Mental Health conversation centered around 12 step recovery and related topics. We talk about spiritual living, living with addiction and growing in the 12 steps. Find us on our home at https://recoverysortof.com/. If you want to join the conversation, email us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RecoverySortOf, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/recovery_sort_of/, or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Recovery-Sort-Of-112376247161866/?view_public_for=112376247161866.
What is a relapse? What does it take to avoid relapse? Can we really stop people from relapsing? What can we do after a relapse? Are the 12 step programs too soft on relapse? Too hard? We take on these questions and more in our conversation about relapse. Join the conversation by leaving a message, emailing us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, or find us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
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10/18/20 What is a relapse? What does it take to avoid relapse? Can we really stop people from relapsing? What can we do after a relapse? Are the 12 step programs too soft on relapse? Too hard? We take on these questions and more in our conversation about relapse.
Transcript:
recovery sort of is a podcast where we discuss recovery and addiction topics from the perspective of people living in long-term recovery this podcast does not intend to represent the views of any particular group organization or fellowship the views expressed here are solely the opinion of its contributors be advised there may be strong language or topics of an adult nature
knock knock who’s there recovery recover you recovery sort of and i’m jason a guy in long-term recovery and that’s the worst dad joke opening of all time i’m billy i’m also a person in long-term recovery he’s back i told you we were joking about the vow of silence i didn’t really take it was to improve my language i gave up on that pretty quick i thought for a couple episodes back i mentioned i might try to improve my language i’d listen to myself a few times on here and and was like man i cussed way too much and i decided [ _ ] it i’m okay with gossip so i gave up on that was a minimal effort put into that change we have had very little cursing in two weeks now and i’m not sure why i mean you weren’t here last week so someone else gets to take credit right right johnny gets a little credit for not cursing but i didn’t curse too much either it’s we i don’t know what the hell is going on we better curse this one up we’ve been officially doing this for a whole year that’s incredible i don’t i still don’t think we know what we’re doing but a whole year and it’s almost like recovery in my regular life i just show up and do my part a day at a time or in this case you know once once a week occasionally twice a week if we blow it off for some reason or have some scheduling conflicts but and over time i think wow has it been that long like it’s amazing it is amazing i i think one of the crazy things is we started out thinking oh my god recovery will never run out of topics and then you get 25 episodes in you’re like [ _ ] what are we going to talk about next week is there any more to talk about like if we explored all of recovery right and and not to knock other recovery podcasts because there are some that are pretty good out there but i think what happens is you end up falling into a place where you just start having people come on and tell their story because that’s i don’t say easy it’s not necessarily easy to get good people to tell a good story but it’s definitely easier than trying to come up with topics to delve into each week it’s helpful to have another voice for sure but see i can’t imagine us in our format just having someone on for the sake of having someone on like it’s cool to have more to talk about a topic but if they just came on like where would we even begin we just sit here and talk about the ravens or something like i don’t know right let’s see where it goes right right i don’t know that that would go where i would hope it would go but maybe it doesn’t matter maybe it doesn’t have to i don’t we’re still figuring all this out i will say one thing for sure i realized last night i think i was thinking about today’s episode and i was like the introduction and um jason and the guy in long-term recovery and that was one of the most uncomfortable things to say a year ago like i’ve struggled with this ego my entire recovery journey and so my idea of humility was tamp that ego down on purpose like somehow i can still outsmart this disease right i can just if i say the right words and act the right ways that ego doesn’t really exist i would you know oh i’m still a newcomer with whatever and i i’ll never say long-term recovery that sounds like i’ve arrived or something i guess i don’t i don’t know i’ve said it for 52 weeks now or something so yeah it gets easier when i went and started listening to the episodes and that was so incredibly difficult in the beginning to just listen to myself to listen to myself make mistakes with words or pronunciations or stumble through ideas and i would be sitting there in the car by myself you know cringing like oh my god i hate myself it was it was hard and i’ve gotten better at it i think it’s given me a i’d say a sense of humility it’s humbling but at the same time you know there are some things that i say or do that i’m pretty proud of you know that i’m glad i said are like wow that’s pretty insightful you know there was there was definitely a time when uh there we go uh i thought oh we don’t need to edit this it’s a normal conversation and i don’t overdo the uhs and ums and stuff and then uh this past week and i just um again i’m gonna notice everyone now this past week i actually decided hmm let me edit out some of the uh like there’s quite a few some of the you knows you know what i mean and it was a lot of work and so my my new thing is i’m going to try to not say uh because that’s rough even though you know i can kind of pick out the little sound diagram of what it looks like now it’s awful there’s so many of them if i went back and edited some of our podcasts you know they’re an hour and 45 minutes they could probably be an hour without uh maybe that’s why they’re too long we need to do better editing and they’d be shorter that’s that’s all it is i’m pretty sure i took at least 10 minutes off of last week’s episode just taking out the us there was another one wow okay enough paying attention to um so today we’re going to talk about relapse and i don’t know exactly what about it but that’s where we decided to go i think there is a lot of relapse going on quarantine if that’s what you still want to call what we’re doing or coronavirus or the weird state of the world during this pandemic i definitely even yesterday i mean we had to drive my daughters were going to a baby shower not for them thank god because they’re not that age yet you know we stopped at starbucks and starbucks has very minimal seating and these plexiglass and you can’t put your own stevia in your coffee they have to do it for you and it just still feels so weird and and some places are like that and then there’s other places like last night i found out that all the haunted houses are still open this year which baffled me i’m like well starbucks is all this you know fancy like preventative measures and haunted houses are like [ _ ] it let’s get scared and die i don’t know i just don’t even know if it’s serious because people take it such different extremes and but the world no matter if you take it serious or not the world looks very different now it’s uncomfortable it’s very uncomfortable for me like just walking into starbucks yesterday was like this just feels so [ _ ] wrong the earth doesn’t even feel like home right now and i’ve heard of a lot of people with years or days or months or whatever relapsing