Your goal in this final chapter is to shorten your relapse phase and to return to the healing phase of your cycle as quickly as you can. Slowly but surely over a long period of time, if you keep trying, your relapses will become shorter and less frequent. That is how recovery works.

*RELAPSE IS PART OF RECOVERY* 

        Of all of the concepts in this book this may be the most difficult to accept because of the long-term conditioning of yourself and those around you who view relapses as failures. If you have been in the healing cycle for even a short time you have no doubt experienced the negative attitudes of those who mean well, but because they believe that the only true healing is total abstinence, they think that you have "let them down." To make matters worse, you probably believe this yourself.

The Neutral Attitude

        Relapse is not failure. It just is what it is. You need to come to accept this way of looking at relapse in order to free yourself from it. "Beating yourself on the head" when you relapse will not help you recover. Your family and friends do not help you when they shun you. They would accomplish much more by being kind to you and perhaps taking you out to have some healing fun. 

        At first, viewing relapse without judging it will be difficult. Time and time again you have "disappointed" yourself or others, so that by now you are unable to think about it in any other way. You and your family and friends are all locked in a vicious cycle of hope and disappointment. And you, the "failure," are mistakenly blamed as the cause. You are not the cause. The substance is the cause. Chemistry is the cause, and chemistry easily overpowers the human will.

        The way out of the mess is to declare the game over and read this section to them. You must all come to accept the truth about addiction: relapse comes and goes during the recovery process. 95% of those persons who lose weight on a reducing diet eventually regain the weight, then lose, then regain, and so on. So it is with other addictions. An attitude of blame and failure will do nothing to change the cycle, no matter how well intended.

        Remember, others truly want what is best for you. And so do you. The way to achieve what is best is for all of you is to adopt a neutral or nonjudgmental view. This will not be easy as: "The wrong road is paved with good intentions."

Has the Urge Peak Already Passed?

        If you smoke cigarettes you may have noticed how often you smoke for no reason other than for something to do, or to break the monotony, without even thinking about it. Often you are smoking without the urge to do so. Is this the case with your addiction right now? Close your eyes, take a deep breath, relax, and try to determine if you truly have an urge. Try to locate it in your body. You may find that the peak in your cycle has already passed. If this is so, then distract your mind with some healing fun right now.

Are You Already in a Healing Phase?

        Healing is always a moment away because relapse is made up of fast changing cycles of healing and relapse. During active relapse there are many short relapse phases and many short healing phases. When you are not in relapse you are recovering.

        The healing phase could be as short as a few minutes or hours. When you sleep you are recovering. When you wake up you are in healing until you relapse. Your are in healing for all of the time you are not "high" and actively using. How much time today was spent not taking your substance or engaging in your harmful activity? This was healing time. How about stretching it out a little bit more today?

        Notice how this "stretching out" is your task no matter how long your healing cycle has been. If you have been in the healing phase for a year or only a day, you still have to try to make it last longer.

        Try to determine how many days your urge cycle peaks last. What were the lengths of time between abstinences? Do they vary from two minutes to one hour? Perhaps a one hour to six hour randomly varying cycle? Did they last for a day or more? In any case, do you get the point?

        Healing is always around, always a possibility. Remember:

RECOVERY IS ALWAYS A MOMENT AWAY.

The Cause of Healing

        As with relapse, circumstances do not cause healing either. Yesterday's circumstances do not cause today's relapse, or prevent today's recovery. Remember the little experiment in Chapter 2 where you dropped the book? Your action of dropping the book caused the book to fall. Not gravity. Gravity is in effect 24 hours a day. The circumstances during relapse are the same during healing. Having good reasons will neither cause you to end your relapse phase nor your healing phase. So, do not spend a lot of time looking for reasons to recover. You need to do something, to cause something.

Call Someone Right Now

        You cannot do it alone. When you don't call someone you deny them an opportunity to serve you. Go out and do something that will distract you from your thoughts and urges until they go away. Get out of your tunnel of isolation and just do it.

Look At Your Substance

        Take a long look at your substance. The substance consists of the drug itself and a delivery system. In the case of alcohol, the delivery system is water. For nicotine, it is burning leaves and paper. For cocaine, the delivery systems vary from baking powder, to flame and amphetamines in the case of "crack." Is it the delivery system, or the drug, or both that harm you?

