Why your addiction knows more about your relapse than you do

In one to one counselling sessions and therapy groups up and down the land, a familiar story of guilt and remorse is heard every day from addicts and it goes something like this.

1) I started to recover from my drug or behaviour of choice a few months ago and at first it was hard, but then I felt great.

2) After a while I started to feel that I was fine and I didn't want to drink or get high, and for the first time in years I felt good in myself.

3) Then I started to feel that the group wasn't necessary any more, after all, I'd found recovery.

4) I started to believe that I could do things on my own and I started to notice things about the group that I hadn't seen before. I'd started to see that there were people in the group who said things I didn't like and didn't want to hear, they felt judgemental to me.

5) When I noticed this, it helped me make my mind up, I wasn't really like them and while I was glad I stopped drinking, I wasn't going to be told what to do.

6) I started to feel resentful about the time I had wasted on the group and began to pity those dullards who sat round in a circle moaning all afternoon.

7) I began to feel a bit like my old self, confident and on top of things. Sort of how I used to feel when I drank.

8) Safe in the knowledge that I was now o.k. and cured of my drinking I began to realise that there was no need for abstinence any more. After all, if I had stopped drinking once, I could do it again.

9) In this spirit of new found optimism I had a drink and then a wave of craving for more alcohol came over me and I decided to make a proper afternoon of it.

10) I eventually made my way back to the group and stopped drinking again, but my recovery was weaker as a result and I lost everything as a result.

This is the cycle of relapse, it involves isolation, self righteousness and self deception and at the heart of things is the illness. The addiction is the generator of delusional ideas, convincing the addict that they can re-engage in old destructive behaviours again which once brought them to their knees.

Why does this happen? It happens because the addiction is a mental 'programme' that is specifically designed to make the same outcomes happen time and time again. Human beings instinctively gravitate to that which is familiar and to solutions to problems that are tried and tested.

In the life of every addict, drugs or addictive behaviours actually have been a solution to intolerable emotional circumstances. By the time an addict is brought to their knees by their illness, it has long since ceased to be one, and the only thing that are left with is the delusion that one day the illness might work for them again. There is only one way to break the hold of this fantasy and it is through engagement with others.

The illness can't function in the presence of other recovering addicts, it needs to hide away in order to thrive. When the urge to isolate comes to you, mysteriously, inexplicably, rest assured that it is the siren call of your addiction. Ignore it and stick with those that know and care.