during all this and we’ve lost quite a few of them and it’s like is that what they’re feeling too is that everything just feels so strange and out of sorts and how do you survive in this kind of environment or what there’s definitely a social awkwardness to going to in-person meetings for myself i’ve been to a few and what i find i tend to do which i don’t feel 100 great about but i almost want to go back to acting like there’s nothing going on and hug people and you know because that’s what we do in our fellowship when you see someone you know you give them a hug stranger or someone you know it doesn’t matter see someone you introduce yourself you give them a hug and i still have a tendency to want to do that it puts me in a weird place sometimes because i’m like well wait a minute i don’t necessarily even know these people and what their behavior is if they’re sick i don’t know anything i’m not asking questions hey have you had a fever none of that i’m just hey i’m billy you know and want to give him a hug that’s you know makes me feel uncomfortable but then i know i’ve went in to give other people a hug and i can tell they’re uncomfortable like you know like all of a sudden you know they’re like they’ll do it because it’s impolite to be like no get away from me um i’m in politics yeah well yeah nowadays that’s the thing i don’t know maybe it’s not impolite you know i don’t take it offensively like i understand when people say that but your my reaction a lot of times is like if someone goes to hug me i’m gonna just hug them back and then be like oh that might have not been the best so there’s a lot of that weirdness you know that makes what used to be for a lot of people a very comfortable place where you felt kind of loved and supported that you were around your peers you know people you looked at as brothers and sisters you know all of a sudden there’s this kind of awkward i’m not exactly sure how to act or how to introduce and then if i don’t want to be hugged how comfortable am i telling people that i love or that i’m close to that i don’t want them to hug me you know it’s just it’s a lot new uncharted territory that can be difficult to work through yeah it was super hard to tell people that i wasn’t hugging for a time there and not everywhere because i’ve definitely talked to people who have not had any meetings shut down since the beginning they just continued right on through but a lot of places there was also a time where there wasn’t even that you know there was just no meetings unless you did the online versions and that is very nice and it’s incredible that we can do that in 2020 but it’s not exact substitute for what we’ve dealt with in the past where we do see face to face and we do get that hug that we need and that reassurance and i mean some people who don’t like phone calls or virtual stuff they’re not going to get down with that i i gave it i i hugged some people at the last meeting i went to i’m i’m getting to a place where at least right now and i know that there’s some possible predictions that maybe this picks up again and gets worse as the winner you know sets in and if that’s the case then maybe i need to readjust my my views but at this point in time i’m i’m pretty much [ _ ] over it i’m just i don’t know man i’m just so tired of it all and i understand how people got there quicker than me and i understand there’s people probably still holding on and i’m still trying to do the safe thing but at the same time it’s just like man i can only live with so much of this it’s like i need to get back to some living the one thing i think i’m still not doing is like the gym like i keep hearing that that’s one of the worst places and i’m like god damn it i want to go to the gym that’s like my favorite place but i i have not yet done it yeah and for myself i would never recognized or acknowledged how important like the hugs were you know in other fellowships they do handshakes and stuff and i think well it’s just a greeting you know and we’re addicts we’ve got to do everything over the top yeah right it can’t just be a handshake now it’s gotta be a hug you know and i would have thought it was that now i can say honestly you know when there was a time where there wasn’t meetings like that hug has become meaningful you know especially for people that i haven’t seen in a while like you know i have friends i’ve been around a lot of meetings in recovery for a long time and if i go to a meeting you know and i see someone i haven’t seen for a while i really genuinely want to give that person a hug you know to to make that connection there is something there more than just seeing you and hey how you doing and and kind of waving like there’s some some intimacy and connection that happens in those hugs that i would have never recognized or acknowledged had i not had to go for several months without it yeah and so when we when we talk about relapse you know our definition is kind of like picking up using again after a time of recovery like is that what we assume i’ve heard that a lot like people say well you can’t just come around for two months and not do any step work and then use again you’re just continuing using like you just took a pause you didn’t really recover so you can’t really relapse i don’t know if that’s just a fun thing to say that sounds fancy or is that a real sentiment um i want to say that yes so my gut reaction is to say yeah you know if you don’t have any recovery it’s not really a relapse but i don’t necessarily know i mean that’s i would say uh like uh our fellowship kind of thing like a 12-step fellowship kind of thing it’s elitist right so i looked up the definition sort of that just you know right for most things because i always think i know what it means but then i look it up and think well it’s a little different than what i thought right so would you um so i have two this comes from merriam-webster uh one is the act or an instance of backsliding worsening or subsiding and two a recurrence of symptoms of a disease after a period of improvement so under either of those two cases just someone who comes in stops using even for a short amount of time could be considered i i don’t know if i would say i wouldn’t say they’re in recovery but if they stayed abstinent for a period of time and started to get some improvements in their life and then went back to using that would be a relapse under that definition they’re just in cover they’re not recovering they’re just in cover uh so the one i found was similar it suffered deterioration after a period of improvement yeah that’s hard to say like we look at improvement as in like an improvement in spiritual condition or life being or joy or serenity and so i can say i can stop using drugs and be miserable and not improve in that area but if i just look at life in general if i stop using drugs my life improves even if i am miserable right it’s just an improvement i’m not killing myself regularly on a daily basis i definitely i think it’s kind of an elitist i’ve worked steps and you didn’t that’s why you can’t get it view to say that they haven’t recovered enough to relapse for sure and that was part of my focus on this discussion wasn’t just to look at that because it’s it’s hard in the beginning you know a lot of our any recovery has a low success rate you know it seems like it’s not like any program out there can say like oh 75 percent of our people recover this one time and get better like it’s just not that’s not a realistic statistic for addiction what i kind of thought about more than that was okay so we kind of understand that people getting short amounts of time and then relapsing and then getting some short amount of times like that’s part of the recovery process i think for me what’s more important to focus on as a person with time is how do i avoid after coming in really building a life and becoming successful in my life and you know working steps and and all those things