At any point along your recovery journey, there may come a time when you lapse or relapse. Contrary to popular belief, a relapse or slip is not inevitable and not an absolute part of your recovery. However, the data supports that the potential of it happening is very high, especially within your first year. If this does happen to you, you much never consider this a moral failure or a fall from grace.
It is hard to keep up with the demands of a committed addiction recovery program, especially when life seems to be going so well. Going to meetings, completing sobriety checklists, or thinking about the consequences of your behavior on a daily basis, can get boring and rather time-consuming. We all want nothing more than to forget all of those consequences and wish that others would forget them as well. However, as much as we do not want to live in the past, if we do not learn from it, we are destined to repeat it. You never know when life will toss you a curve ball. It is best to keep your seat belt securely fastened because life can be a bumpy road.
There are many opinions about what constitutes a slip and how it differs from a relapse. Let's take a look at the difference.
A slip is considered to be a less serious occurrence than a relapse. Both events are negative, but they differ in the degree of impact they will have on the life of the individual. Slips are when people pick up alcohol or drugs after a period of sobriety but stop again almost right away. They might have had one night where they returned to their former behavior but realized right away that it was a mistake. As soon as they sobered up they were able to return to life in recovery. A slip is often a spur-of-the-moment event and not something that the individual has been planning.
Get help right away, you must tell someone. The fact that you have returned to the previous behavior of your substance use is indicative of worse things to come. Something is not working in your recovery journey. You must reach out at all costs. The worst thing you can do is beat yourself up and give up. Slips and relapses happen and they can happen to you. Your life is more important.
Reach out today. It will be the second best decision in your life.