Addiction Relapse – Do You Have to Start Recovery Over
There is a perception that addiction relapse means a person has to start their recovery from the beginning – day 1. In some groups, this practice is followed as part of the group’s guidelines, and for some people – especially those who’ve found their recovery through these groups – this practice is critically important to them, which of course is absolutely fine!
This post, however, is not to pass judgement on how anyone chooses to “do” his/her recovery. In fact, a little known fact is that 23 million Americans are living their lives in long-term recovery! For those who are not aware of this fact, please look for the documentary, The Anonymous People, or check out the study, Life in Recovery Survey, by Faces & Voices of Recovery. Rather, this post is to share the science of relapse and what it means for brain health, which is the basis of addiction recovery. The point of sharing this information is to help those treating their brain disease (regardless of whether they realize it’s a brain disease) understand that relapse does not mean treatment has failed, nor that the individual who’s relapsed is weak-willed. The following will explain these claims.
Addiction Relapse Explained and Why All Recovery is Not Lost
Recovering from addiction is about healing the brain – not only the brain’s infrastructure (cells, neurotransmitters, receptors, myelination…), but the embedded brain maps that formed around repeatedly activated addiction-related neural networks (the “neurons that fire together, wire together” concept), as well.
Understanding this, we can appreciate that relapse after a period of recovery does not mean a person necessarily has to go back to day one to start healing their brain, again – there is still residual recovery, and in the case of repeated relapses, cumulative recovery.
Addiction relapse rates are similar to the relapse rates for other diseases.
Understanding this and more on the concept of relapse helps us appreciate that relapse is part of the disease of addiction (just as it is part of other chronic diseases, like cancer or diabetes). Remember – disease by its simplest definition is something that changes cells in a negative way. Cancer cells in the breast or prostate or liver change the health and/or function of those organs.
Addiction changes cells in the brain, thereby changing the health and function of the brain. Given the brain controls everything we think, feel, say and do, it’s the disease of addiction that changes a person’s behaviors. It’s the disease of addiction that results in behaviors, such as lying, cheating, stealing, breaking promises because of where and how neural networks are changed / hijacked. Check out this article, “Why Addicts | Alcoholics Lie, Cheat, Steal.”
Thus addiction relapse doesn’t mean addiction treatment has failed. And it certainly does not mean that the person with the disease who’s relapsed should feel a failure. Nor does it mean there has not been brain health recovery. Rather it means treatment needs to be upped – changed – in the same manner we’d try something different or more intensely if a person’s cancer or diabetes relapsed. Scroll down to this section, “Does relapse to drug abuse mean treatment has failed?,” at this NIDA link on Drugs, Brains, and Behaviors: The Science of Addiction > Treatment and Recovery.
Additionally, given over one-half of those who struggle with substance misuse also have a co-occurring mental illness, it is important to understand effective dual diagnosis treatment as one means of relapse prevention.
So if relapse can be part of recovery (many millions recovery without relapse), what can help a person avoid relapse?
Effective Addiction Treatment Can Help Prevent Addiction Relapse
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) created a website section, Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment: A Research-Based Guide (Third Edition) Principles of Effective Treatment
There are millions of Americans who still struggle with the disease of addiction, but only 10 percent get the treatment they need. As we learn more about the science of this disease – how it develops / wires in the brain – the more we’ll understand addiction relapse and the role effective treatment plays in its prevention. There is no one, nor right, way to do addiction treatment. The best thing we can do to help the 90 percent who’ve not found the treatment they need, is to share the science and the multitude of treatment options because ADDICTION IS A TREATABLE DISEASE.
Bottom Line
Recovery is real. It happens to real people. And it happens all the time. To see just how real and how varied the recovery approaches, check out Faces and Voices of Recovery.
If you have additional questions, feel free to send me an email at lisaf@BreakingTheCycles.com to arrange a phone call. There is no charge.
You may also want to read my latest book, 10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You’d Stop! The first half explains alcohol use disorders (drinking problems) – how they’re developed and treated and what long-term recovery requires. In the case of alcohol abuse, for example, it’s possible to learn to “re-drink,” but in the case of alcoholism, it must be total abstinence from alcohol, yet in both cases, there are other brain healing aspects necessary in order to address “why” a person finds themselves drinking to these extents in the first place (e.g., trauma, anxiety, depression, social environment…).
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Note: This post was originally published September 5, 2013. It was updated and the url date changed to reflect the update on January 5, 2020.
Lisa Frederiksen
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