and some years in this process how do i avoid recovery because i’ve seen those people go back out and use and it they seem way less likely to come back yeah it’s is that an ego thing maybe i’m i’m not sure right i don’t know so the other the only other definition i found was more of a mental health definition was it said in the realm of addiction relapses are returned to a substance use after a period of non-use so that would qualify everyone for it but i i definitely get what you’re saying about you know thinking about more people who’ve come around and done some work and had some freedom and what happens and i can’t say that i know for sure either so i had this happen recently with sponsy he’s been around for i don’t know eight or nine years and he asked me to sponsor him and i guess i’ve technically been sponsoring him the whole time but he hasn’t done a whole lot of step work and then he’ll come around he’s got a good career and they accept him back and he makes good money almost instantly and then the next thing he’s got a really nice car and he sleeps around a lot you know it’s a next void filler after drugs is usually sex and gets in these you know sex one night stands or you know short relationships he’ll finally find the the one he gets a place they move in together and then i don’t hear from him again and he’s gone and then you know a year later he comes back and so somewhat disheartening he he was working steps he just celebrated two years and he finished his fourth and fifth and i was like cool you know i went to his anniversary i’m like look let’s go over that soon we set up a saturday in in theory he said i’ll call you this week we’ll set it up i didn’t hear from him waited a couple weeks i text him he called me he’s like man i’m glad you broke the ice i forgot to call and then it just got kind of weird where i just felt weird about calling he’s like look let’s set it up for next saturday this time we’ll start it and i was like oh should be able to do that so it was coming up i didn’t hear from him and i text him this was not yesterday last saturday morning i was like hey what’s up and he’s like i’m gonna step back for a while and it’s just kind of hurt i don’t know put me in a little bit of a funk right i’ve seen this guy come so far this time where he hasn’t been able to before and then i mean he has a house and he has the car and the job and he just moved in earthling in with him and it’s like ah is this the pattern all over again like is this nobody says that because we do that we end up with drugs right what could happen is he could get miserable and decide to go over a step like anything can happen it’s just it’s hard to watch and know that there’s really very little i can do about it at all and for me personally so i’ve sort of interpreted relapse as not being just about using like i can fall into periods of relapse or patterns of relapse without ever picking up a drug my understanding of the disease and how it works for me in my life is you know my self-centeredness my self-obsession total dependence on self lack of trust or faith in a higher power or a power you know greater than me and i go back to running just on self will i do what i think because i think it’s the best thing to do and i don’t really run it by anybody or challenge it against anything you know it’s and it’s just back to me thinking i know what’s best for me in my life that tends to cause me pain and so for me personally that’s what a relapse looks like that could eventually end up in using maybe it doesn’t you know right but that’s a relapse is when i get back to a place where i have no dependence or no i would say need for anything outside of myself to help me in my life i am in relapse i think for me it’s interesting uh that 10-step conversation we had was really eye-opening and not that it was like new information but just the the way it said that we worked the 10-step because today our recovery is not based entirely around pleasure right and basically this concept that a lot of what we do in our lives today to further our recovery is about this is the vigilance and perseverance of what i do next it’s just what i do next no it doesn’t feel good a lot of times but at the end of the day it leaves me being the man i want to be and feeling good about myself which allows me to stay clean another day it allows me to you know live happy joyous and free and not caught up in the things i didn’t do and blah blah but that’s where my you know you describe what your relapse mode or whatever looks like that’s me i just get caught up in living with what feels good my all my decisions are based around what feels good next well skipping doing them [ _ ] dishes and i know i harp on the dishes i don’t even do the dishes right that’s not even my job at my house but it it just reminds me of times when i’ve skipped the dishes or i don’t want to attend to that laundry today i’ll put that off and just sit here and watch tv or sit here and play a video game or sit here and scroll on my phone because that [ _ ] feels better and that’s where all my relapse mode comes in it’s in the inability to make a positive healthy decision to do the next right thing i just make decisions on whatever feels best right now which is usually doing nothing yeah and i will look at the fact that i make some good decisions and ignore the bad decisions that i make and what i mean by that is so i might not be out like impulsively spending all my money and i’m paying my bills and you know i’m secure in that area but i’ll ignore the fact that like i’m ignoring you know maybe some responsibilities with the kids or some other responsibilities around the house and you know just like using like i only look at i pick and choose what pieces of information i’m gonna use to justify my success you know in my decision making and i ignore all the areas where i’m causing harm you reminded me and and it’s ties into some scenarios i’ve seen with some friends over time what i would call a common theme amongst people that i’ve seen that come in and get time is and again i’ll explain my own i’ll explain this from my own perspective probably some other people can relate but you know come in fully invested in recovery in my first couple years you know it’s like sponsor involved in service i have a home group i’m hitting multiple meetings my whole social network is all people in recovery or majority of it i mean i have some relationships with my family and stuff but majority of all my social network everything i do is centered around recovery and that goes you know for a good three or four years i’m hardcore working steps you know heavily invested in the process of recovery slowly my life what they call that social acceptability goes up you know i get a good job and i buy a house and i have a wife and a couple kids and then i’m doing good and i’m four or five years into recovery well now by all measures of anything i’ve ever had in my life like i’m a success i’m doing great you know my life could never this is this is what i wanted my life to be the whole time i was using i just wanted to be normal you know and here i am normal now i’m normal and i’m working towards the future and we got a couple cars and we’re taking trips and going to the beach and you know going to disney world like who the [ _ ] does that [ _ ] you know for a drug addict like that’s dream come true and so somewhere in that process i’m like well i’m good now you know and i don’t actively reject the program i just have outgrown the program i’m now grown beyond it and so i’m going to meetings you know or at least i’m going to my home group each week because that’s one commitment that i made i’m like all right well i at least need to do that so i’m going to my home group uh most of the time with the attitude that i’m there to [ _ ] save all of them and fix them and help them and give everybody some great advice because look at me you know if you look at me and