what's a relapse?

[AlexT]

Hey Sid,

Thanks alot mate, appreciate it!

hows your 3month challenge going, you kept at it?

cheers

[london bloke]

Hiya,

Doing OK- have lots of problems in real life- but staying sober has lifted my self-confidence quite a bit. Spend a good amount of time on here- its helping me see things more clearly.

Keep the faith - you will turn a corner!

lb

[ruby]

Hi everyone,
Alex I am the same. This is my second shot at Bright Eye and hopefully will stay strong this time. I just want to remember the morning after to realise what a waste of time it is and really not worth it. I wanted to drink like you describe with your fiancee's family but just can't do it. I have to realsie this and cut it all together x

[AlexT]

Hey Ruby,

Hang in there. The great thing about this forum is it links us all up, none of us are alone in falling foul of the demon drink. I just dont udnerstand how after reading everything Allen Carr says in his book I still keep crawling back to it. I know its a debilitating poison, I know it does nothing for you except basically cloud your judgment, inhibit and suppress parts of your brain and ultimately just always, always, always lead to one followed by another followed by another 15 drinks...it tricks you every time!!

The thing to really tackle for me is missing the taste of certain drinks. I like german wheat beers (probably because they are up to 8% LOL) and chilean red wine. But actually, and again I quote Allen Carr, when you actually truly analyze the taste its the sugars and additives that are giving the good taste. I find alot of red wines actually very sour when you truly analyze it. Normal beer also tastes like real shit on a bad day. We have all of us accustomed our taste buds into liking the taste but its such a massssssssive con. My first drink of beer or wine or whatever, tasted horrible, I literally used to have to force the beer down me when i was 14 and trying to impress my friends like so many of us try and do to fit into social peer groups. That beer was horrible (probably why so many of us start on sweet ciders)...keep telling yourself all this when you have a weak moment. Truly analyze what you are missing and there is a counter arguement that shows alcohol up for what it really is in each case:

1. It gives confidence...wrong, it strips us of that and none of us can deny how much our inner selfs have been battered by the demon. Sometimes it feels like you go to a party and the booze takes the edge off the nerves, but i have noticed on those few times without the booze, that after 5 minutes of meeting a whole room full of new people, the nerves go anyways...so the booze is not doing it..we are being conned yet again.

2. It tastes nice...see above

3. It somehow provides intuitive insight or empathy and is a key to nights out with friends. This is another subtle and very massive con trick i find. It all boils down to the people you love in your life, you will have a superb time with or without the drink and your topics of conversation would be as interesting with or without the booze. The booze is merely there, it is not the root cause of such stimulating evenings.

Anyways sorry im rambling massively but you keep at it! We are all so much the better without the booze in our lives!

Cheers

[zarajenkin]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your post - really helpful for me today! I can do two or three weeks fairly easily - even six or seven weeks leading up to my law exams in June but can't seem to embrace sobriety as a permanent way of life - even though clearly much, much happier without it.

However, the fact that we are here means that we CAN do this. Yippee!!!!

Sending you masses of support. Think we chatted on BE over a year ago.

And also support to all others here on BE today. We are in the right place.

Zara

[AlexT]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your post - really helpful for me today! I can do two or three weeks fairly easily - even six or seven weeks leading up to my law exams in June but can't seem to embrace sobriety as a permanent way of life - even though clearly much, much happier without it.

However, the fact that we are here means that we CAN do this. Yippee!!!!

Sending you masses of support. Think we chatted on BE over a year ago.

And also support to all others here on BE today. We are in the right place.

Zara

Nice one Zara and good luck in your LAW exams (good for you!! Im studying event management over in sweden but cant start till ive mastered swedish, im upto alevel standard now so going good and not bad for an aging binge drinker hehe)

Yes we did chat last year good to meet you again

Also totally hear you about the 3 week itch. Every january i always do booze free and i dont know what it is, boredom, listlessness, restlessness that kicks in, need to find other ways to make weekends exciting that dont involve bars, at least for around 6 months till you put some decent distance between yourself and drink

I also havent got an iphone yet but i really want one because then you can access bright eye in really weak moments out in bars and places!!

