Substance Abuse

Remembering Third-Person Pete

Many Second Chances Addiction, In Memory Of, Lessons from the past, mental health, Substance Abuse

(Trigger Warning: Suicide)

I had just completed  the necessary intake proceedings to begin  my third inpatient treatment for alcohol and drug addiction. 

Mark, the intake counselor at the place, was leading me up the stairs to what was to be my room for the foreseeable future.

“Pete doesn’t wash dishes!  Pete doesn’t do kitchens!” someone yelled  from what I could only guess must have been the kitchen area.

“Great,” I mumbled, as I dragged my duffle bag up the last few steps.

“Don’t worry about him,” Mark said, looking back toward me as we walked down the hall.  “He’s harmless.”

I nodded in reply to his reassurance as we arrived at my room.

“Pete will scrub toilets!” the voice from down stairs continued, becoming louder. 

“Pete will shovel shit,”  he continued, having reached the top of the stairs. 

“Pete will do anything but work in the kitchen!” he finished just in time to reach the doorway of my new residence.

“What’s up, Mark?” Pete asked, half out of breath from the combination of scaling steps and reading the riot act to some poor soul downstairs.

“Hey, Pete, this is your new roommate,” Mark said.

Pete raised an eye brow, shrugged his shoulders, and slid between us to enter our room.

“Welcome to rehab, this place sucks,” he said, flopping onto his bed.

I looked at Pete, gave the room a quick look, and turned to glare at Mark.

Mark smiled.  “You’ll get used to it.  Welcome.  If you need anything, I’m around,” he said as he turned and walked back down the hall.

“Great,” I mumbled as I entered our room.

Inpatient treatment isn’t so bad once a person comes to grips with the reality of it all. 

Leaving one’s life for 21 or 28 days, or for what would turn out to be almost 150 days in my case, is tough.  It’s a tall order to leave one’s life, no matter what that life is like, and by the time one agrees to inpatient treatment, life’s usually fairly crappy.  Leaving what one is used to, good or bad, is a shock to the system.  Completing a four or five day detox stay prior to that doesn’t seem to make things any easier.  It never did in my case, anyway.

This was to be my first experience in a residential inpatient setting, after having been a guest at two medically-based settings before hand.  The hospital-based treatment was just that.  It felt, looked and smelled like a hospital.  There was an around-the-clock staffed nurse, and they did their own medically-supervised detox on site.  They also offered outpatient services, like groups and individual counseling.  I entered detox there once again prior to moving on to the center to become Pete’s roommate.

“Why are you here?” Pete asked, arms folded behind his head and feet crossed on his twin bed.

“What do you mean?”  I asked as I bent down to unzip the duffle bag that lay on my new bed.

“You know. Drugs? Alcohol?”

“Both. You?”  I started to unpack.

“Pete’s here to make Mommy happy,” he said, with no hint of sarcasm.

“Good for you,” I said, continuing to unpack my stuff.

Pete sat up on his bed.  “You don’t believe me.  It’s the truth.”

“Look, I just want to unpack.  That’s great that you love your mom,” I said, not really interested in the banter.

“Actually, I was committed, by my mom,” Pete shared, laying down again on his bed.

I stopped putting my clothes in the little chest by my bed.  “So, you don’t love your mom?”

Pete started laughing. “You’re going to do alright here,” he said, rolling over to face the wall.  “Wake me up at five, it’s pizza night.”

“Great,” I mumbled, as I finished putting away my clothes.

Five minutes to dinner…

I woke Pete so he wouldn’t miss pizza, and we talked some more after he introduced me to the other people at the center.  As one might guess, the twelve of us represented quite a sample of age groups, professions, drugs-of-choice, and back stories. As they say, addiction doesn’t discriminate.

As time wore on, through days filled with groups and counseling sessions, urine tests and Twelve Step meetings, I got to know Pete a little more. 