all my outsides everything’s good and the ego creeps in and then i’m in the back of the room with my buddy or you know whatever and we’re cutting up and making jokes and whatever and we’re just there because that’s what we do and then life happens like a tragedy happens something hard happens because in this process at least for me when i turned my will and life over to god when i thought i made that decision i thought god had a part of that agreement that he was supposed to uphold too and that was that i wasn’t supposed to suffer any tragedies now that i was doing the right things and being this good person and sure some bad stuff might happen but bad stuff like i get a [ _ ] flat tire on the way to work you know not like real life [ _ ] right but what i can say is that just because you get clean life still shows up people still die spouses still use people that are your sponsors or people that you sponsor will lie to you and steal from you and try to sleep with your wife and like all that [ _ ] will happen you know you’re dealing with a crowd of drug addicts you know and we are all very different i mean i think it happens with earth people too you hear that but in any case in my case it was we found out daughters got molested and when that happened i became angry and bitter with god and it’s not that i thought using would make anything better but if i used i wouldn’t have to feel that way i wouldn’t have to feel as angry and hurt and i wouldn’t give a [ _ ] is basically what it boiled down to and i thought well you know what i might be okay with that i just i don’t want to feel the way that i’m feeling now i don’t want to go through this i don’t you know my whole faith and trust in the program of recovery was out the window you know because god didn’t uphold his side of the story you know he didn’t he didn’t uphold his end of the deal i upheld mine i was clean and working and had a job and paying bills and raising kids and being faithful to my wife you know that was all my side of the street was clean you know and it came down to a choice of do i want to use or do i want to resurrender to the program and i luckily chose the ladder i came back to the program and recommitted and reassessed some things in my belief and understanding of a higher power and began a different journey with that part of my recovery so i i totally relate to the getting the family the house the career and all these things and feeling good and not only did the social acceptability piece happen two other things also went into it for me one i felt guilty leaving the house for meetings when i had the wife and a kid at home right like she gets up with him at night and i’m supposed to be there to help and give her a break and be this perfect husband which i was far from but i thought i was supposed to and so i constantly talked myself out of going to me i can’t do that i’m supposed to be home with this family i made and all this stuff which there’s some truth too right i shouldn’t be in meetings seven nights a week but i’ve avoided what i needed to do to keep myself healthy at all right and that good there came a point where after some bitter breakdown stuff of my own like i realized that hey i need to do these things this many nights a week in order to stay okay and be helpful when i am here and not just here and being a bigger problem and on top of that the second thing that happened was that i accomplished all these goals that i came into recovery to get right like you talked about the the job the house the car the the kids the spouse everything was there and it was like well now like i don’t have anything else to work towards this is all the [ _ ] i ever wanted and i never even thought i’d get here and now i’m here well nobody taught me i need to establish new goals and you know have new ideas of things i want to work towards so i had no purpose in life anymore and i didn’t realize god i don’t know it was probably 12 years into this process before i realized that purpose in life was actually super meaningful for the recovery process i just i don’t know how i missed that part but apparently that’s a huge emphasis so it’s like we need to find a purpose in our life and and reason and something to get out of bed for and without it we’re kind of lost and flailing which is where i was for quite a long time yeah and i think i was similar i was again looking at all the outside social acceptability stuff instead of looking internally at you know what are my values what are my beliefs what kind of person do i want to be in my day-to-day life you know how am i treating the lady at the wawa and how am i treating you know the people i interact with on a daily basis not just look at all my outside stuff and i’m a success now you know right because i could be all that outside stuff and then still be like flicking off people on the highway because they cut me off or you know being an [ _ ] to the lady at the wawa because she gave me the wrong amount of change you know oh yeah or keeping the excess money if someone gives me too much change you know walking out of the store feeling like i hit a jackpot you know like if only the people listening to my great sound and share could see me break checking the [ _ ] guy behind me on the highway yeah super spiritual to kind of reel that back to relapse so i think you know we get into those periods all of us find ourselves for different reasons and sometimes you mentioned something that i found important or that i had to discover on my own is sometimes there are some really difficult things we have to balance out with recovery you know i value being a father very highly in my you know list of values and my value chart or whatever you want to call it so showing up for my kids things is incredibly important you know and when you have you know four kids at one time we had you know four kids well we have four kids just one time they were all living at home you know you’re trying to balance out you know this one’s got this sport going on that one’s got that thing this one’s got gymnastics on tuesdays and for me personally as a parent i didn’t want to miss any of that stuff i went to all of it because it was important for me like i felt like i wanted to be there to show my kids that i loved and supported them it became easier to justify not fitting in meetings because this is all the stuff that you guys told me i was supposed to be you know like i’m supposed to be a good parent a loving father i’m supposed to be giving of my time to others you know and all this stuff somewhere in there we have to learn some discernment and i think that’s where connections with people in recovery again connections to people outside of myself powers greater than me other advice from other people other than me and my best thinking can help with that stuff if i’m talking to a sponsor or in my case you know my wife is very involved in recovery so she’s a good source of information you know it’s like when’s the last time you’ve been to a meeting [ _ ] it could easily turn into two or three weeks sometimes not intentionally it wasn’t like i had no intention to avoid meetings i wasn’t like i did if you’d asked me intellectually i wouldn’t have said oh i don’t need that [ _ ] i’ve been like oh no that’s really important my recovery is vital to my life it’s interesting even without like i can remember during those times i was referring to not so much having that outside input you know call my sponsor here and there just to say hi and talk about you know his job and my job and some surfacy stuff but even even my wife who’s not in the program you know recognizes stuff like she had the good information i needed i just had no ability to listen right i still knew everything and she would say things like you know you realize you can go there it’s just a practice tonight you can go to a meeting it’s not a big deal i’ll just take the kids and we’ll have a good time and you can hit a meeting or