Keep at it!! good luck with your studies! (Think how much more of a powerful lawyer you will be when all the rest are all out on the piss every weekend hehe)

xx

[xxkellbellxx]

hi everyone,

i can totally realate too... i go about 3 weeks and then get this desire to get hammered! it's like i can't think about anything else and i just drink myself stupid for a couple of days, feel totally ashamed and then get back on the wagon... What is it that makes us feel this way? im really going to try this time, it just destroys me each time i binge! x

[zoe]

I just wanted to share something that has been on my mind a fair bit recently. I was talking to a mate on here and then coicindentally read some very pertinent posts about the "inevitability" of lapses and relapses in recovery.

When I first came to BE I was drinking (no kidding Big Ears). I wanted to deal with my drinking ... but I also wanted to keep drinking. I decided to go for a period of abstinence and then re-introduce. So after many many failed attempts ... stringing together a few days and then thinking I was "cured" since obviously an alcoholic has to drink every day doesn't she? ... well I finally got underway and managed nearly 5 months sober in the lead up to my wedding day. I wanted to ensure I was making 'sober decisions' and not just muddling through in the usual fashion. I planned to drink on honeymoon and I did. Not in a controlled way but in much the same way as me and OH had done in the past ... drinking from mid/late afternoon onwards and not stopping until virtually passing out.

The next couple of years I spent in the cycle so many of us experience. Stop start, try to work out what I wanted ... not being able to find any consistency in my thinking ... stop start ... on and on it went. I felt like I was getting nowhere fast and yet I could see that others on here were "getting it". Why couldn't I? What fatal flaw was I imbued with that others didn't have? I started to lose hope.

Psychologists will tell you that humans will do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. For me I think this is definitely true. My drinking spiralled so that almost always I drank to oblivion ... I did this every night and the amount of wine it took to achieve this escalated too. I started hiding the extent of my drinking from my husband ... started having hidden bottles in the kitchen, started swigging from OH's glass when he was out of the room, started topping up my glass and gulping it down then re-topping the glass when he wasn't looking, started drinking earlier and earlier in the afternoon and sometimes the mornings too, started fortifying my glass with vermouth ... started taking days off work, not just through hangovers but to drink through the day.

I was scared of what was happening but I somehow also felt some kind of excitement too. Somewhere in my twisted logic I thought that this self destruction was kind of cool. Like I was one of those tortured misunderstood souls like we sometimes read about in literature or see in films. Poor me eh? Delusional.

I was still here though. Still on BE posting and offering advice / support even as I grappled to understand what I could possibly do to turn this ever worsening situation around. I was starting to not just lose hope but to actively despair of myself. I felt so very lost, and it hurt me deeply to feel like that ... so I drank to make the feelings go away.

Eventually despair drove me to try again to re-gain my sobriety. Those first few weeks and months were as gruesome as they are for anyone. Emotionally all over the place, various unpleasant physical symptoms, battling through seemingly endless feelings of "what's the point?" ... "you're never going to make it this time" ... "why should this time be any different" ...

I was just assailed by self doubt based on hundreds of day ones. But I also knew what the alternative was. I could go back to the way things were. I could go back to the despair.

Last night I met someone who stayed sober for 16 years and then drank again. He is just coming up to his full year sobriety since stopping after about 3 years of the stop-start cycle that so typifies recovery. It helped me a lot to see that even someone who knows about living sober will struggle to recover once their drinking has re-established it's place in their lives.

What has this to do with the "inevitability" of lapses and relapses. Well I think fundamentally it has to do with how well we maintain our level of acceptance. I've often heard people here talk about their "rock bottom" ... that turning point which put them on track. I think many of us hit quite a few rock bottoms really ... they just get worse each time. The purpose they serve is to drive a deeper level of acceptance I guess.

The thoughts I had in early recovery really troubled me a lot. I continually visualised various scenarios where I'd be able to "justify" lapsing. I planned lapses and even went as far as creating mini dramas in order to justify drinking ... I'd get a bottle down from the rack and look at it, weeping that I couldn't just get blotto to take away the way I was feeling inside myself. I would fantasise about drinking, I'd see myself as some poor victim of life circumstance and dream up reasons to make it OK to drink. I planned and schemed and all the rest of it. But I didn't actually drink. I really had to grit my teeth sometimes but I didn't drink.

And through not drinking I learnt something really valuable. There is nothing inevitable about lapses. They happen when we let them happen. They happen because we don't stop them happening, and they happen because we sometimes allow ourselves to forget how powerful this addiction is ... I would even argue that they happen because we haven't learnt enough yet to stop them happening. Lapses can teach us so much but for me as a very slow learner. I know I could have saved myself a lot of heartache if I'd looked at lapses as an opportunity to learn rather than as a reason to wallow in the awfulness of finding myself drinking again.

