“My name is John and I’m an alcoholic”
A simple introduction, while commonplace in addiction recovery meetings, was not so easy for this presenter to acknowledge 46 years ago when he reluctantly began his journey to sobriety. The reluctance was in part due to the shame that society associated with such a moral defeat. However, a greater hurdle for him to overcome was the lack of hope he had come to expect for the alcoholics he knew that had tried to sober up. His family members who proceeded him recovery had either relapsed with disheartening regularity or had managed to remain abstinent but retained much of their destructive personalities characteristics.
He will tell you it was only by the grace of God that he hung around long enough to unravel the mystery of why it was that some did not make it and others, while they remained drug free, languished in emotional and spiritual misery. The old timers encouraged him to study the mistakes and the victories of his fellow addicts with compassion and humility. The compassion, they told him, was necessary to prevent the negativity that often accompanies the trials of living life with one’s drug of choice. The humility, they assured him was more important for without it he would fail to see that he was more like them then he was different.
He learned that the absence of alcohol left only emotional and spiritual dryness without the huge characterological changes he needed to make. Those who were close to him would have told you that he was, in fact so dry they expected him to burst into flames. Many aspects of his character would need to change if he would avoid the merry-go-round of relapse he witnessed in his loved ones.
The self-defeating behavioral patterns he identified in others and himself would become the foundation for understanding the phases in the relapse process that have been codified in An Ounce of Prevention: A Course in Relapse Prevention, (Leadem & Leadem, 2009) introduced in this video. We believe that the symptoms of prospective relapse can be identified, intervened on and prevented.
Related Article(s): How to Avoid Relapse and How to Put a Relapse Prevention Technique Into Action
What is Relapse? What is Relapse Prevention?
How Can Family Help Intervene in Addiction? The Importance of the Intervention Team
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