you know hey it doesn’t really do any good for you to stay home from the meeting and not hang out with your kids at all anyway like that’s kind of pointless and i was like ah whatever you don’t know what you’re talking about like you don’t understand the program like she probably had a way better understanding of what i needed than i did i just couldn’t hear any of that [ _ ] so let’s pause here before we get uh any further into discussion we’ll do our voices and be right back this episode has been brought to you by voices of hope inc a non-profit grassroots recovery community organization located in maryland voices of hope is made up of people in recovery family members and allies together members strive to protect the dignity and respect of those that use drugs and those in recovery by advocating for treatment support resources and mentoring please visit us at www.voicesofhopecilmd.org and consider donating to our calls so we talk about this idea right and and i’ve i don’t know maybe 50 80 100 i have no idea how many dudes have asked me to sponsor them over the course of my recovery right it’s been quite a few and anybody who’s been asked to sponsor you know more than 10 people probably knows this already but generally there’s a bunch that will get your number and never call you and then there’s a good amount that will call you a couple times and see you at a couple meetings and then never call you again and you might see them for a few more meetings and then they fall off then there’s one to start the step work and maybe get a step or two down and then they fall off like there’s this spectrum of how much people are willing to do or how long they’re going to stay and fortunately like i i’ve definitely had sponsees that are now past they’re not here anymore with us and that’s awful and then you have guys that start off all gung-ho and they’re three steps in and they’re like super you know they’re they’re recovering addict of the year right like rookie of the year uh recovery guy and then they stop like you’re just sure that they’re gonna stay clean forever and then they end up using a year and a half in and then there’s guys who do nothing at first and then two years in decide they want to start working steps and then they’re like pretty healthy and i just i guess i feel like we really just have no idea and i’ve put that judgment on so many people of oh they’re going to make it they’re not going to make it and it there’s some accuracy to it right you can kind of tell some things about people’s behavior when they get here if they’re ready what we call ready and that’s i think that ready idea is something that i’m curious about because we we just don’t know and we we sort of say this it’s like our in a belief i guess at least my belief like people get it when they’re ready or after they’ve hit their real bottom that’s when they’ll not use again and i like we don’t have any real idea of when that is or if it’s ever happened already and then we say we’re each other’s eyes and ears but people don’t seem to really listen when they’re in the denial of a relapse mode so i don’t know how that really helps or if we can truly stop people and so i don’t know i just feel like we’re so defenseless against it and and basically we’ve decided and i don’t know that this is wrong but basically we’ve decided to just say oh it’s completely out of our control and it it could just be an excuse maybe there is something we could do or maybe there’s not but that’s what we we just you know we don’t know we can’t control it we’re just here when they’re ready yeah wow so over the years i have given up on trying to figure out what and i don’t even know if i’m going to be here a month from now so [ _ ] if i know what anyone else is going to do and uh because i i’ve learned i don’t i don’t know what takes people out you know i i don’t know what a sincere desire looks like and i can have a really sincere desire today but next week some tragic thing could happen and that desire is gone you know like it’s just the way that life’s work i’ve seen people that i love use and given up on that idea that oh once they use there’s nothing we can do you know when you cross them off the list so so early in recovery i had a you know they give you a phone book or they used to give you a little blue phone book and you would write the numbers of people that met in recovery in that phone book and i carried it around for a long time and i would go through and like i actually had a red marker where i had xed out the names of people that didn’t come around anymore or that news that i knew used because i’m like i can’t call those people you know i mean like they use they’ll take me out before i can save them so early in my recovery it was like a self-preservation thing i don’t i shouldn’t be reaching out to try to save people because i’m in no position to save people now in my recovery if it’s people that i love and i know they’re drifting away or or are even using i’ll call them not i mean i don’t try to hang out with them it’s like i want to go meet him at the [ _ ] bar and hang out and have drinks you know nothing like that but i reach out to them i call them every now and again i had a sponsor i was super close with that had 17 years clean i call them once or twice a year hey how’s it going man i haven’t seen you in a while just you know want to catch up see how things are going just to let them know that i love them and care about them whether he’s using or not you know what i mean that relationship went beyond you’re just an n a friend and if you’re not in n a i have no time for you right um there’s not many of those people in my life there’s probably two three that are people that i’ve talked to over the years that use and and it’s weird i don’t again i don’t feel like it’s my place to try to talk them into coming back it’s just a matter of letting them know like hey you are loved and you are cared about and if you decide this is something you want to do i’ll help you in any way that i can the last thing i’ll say about that is fortunately or unfortunately like this version of recovery at least what we’re in through you know narcotics anonymous like it’s not for everyone not everyone’s gonna come here and find what they need to keep themselves clean they might come keep looking here but it doesn’t mean it’s ever going to work for them for whatever reason maybe they have a hang up maybe there’s something in the program that doesn’t work for certain kinds of people with different kinds of whatever but this there’s other ways of recovering that may work better for them that if they explored some other avenues and didn’t get stuck with the idea that this was the only way to do it maybe they’d go out and explore something else and find that that’s what they it is interesting that we always say the program doesn’t fail it’s the people who don’t work the program like we have so many quotes and and sayings and meetings about oh the program is perfect you know it’s the fellowship falls short or the people fall short that’s why they use or you know if you don’t work a fourth step we’ve seen these people frequently use or like we have all these cliches around that but yeah maybe our view is limited maybe it’s not the only thing and maybe it doesn’t work for some people well i was always told the very first thing in the program is don’t use no matter what so if you don’t use no matter what a day at a time then you know so to me that’s like one of those sayings like you say it but it’s like it doesn’t really mean much because yeah if i’m living the program i’m not using that’s the very first thing of the program right yeah that’s you know don’t give up five minutes before the miracle and there’s another one we have too there’s so many that just yet they’re very okay all right sure that sounds great but what are we actually gonna do to help people not use right so one of the quotes one of the first ones we hear