For a long time I thought acceptance was a one shot deal. You accept you have a problem ... eh voila! You're half way home. It's taken me ages to figure out that acceptance is a practise ... it's something you have to maintain and preserve. It is a powerful tool for preventing lapses and relapses.

Someone said to me a while ago "you need never drink again". If I'd heard that phrase a few years ago that would have sounded like a life sentence to me. I couldn't imagine my life without booze. Nowadays I look at my drinking days and what I mostly see is the pain I put myself through in those final few years. It was like I was in freefall and couldn't find the parachute release button.

Anyway, I just wanted to send some encouragement and support out to anyone struggling with the thoughts that they will never do this ... or that their own personal history means that they are incapable of doing this. Believe me, these thoughts are really really normal. Our minds take a real battering in this addiction, but really and truly there is a way through to the other side.

Warmest hugs and thanks for reading all the way through! xx Jos

[Grendelslip]

zoe, I did read all the way through and thank YOU.

I have read about the 'relapses are inevitable' thing but the message I took away from it is that its a reality that most people will relapse at some point - any point - on the road to recovery and that one should not feel a failure when it occurs.

That seems to be borne out by the experiences posted here. Most of us fall, then are told not to worry, you did it once, you can do it again, pick yourself up, it is not the end of the world etc. All true and absolutely correct in my opinion.

My concern though is allowing this fact of life to become an enabling excuse, a sort of (un) safety net. 'I will not drink today, but if I do that is OK, I will just start over.' For me, each time I have had to go back to day 1 I have to convince myself that THIS time I will do it, but there is that little niggling thought - the good old EAF - in the back of my mind which says 'that is not how it has happened in the past, is it?' Currently I am dealing with it by trying to convince myself that this time I will not relapse because I have learnt from my previous relapses so it is entirely probable that I will not relapse again.

It is a tricky area, isn't it. Saying 'I will do this', when experience tells us otherwise and yet we need to preserve a part of us which can pick up the pieces should the worst happen. One of the things that really tugs at my heartstrings is when somebody has started drinking again and says 'I cannot do this'.

Thank you again Jos for another thought-provoking post.

Dave x

[Artlesschaos]

I understand what you mean Dave. I had a bottle of wine last night (well it was Valentine's Day) thinking oh well, it's just a little relapse. I can get back on the wagon tomorrow (or when I feel like it ) and whilst this is true, it is all to easy to put it off and make excuses why today won't be the day to quit.
I am currently locked in this cycle of thinking and I need to draw on my 18 day previous achievment and get back the motivation I had then. My drinking was scaring me to death. I need to remember that to spur me on.

[hamster2]

My personal experience mirrors Zoe's with umpteen lapses between periods of sobriety. I totally agree that the main and huge part of recovery is a whole hearted acceptance of the problem - not an intellectual acceptance but a spiritual acceptance.

Part of reaching that spritual awareness or awakening (if you like), is through the trials and tribulations of lapses, through reflection and personal analysis and understanding of the triggers of lapses - At some point the light goes on and we say 'oh I get it! I cant drink'. Its not a thought but an awakening. I have thought a zillion times 'I should not drink its bad for me' but it took years to understand 'I cannot drink its bad for me'. Once I understood my problem, accepted my problem then the pieces of the jigsaw started to fall into place. Not drinking is normall place for me right now.

I think we drinkers need little excuse to drink so I dont really believe the idea that lapses are inevitable would be a serious driver for lapse. A drinker will find any excuse if the feeling is on them. I know I could and did.

If I drink again I will not be blaming it on any idea that a lapse is inevitable however true that may or may not be. I will continue to tell myself I dont drink and continue to believe I will be alcohol free forever, one day at a time.

I believe for everyone there is a time when the lapses stop. Its just that we dont know when that will be for any one person - we are special and unique individuals so how can we tell?

Pink - I do believe some people can find a way to control. I can't for sure - I have had my time of trying but I am so happy that you seem to have managed your lapses ina postive and constructive way. - good to see you enjoying sobriety so much

Julie
x

[2XS]

Brilliant post Zoe and great responses from everyone too... thanks, these gems of reflection are so incredibly vital and a superb reminder for those who like me are returning or valuable reassurance for those just starting out.
It's made me consider all those dates where I'm likely to give myself 'the excuse'...

