Day 7: The Unexpected Gifts of Relapse

Relapsing frequently can be enormously frustrating and heart-rending and depressing. It feels like you’re on a road trying to get somewhere, but all you keep doing is making U-turn after U-turn and never getting anywhere.

And. And it can also be incredibly educational. When you’re paying attention to why you relapse, you get the gift of understanding what causes you to relapse. And that’s the best way to prevent it.

So as one part of my current resume, I’m trying to take a more preventative approach. What happens right before I relapse?

Well, looking over everything I’ve journaled about during relapses, it’s pretty clear that one of the following likely has happened:

— I’m tired. When I’m not getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night, I feel tired all day. It lowers my coping abilities. Little things get magnified. Things that normally would roll off my back — an irritating co-worker, unexpected traffic, my dog misbehaving — suddenly seem much more stressful.

— I’ve overloaded my calendar. Typically, I aim for no more than two big “things” every day. It could be two work things — giving two public speeches. It could be one work thing and one family thing — a public speech and then dinner with my husband. But it’s when I try to do three things that the going gets tough. When I try to do two public speeches and then dinner out, my stress level goes up and my willingness to break my abstinence increases.

— I’ve drifted from my abstinence check list. I’m not doing the things on my nightly checklist consistently. Maybe I skipped meditation or didn’t write three gratitudes. I didn’t feel like doing a daily reading. Whatever. My checklist isn’t complete.

— I haven’t planned ahead. I didn’t prepack my lunch or I decided to just wing it at the restaurant.

— I haven’t been keeping up with self-care. I haven’t been taking time every day to sit quietly with a cup of tea, take a warm bath, get myself an abstinent treat, or something like that. I haven’t taken time to appreciate and care for myself.

All of these things, really, are part and parcel of the same thing.

In all of these cases, a little something — a little lack of sleep or a little dip in keeping up with my checklist — turned into a snowball, which turned into a relapse.

So, turning it around, perhaps the best way to see a relapse coming and stop it dead in its tracks, is to watch out for the tiny little drifts away from your abstinent supports. A tiny little miss is the first sign that you might be on the path to a relapse.