Relapse: How to Bounce Back
“It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. I’ve had a few relapses, which I’ve felt a lot of guilt and shame about. After everything I’d been through, how could I relapse?”
“I did manage to get about three months sober [the first time] and I told myself, “if I can not drink for three months, I probably don’t actually have a problem.” Insane thinking. I ended up getting arrested four more times after I left Portage [Rehabilitation Centre] and that’s when the talk of being incarcerated started when I was in court.”
“I went through kind of a rough time [recently] – my father was in the hospital, it wasn’t too long after my mom had passed. It was really stressful. There was COVID and I had just gotten a new job. I think my identity was almost wrapped up in that a little bit so when everything shut down for COVID I was so anxious. I was isolated. I lived by myself, and I was taking Ativan from my doctor. That got out of hand pretty quick. I had been sober for 10 years before that. I was in a bit of denial about how bad it was. I don’t think I properly dealt with that relapse, or the reasons why that happened.”
“After three years after that, I did start drinking again. So strange because I had the perfect life: I had a husband, a home, a car, two dogs. Everything on the outside of my life was amazing. I had a job that I loved. But I think I lost the perspective.”
“I tried and tried, and I just couldn’t seem to [get sober]. I didn’t actually tell my husband, which was interesting. He actually had relapsed as well. But if we talked about it, we would both have to make a change. So we just kind of grew apart living in the same house. It was when I opened up to him and my stepmom and I started getting back to meetings. I was going pretty much daily for the first couple months. Now I go at least like five times a week.”
“I went to rehab when I was 16, got sober for less than a year, and started [using substances] again. It got a little bit more severe, and I went to rehab in Florida. I got sober for a year and a half, then I started using again. I got sober on my 30th birthday.”
“I wasn’t ready to be sober then either. My mom – thankfully I had her – she was my big supporter. She never said anything, but like she would be there for me.I remember one of my stints with sobriety I just woke up in my dad’s recliner and she would be passing me freezies every time I woke up. That’s all I remember.”
“So that summer when I had my baby with me, everything was kind of OK. I was just using on weekends. But then one weekend turned into a week – and that was the week that I dropped my son off to my parents house.”
“The problem is if you sit in a barber’s chair long enough, you’re gonna get your hair clipped. For a full year, I never touched a narcotic, I was so scared. I ended up telling everybody my story – only to find out they all knew my story before I even told them.”
“But their story is not my story. The story they told is not who I am. They got to know me for who I am. But when you’re working with your drug of choice, it’s really easy to let that inner addict take hold. Again, I started with the partial doses and stuff like that. I didn’t want to go to stealing drugs, I didn’t wanna go through the black market. So I would go in [to work] after hours and empty out the sharps container. That’s how desperate I was for [drugs]. I was found out very quickly. It only happened over a month and I had the opportunity again to re-bolster my recovery. That’s when I came back to Sophia house again, in January 2023.”
“Relapse is really really common in addiction. I operated without using my drug of choice, which was readily available, for almost 2 years, and at that point I was coming up on my fifth year of clean time. I’m really proud of that. I did what was natural to any addict – it’s like breathing. I just tried to accept my life and just move forward. I’d already been through the process before: I knew what it was like to lose my license, I knew how long it was gonna take [to get back to work], I knew the steps that I had to do. So the day after [I was caught], I started going back to Narcotics Anonymous. I started calling my counsellor. Right now, I have just over 18 months [sober].”
“I relapsed on mouthwash. I was at the gym, and I was having a day – and I was like, I hate this. I just swallowed the mouthwash. It hit me immediately. I disassociated from who I was for a minute, and it made me happy, and I was like, well, maybe this is the only thing that makes me happy. I quit my job, too. It took a couple of weeks of wondering – a few nights I was just happy to zonk out, black out, not care. But days went by, and I was like, is this really what I’m going to do? Or am I going to regain control?”
“I moved back to New Brunswick nine years ago this October: 2015 – I was doing a beauty story where I had to get hair extensions put in; I was like, I’ll get really cool ones – really long ones. But I had an allergic reaction to it and half the hair on my head fell out. I had a huge infection. I lost all my hair. I was working in entertainment and fashion, and I needed a break.”
“I thought I would just move home for a little while, six months. I honestly loved being home though. I relapsed again when I got here, due to not having hair and not having my own life, and also being around my family who normalized drinking. My confidence was so fragile it broke me for a while. I drank for a couple of weeks. That’s when I got back into going to Sophia. In those moments when you need support- [I] needed people who understood what I’d been through.”