at almost every meeting thinking of alcohol as different than other drugs has caused a great many addicts to relapse and that is reading our how it works reading i think a lot of people in n a do they still like i i don’t understand i think that’s an old school thinking but i don’t know maybe yeah i i definitely used it unfortunately i used thinking alcohol was different and learned the hard way that that didn’t work for me but i don’t know if people like i think we’re kind of knowledgeable that alcohol is not any different than trump maybe not though maybe not because i look online and there’s a lot of glorification of alcohol i think we still look at it as like the perfect american party or relaxation it’s pretty sick yeah i’d say that and prescription medications both i guess from a social acceptability point of view are much more socially acceptable so i can see and i say that i didn’t do that but the truth is i did i part of my story was i used you know heroin for years i got locked up went to jail for a year i stopped using heroin when i because i had to go through horrible withdrawals so when i got out of jail i didn’t use heroin again but i drank and smoked pot for four years because i thought if i just do these things i’ll be fine it’s the heroine and the coke and the heavy drugs that are my problem right and then my life wasn’t any better and it was still a disaster just with alcohol and other drugs and i haven’t i haven’t done heroin you know i didn’t do heroin again but it didn’t matter so i guess before i came to na i had exactly that point of view that i could drink successfully and that would be fine i will say my alcohol use is not there’s not a lot of it to go by it’s a small sample size but it was ugly every last time like it was like piss yourself black out drunk every time there was never something shorter than that i definitely woke up the next day not remembering every last time so i think it’s pretty safe to say that i can’t use alcohol one of the things i did find interesting i put on twitter and asked if people found it different like dude i just assumed because i’m self-centered that everyone in n a thinks like me and that n a relapses are somehow more urgent or dire situations than a a relapses like i get fundamentally the same thing happened i get over time alcohol actually kills more people than drugs does for sure because it’s socially legal and acceptable and you know all the tied in consequences to it of body part failures and everything but i just i guess assume that it was universal knowledge and agreement that you could die from a drug overdose tonight and if you relapse on alcohol yes some things could happen you could drive drunk and die i guess but you could drive sober and die so that doesn’t really like that doesn’t seem urgent like the the drug addict relapse and on twitter there was a myriad of opinions but i will say this the general overall sentiment there was a few people that were like let’s stop comparing i’m like oh my god really i’m not trying to compare these or make one worse than the other i’m just trying to see what people think and it seemed like people in aaa do not share that opinion at all which i guess kind of makes sense you don’t want to belittle your own program’s relapse right but they were like no this is just as serious here and and i don’t know do you have any thoughts about that i it might not even be the n a stance it might just be my statement well yeah and i was gonna just say i think and i’m guessing here because we didn’t actually have this conversation but i’m assuming you’re referring more to like the heroin epidemic and and how you know but heroin isn’t the only people the only reason people come to n a you know people come with whatever well and i think my heart busting is even worse than so i i don’t know i i get it though you’re right i don’t know that i’ve ever really thought about one being worse than another not so much worse just it seemed more urgent like the aa guy who drank tonight i i’ve always just assumed and i guess my brain is changing as i’ve read these twitter comments but i’m like well you know maybe we can get him back in the meeting next week right but like the guy who went out and shot heroin tonight i’m like [ _ ] we gotta get him into a meeting tomorrow right we need he something now like that a guy like yeah he’s gonna drink some beers this week and hey that’s my belittling of heart disease i guess that’s my own short sightedness huh now i don’t know that i think there’s any i mean all of it’s urgent you know to me i i just i’ve never really looked at it differently i don’t know why well and that’s the great thing about this past year is that i have learned and been able to change my opinion on so many things like really solidifying my opinion on specialty meetings that episode completely changed my brain on that one and obviously like this i’ve just learned you know that it’s not universal to think of one is worse than the other and they’re all pretty goddamn serious and that’s what i’ve loved about doing this podcast for the last year is that i’m able to learn and grow with this new information instead of just rejecting it all and being like nah y’all are crazy i’m i’m right over here yeah or maybe you know even and i don’t know if this doesn’t really matter but it’s just funny to think that funny is probably the worst thing i could have said another way to think about this was an alcohol related like let’s say someone you know relapses and goes out and drives well their likelihood of killing other people’s a lot higher than a heroin addict who you know may just overdose and die themselves you know so you may have way more tragic consequences you know to alcohol related uh just different ways of thinking about it different ways of looking yeah absolutely interesting consequences can be devastating so the next quote that i had pulled out is out of recovery and relapse and it says after a member has had some involvement in our fellowship a relapse may be the jarring experience that brings about a more rigorous application of the program and then it says there may be times when a relapse lays the groundwork for complete freedom and so as people who we look at relapses a terrible failure frequently it’s hard to when your life is on the line it’s hard to see that that might have been part of the process right i’ve definitely heard differing opinions of people sharing meetings of relapse doesn’t have to be part of recovery or it’s not a part of recovery or i i do think relapse does have a lesson in it if we’re able to make it back hopefully yeah we can see we’re only at least my understanding of of this process of recovery is we’re only given a daily reprieve from our addiction and that i need to keep up and it ties back to the 10th step like i need to keep up with a a daily vigilant application of these principles if i want to continue to experience ongoing recovery and if i get out of that mode i’ll go from recovery sort of back to like an abstinence level so i would look at it as recovery is when i’m in a state of like improving my spirit improving my life making active you know changes to be a better person abstinence is where i’m clean i’m not using but i’m probably not doing a lot to work on myself or change very much and then active using and it’s like those are the steps in between so if i’m staying you know in a daily application of these principles then i’m actively engaged in recovery versus well i’m just absent and running on my own self-will for a while yeah the the ride in the bicycle up the hill analogy right when we stop pedaling we’re not just sitting still and that’s what i think i forget so frequently it’s like i want to coast for a while but you only coast so much going uphill after you’ve pedaled yeah so that and they talk about it in a you know some of our literature it’s like that recovery i mean the relapse is like a process that we