After all, we were roommates, and, often purely due to familiarity and shared space, roommates tend to talk.  They talk when they wake, they talk before lights-out, they talk whenever.  I was always a little put off by his habit of referring to himself by name, but it just became a part of who Pete was.

Before arriving at rehab, Pete spent some time in what used to be called a psych ward, or what is known more today as a “secured behavioral health unit,” at a local hospital.  It was indeed true, that his mother had called emergency services, which set the whole process in motion.

Pete really only shared snap shots, a flash in group, a flash in the kitchen, a flash outside while shooting baskets, a flash before lights-out, and usually the story was told within the third-person framework, never in any order.

Pete was a 28 year old single male at the time.  He had moved back home to live with his mother in his childhood home after losing his apartment, after losing his girlfriend, after losing his job, after losing control of his alcohol use.  Pete’s father had passed away several months before it all happened, which may, or may not have been the catalyst for the chain of events that led him to treatment.

Pete never spoke of his mother negatively, but he never really spoke of her positively, either.  In fact, he spoke of her as if he had to, as if she were mentioned only because she was a necessary part of the tiny bits of the story he did share. The only time I remember him mentioning his father was to say that he had died.

The best I’d ever able to put things together concerning how he had gotten to rehab via the psych ward, Pete had been literally out of his mind on alcohol and whatever else when he engaged in what became a heated argument with his mother, the subject of which he never mentioned.  After the argument escalated and spiraled out of control, Pete threatened to hang himself in the garage, going so far as to fashion a noose out of an old swing set chain.  Police arrived, an ambulance arrived, his mother cried, and they took him away because he was deemed a danger to himself and everyone else.

“My counselor’s full of shit and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

“I’m out of this damn place,” Pete said one afternoon, busting into the room after slamming the door open against the wall. 

“What happened?” I asked him.

Pete sat on his chair with a thud and threw his assignment folder at his night stand, knocking over the lamp that had been, up to that point, standing there peacefully.

“What’s going on?”

“That bitch doesn’t think I’m taking responsibility for my actions.  I’m here, ain’t I?” he said, opening his arms and gesturing to our room.  “This is bullshit.”

Pete leaned forward off the chair and crawled to his bed, reaching under it for his bags.

I closed the book I had been reading and sat up on my bed.

“What are you doing?” I asked.  “You’re not going to leave.”

“The hell I’m not,” he replied.  “Pete’s had enough of this shit.”

“What did she say?”

“She said the same shit they said at the nut farm.  She said the same thing my mother said.  Bullshit.  All of it,” Pete said, dragging his bags from under the bed.

“You can’t go, I don’t want another roommate.  It’s taken me two weeks to get used to you,” I said, mixing humor with honesty.

“Look,” I said, “You can’t leave.  Just do what you have to do.”

Pete stood up and walked over to the lamp that was laying on the floor.  He picked it up, popped the dent out of the shade, and returned it to its place on the night stand.

“I don’t want to do what I have to do.  I don’t want to talk about it.  I don’t,” he said, collecting the sheets of paper that had scattered from his assignment folder when they collided with the lamp.

“Why not?” I asked, an answer I had been curious about for the entire two weeks I had been there.

“I just don’t.  Pete don’t.  Both of us, none of us.  I want to stop drinking.  I’ll do that.  They can kiss my ass about the rest of it,” he said, extending a middle finger in the general direction of the office area of the center.

I thought about it for a while, staring at the floor, as Pete continued to salute the counseling wing.

The autobiography is a staple of many an inpatient treatment center. 

It’s basically a rite of passage, an initiation, if you will.  One writes, as much as they choose, information about their family, their friends, their use and their part in it.  Then, they read, or present, it to the group. Some of them are really long, and some are fairly short, but length isn’t always a good indicator of quality.