        Now try this: Throw some of your substance in the toilet. Do this even though you know you will simply get some more. The important thing is the symbolic gesture of it, and the association to the toilet.

Wait for Shut-Off

        This is another way to begin to control your relapses. Delay taking the next drink, puff, hit, or whatever. Put it aside just for a while. Say to yourself "I want to wait a while before I consume this again."

        Wait three more minutes. Use your watch to keep time. Remind yourself repeatedly that during this time you are in healing. Build this delay into your addictive behaviors so that you continually slow down your intake. Also, leave some substance at the end. Take less this time.

        There will be times when you will be unable to do this. If so, just refocus and try again. Cut your consumption period short and return to healing. The more often you cut relapse short the more you change the cycle.


Change Your Style

        Engage in your harmful activity in a different way each time. Try to break the connection with the time of day, or paycheck time, or whatever. Break the connection with time, persons, places and things.


Change Your Circle of Friends?

        You've changed friends before. Perhaps your addiction makes this necessary now.


Visualize Yourself As Totally Recovered

        Close your eyes, take a deep breath, relax. Create a picture in your mind of what it would be like to be totally healed. Do this for a while. Now imagine having healing fun. Imagine having a great time on a clean and sober cruise, or at a drug-free rock concert, or standing at the bar with your friends while you drink sparkling water. Allow yourself this wishful thinking for a while.

Take Your 'C & C' Right Now

        You already know the benefits of chromium, but you may be surprised to hear that vitamin C reduces many of the harmful effects of relapse. Since you need them anyway, why not take your "C & C" every day? Take a supply with you every day.


Drink Lots of Water

        Water makes up nearly ninety percent of each cell in the body. This is good advice at any time but especially during relapse periods when your body needs extra detoxing. Try to drink eight glasses a day. This may give you a "full feeling" and result in ending your consumption phases sooner.


Read the Mind-Fun Body-Fun List ( Appendix 1 )

        Just sit and read it for a while and think about why there are so many ways to have fun. Perhaps it is because play is the true purpose of life. Is play what you really want to do when you take drugs?

        Go out right now and do one of the items on the list. Do not put it off to another time. Break through your funblock!


Urges Come Up at the Oddest Times

        Notice bow an urge can occur when you least expect it. Think of some times when the urge occurred. Some persons have reported getting these during church services, and while speaking at recovery meetings. There are many possibilities.


The Mastery of "No"

        Saying "no," and being said "no" to by someone are both difficult. Get over the rejection feeling of the latter, and over the fear of saying the former. Try this every day. Be the person you truly want to be. There are miracles possible if you can get to the 

WHAT TO DO NEXT

Leave the building that houses your substance or harmful activity. Take this handbook with you. Keep walking. Just do it. As you walk, say over and over to yourself, "This is fun." Then find a place to read some more from this handbook. Read all the starred (*) items. Then look for bold print words and read them. Then read pages 2 and 3.

The X-Mouth Exercise

        1. Close your eyes and take a breath.

        2. Open your mouth. Now imagine a big X in front of it.

        3. Let yourself sit with this for a while. Use this whenever you want to give in to an urge.

Past Healing

Think of times in the past when you abstained for a while. Notice that you CAN heal and
that you HAVE healed. You only need to extend the length of time now.


Do You Need Go to A Treatment Program?

        Answer this question honestly. If you have never been to one then perhaps you should consider it. If you have been to many, ask yourself if you are looking for a vacation, or if you really need to go again. In either case remember that a treatment program is one type of recovery network, and in the long run a successful one.


Go to A Twelve Step Meeting

        Go whether you think you should or not. This is another type of recovery network.


Remember: You Heal the Moment You Stop Relapsing

        And you WILL get better during recovery.


Read Appendix  7 

Realize that you are not alone in relapse or recovery. 

The "Shotgun" Approach

        In your battle try as many different strategies and tactics as you can. Try everything in this book, including our advise to join a recovery group. There is no single solution.

READ YOUR DAILY CHECKLIST EVERY DAY

The very best to you!--Dan & Bill