[hiding]

Hi, the danger for me is when you believe that it is not an excuse but you really "need" alcohol to cope with this problem and that problem. The mind or the EAF can make you think that.

[hamster2]

hi Hiding

good to meet you. I remember 'needing' alcohol just about any time for any reason. When I finsihed work I really needed a drink, I needed a drink when stressed, sad, happy... basically, I just needed a drink. I would always love that first drink - that warm fuzzy feeling that promised to sooth away my stress, calm my excitment or temper my nerves. It was a medicine without which how could I possible get through what life was throwing at me.

The idea of going a day without a drink filled me with abject fear let alone two days, weeks or months!

A lot of this is bad habit breaking, learning to 'feel' again and learning to accept bad feelings and good as being part of you and being comfortable with that.

There is also the physical dependant part of it - not going through sweats, delerium tremours etc (not for everyone) but our minds wanting its fix. I used to think of my addicted mind as a baby contentedly sucking on a bottle when I was drinking and then when the drink was removed the baby would open its eyes, furrow its brow and start to cry and cry and cry ...- sometimes the crying becomes so loud we give in because we just need the peace.

We teach our children to sleep in their own rooms, beds etc by not giving into the cries but providing reasurance. We need to do the same with our inner child.

I became a parent to my own inner child - I have grown up a lot over the last 15 months. My inner child no longer cries night and day.

this probably sounds way rambly and incoherant but for me, it has been a combination of fully accepting my problem, parenting my inner child and to a lesser degree (never very good at it but I do try), practising 'mindfulness' .

Life is no easier - not a bit of it, but I am helping myself and my inner child grow and develope the emotional maturity needed to deal with every day life. With that, the cravings have become fewer.

I dont think I have it cracked, not a bit of it. I think I would be very vulnerable if I ever thought that. I see you are on the two week thread. I wish you all the best on your journey.

Julie
x

[hamster2]

Brilliant post Zoe and great responses from everyone too... thanks, these gems of reflection are so incredibly vital and a superb reminder for those who like me are returning or valuable reassurance for those just starting out.
It's made me consider all those dates where I'm likely to give myself 'the excuse'...

2xs Lovely to see you again. I dont pop in often so Its good to see old 'faces' when I do.

Julie
x

[Gnasher]

Hi,I'm a new member,just thought I'd say hi and I do need help/advice?! xXx

[Martina]

Zoe, I absolutely love your post from 14 Feb (just read it today...I really got to get around more!) What wonderfully articulated thoughts, and they really resonated with me.

[zoe]

Hi Martina thank you so much! I remember when I first started reading around the threads on BE ... how amazed I was at so many stories that I related to. Made me feel so much less alone in my battles. So much of this addiction business is about what happens in our minds ... and how we choose to respond to those thoughts and feelings.

Sometimes I still get that old niggle ... that small whisper that tries to convince me that since I'm eventually going to slip up anyway why not get it over and done with now? It is such a compelling thought because it is grounded in my lack of self belief ... and on the fact that there isn't a single thing that I have ever tried to do in my life that I have managed with anything even approaching perfection ... why should this be any different?

The problem with those kinds of thoughts is that they are based on a false premis. I don't have to DO anything perfectly ... all I have to do is not drink today. Ha!!! Well even with my appalling record in getting things wrong there is one thing I absolutely know I can do ... and that is to stay sober today. As long as I remember to keep things on a simple level then I know that there is no inevitability at play here. I just need to do this simple thing right today ... and then tomorrow. Phew. Simplicity has huge advantages for someone like me because I am so prone to over-complicating things!

A mate of mine told me a while ago that I need never drink again. That's quite a mind blowing thought ... seems almost unbelievable that someone as screwed up as me might actually get something as important as this right for a change!

Good to see you spreading your wings here on the forum Martina xx Jos

[Shelsey]

Zoe, what a brilliant post! I feel the same. I often get the niggling "of course you will one day" thoughts - and the drinking dreams. Sometimes I sit with people who are having a drink and, out of the blue, I'll get the "go on that red wine looks so good, one won't hurt" thoughts.

However, I need things to be simple too. And simply I will not drink, not one, not ever. And if I wake up every day thinking "today I am not going to drink alcohol", it breaks everything down into manageable pieces. And I intend to spend the rest of my life waking up and thinking "today I am not going to drink alcohol". Tomorrow is none of my business