Some people use their autobiographies to cast blame on others and other’s roles in why their lives are a mess.  Others use it as an opportunity to impress other residents by recalling some of their more outlandish and excessive history, including consumption, outlaw behavior and sexual exploits.  But in my experience, most autobiographies are just that; they are highlight stories of people’s lives.  For whatever  reason, Pete didn’t want to share much, if anything, about his life.

“Just do it, Pete,” I said, after weighing the pros and cons of the autobiography question.

“Hell no,” he said.

“Just skim it.  Don’t tell your deepest, darkest-“

“Stop it,” Pete warned, pointing at me.  “It’s not going to happen. You write your shit.  Tell them everything if you want to.  I don’t need to tell them anything.”

“I’ll do mine,” I told him.

“Yeah?  Well, Mister ‘I’ve been to treatment more than once,’ you know how to do it, don’t you?  At least you should, anyway, right?  What good did it ever do you?  We’re in the same fucking place, if you haven’t noticed,” Pete snapped, again throwing his folder, this time the folder and its contents coming to rest safely on his desk.

“You won’t leave.  They’ll take you back to the nut farm,”  I said as I left the room.

“Nut farm, Pete ain’t going back to no nut farm, and Pete ain’t writing his autobiography,  neither!” Pete yelled as I walked down the hall. He continued as I walked down the stairs.

“Great,” escaped a familiar mumble as I headed toward the group room.

A week later, after much begging and pleading from staff and peers, and after what could be interpreted as an ultimatum from his counselor, Pete was finally scheduled to give his autobiography one morning during group time.

We were all interested in hearing what Pete had made such a fuss about the entire time he’d been at the center. We had all shared at least some of the less than flattering events in our lives, and we, or at least I, wondered what could be that bad or sad or scary. He didn’t even want to talk about talking about it.

Then it happened. He took out handwritten papers from his folder and read.  And he read.  And read.  And then he read some more, without feeling and without hesitation.

As he read, the random fragments Pete had released at different times during treatment came together to make a clear picture, all in a third-person format, as if he were reading a story about someone else.

“And when Pete was seven,” he read. “Then, when Pete was around twelve,” he would continue. And on it went.

When he finished, we sat silently around our circle in the little room.

Most of us stared either at the floor or shifted our focus from the counselor back to Pete. No one knew if they should, or how they would, break the silence that filled the room after Pete finished his autobiography.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Pete said, placing his papers back in the sleeve and closing the folder.

After what felt like hours of silence again after Pete’s comment, the counselor finally spoke.

“Pete,” she said, adjusting herself in her chair, “I admire the strength and courage it took you to share your story. However, it needs to be done in the first person. We can’t heal if we can’t own our lives.”

“Fuck you,” Pete said quietly, staring at nothing.  Pete stood up slowly and said, “I quit.”

Pete left the circle, opened the door, left the room and closed the door behind him.

What happened next, really, was a misdirected, all-out attack on that counselor by most of the participants of our group that day.

There were a lot of things we didn’t understand about Pete, at least until that 30 minutes in group, and for her to seemingly condemn him after forcing him to be vulnerable, was unacceptable at the time.  We didn’t understand why the third-person thing was such a big deal. Third-person, sixth-person, whatever. He told his story, all of it. The abuse, the trauma, the fear, the significance of the garage, the chain, the stool, everything. Then she just shit on him, or so we thought.

We made our way up to the room after our collective bashing of the counselor had concluded, and after her futile attempts to explain therapeutic protocol to a bunch of addicts who weren’t ready to hear it, only to find that Pete had already left. We couldn’t have been in there ten minutes after he left group, and he was gone.

I tried calling Pete at the number he gave me when I had phone time, the number apparently to his mom’s house.  All I ever got was an answering machine with a woman’s voice, and I never even learned what Pete’s mother’s name was.

I left a few messages, saying something like, “Hey, it’s your roommate. Call me back to let me know you’re alright.” I never heard back.  Other guys had tried to call, too.  Nothing.

