What Is A Relapse?
When referring to the treatment of addictive behaviors, a relapse is when a patient returns to abusing the substance they have pledged to leave alone. Patients return to their former way of life and pick up bad habits they have tried to leave behind. Once someone is back in a former setting, with its familiar pleasures and pressures, it is easy to start back onto the road to addiction. Knowing the high price of substance abuse is sometimes not enough to keep a patient from going astray.
It is important for patients and their loved ones to know that a relapse is part of the healing process from an addiction. We all would leave bad habits behind instantly if we could, but it is rarely that easy. The nature of addiction is such that it really does take a huge amount of effort to overcome the desire to abuse a substance that one sees as an ally. The patient feels as if the substance helps them cope, and until they learn new coping mechanisms, it will simply be hard to quit.
If you or someone you care about has relapsed, don’t despair. Many people who overcome an addiction did so after many, many relapses. No one can say just how long it takes to beat a harmful habit, so do not be hard on yourself. It is easy to think that the detox process is not working or that you have not made any progress, but this is not necessarily the case. A return to substance abuse is an indication that you need to put that much more effort into in addiction treatment.
If someone you know seems to be unable to leave a substance behind, you have every right to feel disappointed, but don’t give up on them. Detoxification is not an easy road to travel and it may take much longer than anyone thinks it should, but recovery from addiction is worth it.
