Upon entering treatment for my drug addiction in Jacksonville, Florida my first instinct was to talk to some of the other clients. To my surprise for the majority of clients it was not there first attempt at getting clean and sober. The more I talked with the other clients the more I started to think that relapse was a necessity. Not true!!!! I entered the Lakeview Health treatment center four years ago and have been clean ever since.
Lakeview taught me that staying sober is not rocket science. Not wanting to relapse I always listened intensely to the individual stories to try to figure out why that particular person experienced a relapse. I would talk to the counselors and therapist about relapse who were always more then willing to listen and lend me their thoughts.
I found that individuals who would relapse did not do one or more of three specific things. They would stop going to meetings, stop calling their sponsor and stop working on the steps. This made me decide in early recovery that no matter what life situations I was presented with I would continue to go to meetings, talk to my sponsor and work my way through the twelve steps no matter how difficult it may become. Thus far this has proven to be a full proof plan.
While relapse does occur and in many cases is part of recovery it doesn’t have to be. My advice to those in early recovery is to not expect to relapse. Do not pay attention to the statistics that you will hear on the number of individuals who will relapse. My thought process is “what should it matter what the statistics are, I only have to go one for one”.