A week or two after Pete left, I moved on at the center, from inpatient to more of what they used to call a “half-way house” setting. During that time, there were more opportunities to leave the center to do things.  It was a transitional period where people can do things like, look for work, attend outside meetings, and gain overnight passes, all with the safety net of returning to the center.

One afternoon, as I returned to the center, I was told by the lady at the desk that I was supposed to see my counselor after I checked back in.

On my way back to the offices, I heard chatter, sniffles and sobs from the Commons area of the center. I turned around and walked toward the sounds, more interested in them, rather than whatever my counselor wanted.

As I reached the Commons, there were people standing in a close group. 

“Pete’s dead,” said one of the other residents. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” is all I can remember saying. “It’s okay.”  It wasn’t okay.

I didn’t attend the visitation, because I didn’t know anyone.

I didn’t know his mother or any of his family or friends.  All I knew was that Pete’s mother was alive. That was it. I knew nothing about his family, his ex-girlfriend, his friends, or whether he even had any.

I do remember attending the funeral. The church itself was a beautiful place. The service was quiet and almost surreal. Afterward, I met Pete’s mother. She was gracious and even a little upbeat, which was the thing I remember most about that day. I’ve always guessed that either she was still in shock over her unfathomable loss, or it hadn’t all begun to sink in at that time.  I can still remember her face after all this time.  I remember her kind eyes and smile.  I remember her hand on my forearm, as if I were the one who needed comforting.  Her son had just died a sad, tragic death, and somehow she had the strength and grace to comfort someone she didn’t even know.  I could never quite wrap my head around that.

Not long after Pete’s funeral, I learned  that the reason I never received a return phone call was because no one was there. Pete’s mom had taken a trip to visit family, believing that her son was safe in a treatment center.

Pete didn’t answer the phone because he didn’t return to his mother’s house until the day he died.

After he left the center, he talked his ex-girlfriend into staying at her place in a sort of reconciliation attempt. It didn’t last long.

In the end, Pete couldn’t outrun his past, a past that included repeated childhood trauma and abuse at the hands of people who were supposed to protect and care for him. To get some relief, he turned to what was familiar, and starting drinking again.  Not long after, he engaged in an argument with his girlfriend. The argument spiraled out of control at whatever point things spiral out of control, and he left.

Not long after that argument, Pete returned to the garage of his childhood home. He grabbed the swing set chain he had been abused with as a child, secured one end to an overhead rafter, placed the other end around his neck, and stepped off the stool he was often punished on as a child. 

Later that afternoon, his girlfriend found him.

Sometimes, there is no good end to a story. 

Sometimes, obstacles are too much for the hero of a story to overcome.  Unaddressed trauma, in Pete’s story, was that obstacle. 

I believe that Pete tried everything he could to deal with his trauma the best way he knew how, even going so far as to use third-person narration in his own life. It’s not uncommon for victims of abuse to try to separate themselves from those events in a variety of healthy and unhealthy ways, in order to best cope with, and to try to make sense of events that are often impossible to make sense of. Maybe that was Pete’s way of trying to protect himself from that pain, and maybe we could have done a better job of trying to understand it.

All too often, those who suffer abuse are victimized twice. 

Once by their abuser, and then again by stigma and ignorance, or by family members or friends who don’t believe them (or want to keep the abuse quiet), and by the fear, guilt and shame the person who was victimized often carry with them.

Pete’s fight ended nearly thirty years ago, as I write this. Yet, he is a kind of consistent companion as I walk along my path. I’ve come to realize that there are some things there will never be a good enough answer for, and this will always be one of those things.

In memory of my old roommate, “Pete.”

