If I Relapse

By some definitions, I have had one relapse.

Addictions treatment in my rural town consists of counseling and support group attendance. I was in counseling. I attended a support group meeting. One could argue I had “entered addictions recovery.” Then I drove home and drank all the wine left in my house. Some might term that a “planned drunk.” It was. Before I started, I inventoried the partial bottles of wine left to see if enough remained to sustain my drinking pattern. Barely, but I worked with it.

The next day, I attended the support group meeting again. And I began the process of learning the 1000 decisions I have to make each day to not take a drink. I haven’t had a relapse, i.e. a drink, in 890 days.

For years, we’ve heard in addictions treatment that “relapse is part of the process.” I’ve seen the “process” at varying distances, from a newspaper obituary to the inside of a vomit bucket. Agony. For everyone.

Just over a week ago, I had, to paraphrase Janeson Keeley, a near relapse experience.

In my opinion – and I consider it a determinedly and agonizingly informed one – whether addiction is a disease or not, a relapse is the presence of illness.

What illness requires is care. A few times in my life, and I know I’m lucky that it’s been only a few, I’ve been overcome by illness and been unable to help myself, blacking out when I attempted to rise. If people who loved me had waited for me to hit bottom – to see the error of my ways and reach out for help – I’d be dead.

A person was standing, then dropped to the ground. I knew the person had diabetes. I knew the person was unlikely to have practiced the self-care and self-management required to maintain her health. Should I have shouted at her, “Hit bottom! That’s the only way you’ll learn to do what you’re supposed to do! Look what you’re putting me through! You should be ashamed of yourself! Change! Now!” At that moment, she had no ability to undo what she had done or not done. She was heading towards coma and death.

If I have a full relapse experience, I’ve become ill.

But here’s the difficulty in caring for me. Once I take the first drink, I will have a soul thirst that must be quenched.

It’s the enraging, inexplicable part of addiction that can demoralize all who have it or try to help those who have it: once the addiction kicks in, it is my allness. I can’t see you. You are no longer dealing with me but with a self overcome by addiction.

In an ideal world, if I take the first drink, and then the inevitable second, you would transport my body – with me, my self, barely conscious – to a relapse facility where I would be given drinks and monitored by medical personnel, all the while coached and counseled to thwart the hostile takeover of addiction vs. my self. I would be helped to get my self back as my 51% majority stockholder.

Since that facility doesn’t exist, if I relapse in my rural town, please, just take me to the hospital. I’m ill. I have health insurance. It’ll be okay. When I’m released, please hire 24-7 home health care workers to stay with me. Deplete my savings. It’s worth it. Arrange as many visits from as many support people as you can. Try to cobble together a recovery facility for me.

Please, for the love of all that’s humane, please don’t reprimand me. You know not what you do.

Relapses usually are the result of accumulation of pain, with the last pain being the catalyst. Scold me and you add to my pain. I have to use my energy to protect myself against you instead of for strengthening my self. I know you have the best of intentions. We are all taught that shame is a motivator. It’s not. Telling me I’m bad and wrong curls me into a despairing heap. I am worthless, helpless and hopeless. Shame is a destroyer. Please, please don’t kick me when I’m down.

When the person with diabetes fell ill, I felt afraid, hurt, angry, betrayed, and hugely inconvenienced. She acknowledged later that she had not done what it takes to, essentially, prevent a diabetic relapse.

It’s human nature to want to hurt back.

But I didn’t dump my upset on her. I cared for her.

If I relapse, please hug me. Then ask me these questions:

• What have been sources of pain that have been accumulating for you over the past few weeks and months?
• We might wish for more or other, but we have two components of addictions treatment in our town: support group attendance and counseling. If you were doing both, what about them wasn’t working for you? If you weren’t doing either or both, what were your reasons? What would need to change for support groups and counseling to work for you?
• What do you need that you don’t have? Let’s see if we can get it.

I think answering these questions would help me feel better. Because to feel better is what I most need if I’ve relapsed. That I struggle to help myself feel better is my core problem, the primary origin of my vulnerability to addiction, and the primary reason for my relapse.

When I’m stable again, when I am running Anne, Inc. again, oh, my, yes, please, I am so open to talking with you about how you felt during my relapse. I want to be close with you. In the presence of your honesty and mine, addiction’s stock drops. Ours rises.