accident because I'm using something, and it's making me feel like I'm processing something, but I don't even know what that is. I'm not even sure what I'm processing. And so we were able to break through the the lack of understanding of the connection between a relapse, an accident, and the need to process. And it took him years to get there, but he finally did. And he's much happier now, and he's been stable and sober and sane since then. What I want you to understand is there's something about the idea of losing my recovery for us as addicts when we go all in. And you know, we I y we s we we can see the sneaky that people get into getting their sneaky on. Um there was a great example of that with Matthew Perry, who um he just couldn't see that he had switched from one drug to another and he missed the idea of the uh the relapse, and he didn't count or consider ketamine usage as a drug of choice, and he ended up dying from not from ketamine usage, but from drowning because of the ketamine. But he missed the point of like y you're having a relapse. And he I it's it's frustrating because he would talk the talk about recovery and he would do it very publicly, but then he wasn't actually ever in recovery. And treatment the treatment that he was receiving included ketamine. But an addict is an addict, and you know, we can make anything into an addiction. So his attempt at recovery and treatment through the use of ketamine ended up in a full-blown relapse and then he drowned. And that's that's quite frustrating to see people do that. And I know I've had friends who have done that where they were using one drug and then they switched to another and they just wouldn't accept that that was a relapse. So what I want you to keep in your mind is that it's possible for you to have an accident here and there along the journey of recovery in those year to two years of recovery. And I have never met an addict who didn't have an accident here and there, and they do. And I don't give people permission to do it, but I don't expect that they're going to not do it. I know they're going to. It's just what are you going to do when that happens? And again, we learned the lessons. So make sure you have a lot of support around you. Make sure that you have a full understanding of the difference between a relapse and an accident that can can kind of guide you and teach you about what you know, what does that mean and how do I process through that? You didn't lose your recovery. You just hit a bump. You just got to get back up. One accident doesn't erase the work that you've done, it's part of the work. And recovery isn't about being perfect, it's about what you do next. So, like I tell people all the time, it doesn't matter how many times you fall down, it matters how many times you've gotten back up, and you only have to get back up the last time to get into recovery. Well, I hope that this podcast has helped you understand addiction, your addiction a little better. Maybe your loved one's addiction. And if it has, great. I'm glad. If you do need help, please go get help. Go to a rehab, go to a counselor, get into the room, get a sponsor, do some work. It is work, but it's worth it. It's not worth ending your life trying to save your addiction. That's crazy. But if you do need help, you know where to get it. And if you need help from me, you can reach out to me, and you can reach me through my website, docjock.com. I'd love to hear from you. If you'd like to be on the show, you've got something you want to tell me, reach out to me. Docjock.com. So until next time, this is DocJoc saying see ya.