On Pep Talks and Beating Goliath

Many Second Chances Addiction, Recovery, Substance Abuse , , , , , ,

Several years ago, as I was nearing the end of a substance abuse counseling internship, I was asked to deliver a graduation message at the correctional treatment facility where I had been working. The message would be a small part of the ceremony for a group of inmates I had had the privilege of working with who had successfully completed the treatment program there and were nearing release. I got to spend a lot of time with the men in the program and I learned a lot about not only their offenses, their sentences and their addictions, but about them as people- their hobbies, their families, and sometimes their hopes and dreams. They were all very different people in age, class, profession and ideology. Most of the time it seemed that the only thing they had in common, really, was that they all new their release dates and they were all dealing with the consequences brought by their addictions.

By the day of the graduation I felt confident that I had put together a half way decent message. As the ceremony began, the large commons room was filled with different staff members of the prison, invited guests and family members from the outside, and the graduating men. A few minutes before I was to speak, I snuck one last peak down at my cards to make sure I had them all, and had them all in order, when a staff member sat down beside me. This staff member had been at the prison for many years and, from everything I had seen up to that point, was everything one could imagine in someone who provides addiction treatment. "Don't waste your time on a pep talk, it won't do any good." Then, just as quickly and quietly as they had sat down, they were gone.

Webster's Dictionary says that a pep talk is, "a usually brief, intense, and emotional talk designed to influence or encourage an audience."

I remember that to this day, and I often think about how it pertains, in the way of pep talks or outside motivation, to me and my own recovery journey. And why some people give up, when others don't. No matter the reason for the statement -whether brought on by frustration, bias, fatigue, hostility, or any other reason- I realized it said much more about the professional in that instant than it did any of the offenders. Truth be told, it gave me a resolve that I have hung on to since then that I would counterbalance that attitude in the universe by never betting against the possibility of recovery, no matter what the odds seem to be. Because if you've been around addiction and recovery long enough, you know that David can beat Goliath.

Back to that day. I remember most of it vividly. It was quite an event, complete with a powerful Native American drum ceremony, words of congratulations and celebration, gratitude and excitement, held together with reminders about vigilance and caution. My little talk? I don't think it qualified as much of a pep talk, and to be honest, it is one of the things I remember least about the whole day. What I do remember is the people. I remember people who were thrown together in what wasn't a beach-side. five-star resort-type rehab, to work on their problems, to pay their debts and to try to change their lives and to help those who were in the same predicament. A common goal. I sometimes wonder about those graduates and how their lives have turned out in the years that have come and gone since then. I wonder if they are still in recovery despite the obstacles many of them faced, and I am always hopeful that they are able to accept and enjoy and share the gifts that come with recovery from addiction.

In the end, we don’t need to be Vince Lombardi or Bear Bryant or Pat Summitt or John Wooden to make an impact. I guess we just need to be whatever it is that we are. When we show others we believe in them and we are pulling for them, often just by showing up, especially after they’ve fallen or are in a tough spot, we can spark hope. And hope is the foundation of not only recovery, but in the conquering of all things once thought impossible.

5 Things I’ve Learned About Addiction

Many Second Chances Addiction, Recovery, Substance Abuse , , , ,

I have been in the addiction and recovery arena in one way or another for almost 30 years.  About half of that time was spent battling addiction personally, in and out of treatment centers and detoxes, with fleeting stints of sobriety. The other roughly half of that time has been in continuous, sustained recovery.  During my time in recovery, I’ve been able to see things from the eyes of someone who struggles with addiction, someone who has his own recovery path and someone who has spent time as a substance abuse counselor.  My attitudes and biases have naturally changed as I have grown and gained knowledge, which seems to be a requirement if one is to defeat an enemy who is constantly at the gate.  Here are five things I have learned about addiction.