go through i actually heard someone recently share that they didn’t like that we kind of minimize relapse in some of our readings they had recently lost a loved one and had shared that you know they thought it was our version that it talks about you know relapse can be this good thing for people puts this positive spin on it and they just didn’t appreciate that very much in their current position knowing that they just lost someone that they love and tell them hey it’s okay if you relapse we love you when you come back like no relapse is a serious thing you know people [ _ ] die and not everybody makes it back and you know it’s it’s hard so relapse is dangerous right it puts us in a dangerous situation and i don’t argue that at all i would say and of course i could never possibly know the truth about this but i would say i don’t know that i could have gotten the humility i needed without my relapse forever ago when it happened but i it happened and i needed it to get that charring experience and that knowledge and that lesson of what i was lacking and missing in my program but i i i’m really i can understand anybody’s frustration with the way we talk about relapse if they’ve just lost someone because they have a lot of emotions right now and they’re hurt and they don’t like but i guess one of the things that sticks out to me is that we look at staying in recovery as the solution for not dying and that’s kind of ridiculous we’re like oh you know it’s so serious we need to keep people in here because if you relapse you can die without relapsing like that’s tragedy happens unfortunately to to all of us and unfortunately one of the things that i’m struggling to accept is that we all die i don’t know it kind of there’s something about it that rubs me when people are like oh we got to keep people from relapsing because it’s you know it’s deadly and i’m like well so walking out of your [ _ ] front door that doesn’t mean we stopped doing it i don’t know it’s just something about that do you have any take on that from an optimistic point of view i would say the only upside to keeping people in recovery you know yes everyone could die and i could go die tomorrow but if i looked at my life over the last five or ten years like hopefully i’ve left some positive imprint on my kids and my family and people that i’ve interacted with whereas if i was in active addiction the last five years and then just died there’s a lot of unresolved harm there with my children there’s a lot of unresolved harm with my family and they have to go on living with that harm you know they have to go on with these unresolved issues so i’m not trying to be crude or or belittle anyone who’s lost a family member it’s tragic it is sad unfortunately my brain at times likes to dwell and think about the possibilities for my kids and it’s overwhelming to even think about much less to be in the situation dealing with it and so i’m not trying to take anything away from them i guess from my point it’s we like to point fingers and blame and stuff and so when you’re in a hurt position by a particular topic you’re going to say oh well it’s your acceptance of relapse that makes it the problem right we can’t be okay with that look i’ve watched people in recovery that lost kids that had nothing to do with they didn’t blame the program’s language of relapse the problem is it’s [ _ ] tragic like it had nothing to do with our program’s language or or with the fact that relapse is at times part of people’s lives or that we don’t know when people are ready to get it so i just i don’t know whenever anybody criticizes like oh you need to stay clean so that you can live that just i’m like that’s fallacy like we that’s not really how it goes i get that relapse is dangerous unfortunately but there’s a lot of like that’s not so if you heard of an example and this is coming from someone in recovery whether we have quote-unquote treatment for addiction or not so if you heard of someone that died of a condition nowadays that’s very treatable with common medications or something let’s say you know someone who’s diabetic who just needs to eat a little bit better and take their insulin and that person decides to deny treatment and go out and just i’m just gonna eat [ _ ] cake and hot dogs and i don’t care and then they die doesn’t that seem a little more tragic than a person that could have came and just taking some simple steps of treatment and then continue to live like i guess that’s kind of the difference is like would you want to go tell that person who’s eating cakes and hot dogs you know [ _ ] it man forget about diabetes just live your life and do your thing and that’s kind of what they’re choosing though that’s kind of like the person who decides i want to smoke instead of right but is it is it good to support them in that or is it and i think we can do we can not support them in a loving and caring way you can still tell them hey this probably isn’t the best thing for you to be doing you know what i mean this isn’t a smart decision i mean i’m not so i watched it with my mom she had copd she was dying literally you know dying and still smoking cigarettes she was wheeling herself out back with an oxygen tank she actually caught her oxygen and [ _ ] on fire one time trying to smoke and watching that in the beginning she went through this process for like 10 years it was a long time when they first diagnosed her and told her look you can quit smoking and you can extend your life and buy some time and maybe continue to have decent quality of life over time and so she quit smoking for like two years and actually got better she actually got off the oxygen and then at some point said [ _ ] it i’m gonna smoke i’m gonna die anyway i’m gonna smoke so then she went back to smoking and it was hard not to be angry about that it was hard not to go to her and say what the [ _ ] is wrong with you why are you doing this you’re killing yourself but you’re also you know you’re hurting your family your husband you know your children your grandchildren like how [ _ ] selfish are you to do that that’s how i felt that’s i didn’t say that to her maybe i should have i don’t i don’t know i didn’t i don’t know that i regret not saying those things because i don’t know that it would have changed anything but super interesting from like a therapy perspective right and so we we will work with individuals who want to live their lives the way they want to live their lives and our goal is always we’re here to help you live your best life not the life your family thinks you’re supposed to live you’re not here to live for them you get one life it’s for you do it how you want right whatever that means whatever brings you joy and so it hurt me to hear you say that right because i understand the sentiment of it and and i’m sorry that your mother chose that over being here to have more time with you and yet at the same time i could see from the like if i if somebody was her therapist thinking how selfish of your [ _ ] family to think that you’re supposed to be here for them like this is your life if you want to smoke smoke and i’m not saying support it right i’m not saying support a relapse but for family members to think that there’s the flaw in in our take on it like what else are we gonna do because i’ll be honest i’m not a believer that there’s a [ _ ] ton we can do about relapse honestly and you mentioned the person where who has the steps they could take or the medicine they could take and chooses not to i don’t think we have any proven addiction medicine that [ _ ] fixes this i think people get high until they’re done i don’t know that maybe there’s a level of trauma we’re not looking at in the treatment aspect of it which i think we’re starting to come around to maybe that helps uh kind of like the the lady sarah said last week like i’m not so sure there is a prevention or or a fix for this and so as much as i i hate the thought of it happening