How to recognise relapse

Typically, relapse progresses from stability through a period of increasing distress that leads to physical or emotional collapse. To understand how warning signs can progress, it is important to look at the interaction between the recovery and relapse processes, both of which have six key stages.
 
The recovery process

• Abstaining from alcohol, food, drugs, gambling, sex, co-dependent behaviour etc
• Separating from people, places and things that promote the use of addiction and establishing a social network that supports recovery
• Stopping self-defeating behaviours that prevent awareness of painful feelings and irrational thoughts
• Learning how to manage feelings and emotions responsibly without resorting to compulsive behaviour or the use of alcohol, food, drugs, gambling etc
• Learning to change addictive thinking patterns that create painful feelings and self-defeating behaviours
• Identifying and changing the mistaken core beliefs about oneself, others and the world that promote irrational thinking

The relapse process

When people who have had a stable recovery begin the relapse process, they simply reverse the six stages of recovery. Therefore they begin to:

• Have a mistaken belief that causes irrational thoughts
• Return to addictive thinking patterns that cause painful feelings
• Engage in compulsive, self-defeating behaviours as a way of avoiding the feelings
• Seek out situations that involve people who use alcohol, drugs, etc.
• Find themselves in more pain, thinking less rationally and behaving less responsibly
• Manage to find themselves in a situation where using seems like a logical escape from their pain, they return to their addiction

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