ADDICTION IS ONE OF THE MOST MISUNDERSTOOD ILLNESSES ON THE PLANET. There is an old saying that has to do with alcoholics being around since man first learned to crush grapes.  If you believe that as I do, that covers many centuries. In more recent times, Alcoholics Anonymous was founded somewhere around 1935, and the American Medical Association declared alcohol addiction an illness 1956.  If my math is right, that is 85 years and 64 years ago, respectively.  One would think that with all of the technological, scientific and sociological advances made during that time, we would have a better handle on the symptoms, causes, treatments and recovery paths for something so destructive.  And we would have a better view of the illness as an illness, and not a punch line, a head shake or an opportunity for horrible advice.
Yet, addiction is still widely misunderstood, even in 2020.  Doctors prescribe treatment they believe will help, yet medical professionals have over prescribed opiates to the point of being one of the catalysts to an epidemic.  The War on Drugs has gone on for over 45 years and has cost well over a trillion dollars, with really no meaningful, positive change.  In fact, the War On Drugs has been called an abject failure, but that is another post for another day. I promise.
Family members, friends and coworkers close to someone with a substance use disorder are often heard saying, “I wish they’d just quit this nonsense,” or “If they would just stick to beer.”  Movies portray addicts in ways that seem to exaggerate the symptoms to make a point.  Even the news media is involved.  It is not uncommon (in my area is it very common) for the local news to report on a burglary, high speed chase, standoff, or some other crime where charges result in, among other things, possession of heroin, methamphetamine and/or THC. These are just a few examples, and I’m not picking on anyone.

In modern society, we fix things with pills, when often pills are what get us into trouble in the first place.  (Don’t believe me?  Two words: television commercials.)  Family members, friends and coworkers also mean well, and often travel to the ends of the earth, and to the edge of sanity and well passed exhaustion, to help.  But, despite the best efforts of everyone involved, sometimes we contribute to the muddying of the waters and don’t do well to separate the myth from the truth concerning addiction, treatment and recovery.
All too often, if something is said enough times, if we see it in the news or on social media enough, even if it is completely wrong, it somehow becomes truth (see: politics). Stigma is a huge issue that perpetuates the myths concerning addiction.  Underfunding by our national, state and local governments is another barrier in the understanding of addiction, the reduction of stigma and the availability of treatment for those who struggle.  We can do better.

ADDICTION COSTS A LOT.  According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), substance abuse in the U.S. to alcohol and drugs costs over $520 billion annually. Let me say that again. FIVE HUNDRED-TWENTY BILLION DOLLARS per year.  The Institute includes crime, lost work productivity and healthcare costs in its numbers, while the healthcare numbers alone are $27 billion for alcohol and roughly $11 billion for illicit (illegal) drugs and $26 billion for prescription opiates.  (The cost concerning opiates will surely go up as new data is processed and becomes available.)  To put that into perspective, the cost of the effects of tobacco use and addiction in the U.S. costs roughly $300 billion a year, with over half of that ($168 billion) being healthcare costs.  Not only is addiction and its consequences costly for the person who struggles and for those close to that person, it is also a huge drain on our economy. Imagine if we spent anywhere near that on education, intervention and treatment accessibility and availability. And what if we spent money to develop prevention programs that work?

ADDICTION IS NOT A CHOICE.  I grew up in a small town in a neat neighborhood. My sister and I had lots of friends within a few blocks and the neighborhood was always alive with activity. Some of us wanted to be doctors when we grew up. Others wanted to be cowboys. Princesses. Astronauts. Dirt bike riders. Mechanics. Nurses.  Sometimes our future career choices depended on the popular TV shows or movies of the day. At the risk of dating myself, I’ll stay clear of listing those here.  But, of all the kids in my the neighborhood where I grew up, not once did anyone ever say they wanted to grow up to be an addict.
Addiction is a primary, progressive illness. It can travel alone or, as it often does, it can occur with other conditions like depression, anxiety disorder and so on.  It’s also impossible to predict with certainty who will become addicted to alcohol or other drugs or when it might occur. But there are some risk factors including genetics, age of onset (use), a preceding mental illness and trauma.
People make the choice to abuse, that is, to use a substance to gain a desired affect. People choose to binge drink. People choose to take pills or take a various array of other chemicals in many ways to gain or lose something in their lives, even temporarily, and I’m sure you’ve heard some of these reasons. To lose boredom. To gain excitement. To gain energy. To lose sadness. To lose stress. To gain camaraderie. To gain concentration. To lose weight. We could go on and on. But people choose, whether it is drinking to access, or to double a prescription dose, or to smoke, sniff or inject a substance. Obviously, we all make choices, and sometimes those choices have far reaching consequences. However, to make the connection that since one chooses to abuse, one then also chooses addiction, is irresponsible and really lazy. We choose to abuse. But we don’t choose to become addicts.

ADDICTION IS TERMINAL IF LEFT UNTREATED.  The American Medical Association classifies addiction as a disease and follows a disease model, much the way it classifies diabetes, heart disease and cancer.  The AMA also says that causes are sometimes determined by biological, environmental and behavioral factors. There is much debate about addiction as a disease or an illness, and a quick Google search can open up all sorts of thoughts and ideas on what addiction is to different people and organizations.  Here is where I usually ask people to do all the research they can. Ask questions, reach out. Find credible sources. Think critically.
This July will mark 18 years of continuous long term recovery from alcohol and drugs for me, but I believe truly and completely that I am only in remission.  One drink or drug will surely activate my illness.  You may ask how I know that. I gained valuable yet costly, first-hand experience on relapse personally before I gained long term recovery, and I’ve watched countless others do the same.
NIDA defines addiction as, “a chronic, relapsing brain disease that is characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences.”
There are other definitions that echo this idea, some are quite long and more in depth.  For simplicity’s sake, I like to use this definition, and it describes my own addiction, and the addictions of the countless others I have met over the years, perfectly: “Addiction is chronic, and as such will get worse and never better over time if left untreated.”
According to the National Institutes of Health, approximately 88,000 people in the U.S. die each year from alcohol-related causes.  The CDC estimated that in 2017, there were over 72,000 opiate overdose deaths, which included both prescription and illicit drugs. To put that number in some sort of perspective, that was 197 people per day, every day, in 2017, from opiates alone.

ADDICTION IS BEATABLE.  Now that we have all that other stuff out of the way, we can get to the good stuff. Addiction is treatable, it is beatable, and you or someone you love can get their lives back. There are millions of people around the world who celebrate long term recovery. For all the data involving the negative aspects of addiction, there is also data on recovery. There are many pathways to recovery, and each path is as unique as the individual who makes the journey, and there have never been more pathways to recovery than in years past.  Recovery from addiction is possible, and there are millions of us who are proof of that, and there is plenty of room for millions more.
One of the most basic keys to recovery is that it is self-directed, meaning that the person recovering is in charge of determining the path he or she will follow.  Of course, there is much help out there to help guide along the path, or even to help one make the decision of which path to follow. The intervention someone who struggles with a substance use disorder receives, meaning the interruption of behavior, whether family, law enforcement contact, medical, or self-directed, can come in many forms.  Whatever form that intervention comes in, considering consequences, can be the foundation for an effective plan for recovery.
This is certainly not an unabridged, comprehensive reference guide on addiction. These are merely a few things I have learned along the way. There are many resources available online to learn more about addiction treatment, recovery groups, detoxification when needed, and often a medical professional can assist in finding the best option and level of care

5 Things I’ve Learned About Relapse

Many Second Chances Addiction, Recovery, Substance Abuse , , , , ,

You or someone you know had a few weeks or months, or even years of recovery. Things appeared to be going well. Lives were getting back in order. The past was becoming just that. Things were good, or better than good. Then it came seemingly out of nowhere. Relapse. The hope, the ability to breathe easy -the overall feeling that things were getting better- were torn away. It seems that all the effort put into getting help and working hard to gain recovery was all for nothing.

But does relapse erase any previous growth or success? Here are five things I’ve learned about relapse from being around addiction in one way or another for 30 years.

Relapse Sucks. For the person struggling with addiction, relapse sucks. For the people around him or her, relapse also sucks. Rebuilt trust crumbles, restful nights once again turn sleepless. Every time the phone rings, it brings with it a dose of panic. These things are common for a spouse or significant other, friends and family members, clergy, counseling professionals, coworkers, neighbors or anyone else involved with the wellbeing of someone who struggles with substance use disorder. But, as someone who survived more than one relapse before I found long term recovery, there are some things to consider.

Relapse Doesn’t Mean You Suck. My experience with relapse came with a boat load of shame. Because I relapsed, I was not only defective, I was broken. Bad. I believed somehow that I deserved addiction and therefore didn’t deserve recovery. Shame is toxic, devoid of any constructive use whatsoever, and in my case, shame prolonged my active addiction and complicated recovery efforts. Shame, quite simply, kills.
Early on, I hadn’t come to grips with the idea that I was battling an illness or disease. What I believed was that because I couldn’t control my drinking or drug use and kept using even in the face of worsening negative consequences, there was something unfixable within me. Today I know that to be false. I didn’t choose to be an addict. No one does. Not you, not your parent, not your husband, daughter, cousin or the guy down the street. I’ve been around this stuff for a long time and I’ve never heard anyone once say that their life’s dream was to become an addict.

Relapse Isn’t a Spur of the Moment Thing. Regarding drinking and drug use, we’ve all heard about people who “slipped,” or “fell off the wagon,” after some time without using chemicals. Along my winding path to sustained abstinence and long term recovery, I used the same language to describe my relapses, usually to my own benefit, to explain to others that I got drunk out of no where after some clean time. In reality what I was doing was trying somehow to magically reduce my responsibility in the whole matter. I was doing great. Then, all of a sudden, I drank! I know, weird, right?

Looking back, I never “slipped.” It never came out of no where. I was never blind sided by a return to using. Instead, there were always doors I had left open or things I hadn’t done, whether intentionally or not, to make it easier to return to using. I kept old friends and relationships. I kept going to parties and bars under the guise of being a “designated driver.” I thought I could handle it. I wasn’t always honest with myself about how serious my addiction was. I daydreamed about using again and thought usually of only positive consequences. When I did think about the negative possibilities, I often minimized, rationalized or denied them. What I was doing was setting myself up for relapse.

Hearing relapse stories, studying relapse, surviving my own relapses and working with others through theirs, experience says that what seems to be a “slip” can usually (if not always) be traced back to something done, or left undone, during early recovery.

Relapse… Happens. Data shows that people with substance use disorders relapse at a rate comparable to people with other chronic illnesses like diabetes, asthma or hypertension, according to the National Institute of Health.

Relapse Can Be A Good Recovery Tool. I would never, ever, never, ever advocate for someone to relapse back to using or anything close to that. Some people don’t make it back from relapse and we face an illness with often heavy negative consequences.
But a point to make about relapse is the idea that it doesn’t always mean using, if you believe relapse is a process, just as recovery is. More often than not, however, the act of using or drinking is what is talked about, because that is when relapse is most easily identifiable. For example, if someone in recovery would stop doing the things they did to get sober, say, if they were to quit going to therapy or meetings, that would be something to look at and find answers for. If he or she were to go back to doing some of the same things they did while in active addiction -hang out in bars, hang out with old using friends, spend a lot of time thinking about the “old days”- they may be areas to highlight as well. A new or reestablished negative outlook (they used to call it “stinkin’ thinkin’), money being spent, whereabouts being unaccounted for… These are just a few quick examples, and when identified and corrected, can help establish a new, improved plan of attack in recovery.

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This, of course, is in no way a comprehensive list of ideas regarding relapse. It is merely a quick sketch of things I have picked up along the way. There are many things to learn from relapse that can help forge a path to long term recovery. Recovery is a journey and relapse can be part of that journey, but it doesn’t have to be the end of it.