to a loved one that’s my [ _ ] right like that’s for me to come to terms with because that’s life we lose loved ones and we find ways to deal with our own life and come to grips with it and i’m not trying to be cold or callous to it but that’s not for other people to fix there’s no fix in it the world happens and we need to figure out how to be okay with that i guess yeah and i feel like a dick saying all this oh no it’s there’s not a one size right way to life for any of this stuff you know what i mean it’s it’s each individual’s journey going through life you know obviously there’s people that i love and care about that i would want to see make different choices all the time but they sometimes have to go through and experience their own pain i can say though i have been to funerals of people that have died clean and i’ve been to funerals of people that are died using and it’s a very different feel there’s a very different attitude there’s a very different you know celebration of the person’s life right whether they’ve been clean or whether they’ve been using it maybe that’s not the best way to look at it but that’s there’s definitely a different feeling if you’ve been to a funeral of someone who’s overdosed and died it’s usually pretty rough there’s a lot of unresolved pain and there’s a lot of hurt just went to one two months ago with my my daughter’s mother like yeah i get it i i don’t know though in the end they’re not there and maybe from the therapy perspective that’s a wrong way to look at it you know maybe we need to stop treating people that decided to live their lives the way they wanted to live them as tragedies well i think it’s tragic for those who are here regardless right either way you’re still left with the laws of that individual whether they were clean or use it like it’s still sad and you don’t get to call them next week and you don’t get to see them at a meeting or whatever it is however you interact with them you don’t get to have a christmas like it’s tragic no matter what clean or not it’s just a matter of i think that personally for at least from my limited experience that has more to do with who they’ve surrounded themselves with and the relationships they’ve had with them recently like if you’re clean you generally are surrounded by clean people you’re having pretty open honest discussions you’re having connected attachments to people if you’re using you’re really disconnected and so that’s the feeling you leave on the people you are connected with are people you got high with and everybody that you know has some positive stuff going on you’re just disconnected from that so that kind of leaves an empty vibe and i know we’re way off recovery and relapse but i would think too it has something to do with are you living really living the life you truly wanted to live you know in recovery hopefully i’m experiencing you know and figuring out what my values and beliefs are and i’m living you know the best version of myself hopefully that’s idealistic but hopefully you know i’m living a life that i’ve chosen to live whereas in addiction a lot of times you know we’re living lives where we’ve turned our will on our life over to this destructive power that we kind of are doing a lot of things we don’t want to be doing yes so we i don’t know that there’s a way to prevent relapse or stop relapse or any of that but we will talk a little bit uh some of the quotes in our literature that say what we can do or or don’t do so in step 12 it talks about most of us realize that the only way that we can keep what was given to us is by sharing this new gift of life with the still suffering addict this is our best insurance against relapse i guess that works but that confuses me and this has kind of been my argument against people leaving n a i’m like well if you leave n a you’re not really working the 12 step right did you ever really work the 12 steps if you don’t stay but that’s not true people can help the still suffering addict outside of n a or just help people outside of na and so i don’t know is that the goal is that the prevention of relapse being able to show up and give it away we do hear that people who relapse frequently stop coming to meetings first ah so i’m not a 100 percent believer that like if i’m in n a this is just what i have to do with the rest of my life in order to be successful i i think that people can outgrow recovery you know and need to go outside of here to look for spiritual growth spiritual development you know whatever they might be looking for in their lives i think this is for me still a place that works in my life after all this time because i still have issues that i need to work on that i believe the steps can address and that i believe i find beneficial funny enough i don’t get asked to sponsor a lot of newcomer people most guys that ask me to sponsor them have time have been around a while so i guess technically that’s helping us like i still try to stay of service in different ways i show up at my home group i you know i’m willing to sponsor people if they ask me but it’s like i’m not out trying to recruit newcomers so that i can feel like i’m helping to still suffer an addict right you know so there’s a loose understanding of what that could mean yeah i think to still suffer an addict as anybody that’s still suffering which i that applies to all of us really right all of us at any one time and that’s a pretty vague like what’s it mean to be helping the still suffering addict like say there’s plenty of people get into like it seems like treatment work or the treatment field and they kind of disappear from meetings and recovery for different reasons they are very split there’s like half of them thrive and love the fact that they get back and the other half get burnt out and are done with all recovery aspects and it’s so weird it’s so weird to see that down the middle and i don’t know what makes what scared me away from it early on i had just seen a couple of people that i really loved and appreciated that got involved in that recovery world and then for different reasons they just drifted right away from recovery right i guess once it becomes a job it’s like anyway it does change it well so okay so that said you got to give it away to keep it basically you got to give away recovery if you want to keep uh our experience reveals that working the steps is our best guarantee against relapse now that’s interesting so in step 12 it says give it away to keep it that’s the best insurance against relapse and then a chapter later and what can i do it says our experience reveals that working the steps is our best guarantee against relapse so interesting little disagreement in its own literature yeah well i guess if you’re working step 12 and you’re giving it away and you’re i guess but i’ve always heard we’ve never seen a person working our program perfectly relapse or something like that which i don’t even know what the [ _ ] that means honestly because i can remember i mean i was hitting six meetings a week i had a sponsor had a service commitment to do an h i i had all the things that supposedly would be working a program i was writing steps and i used do i make that not true yeah we have never seen a person who lives the narcotics anonymous program relapse i guess i wasn’t living it like i don’t get it what was i doing wrong i mean i can tell you what i was doing wrong but from an outside standpoint i want to know what i was doing wrong so it gets back to again for me personally what i believe addiction is and i believe that addiction is a spiritual disease a spiritual condition a lack of connection to other people total self-centeredness you know in my thinking and in my spirit and so for myself personally this process of the steps and recovery helps me to get outside of myself to learn about myself enough to recognize how my decisions and actions and things that i do impact other people and if i’m really growing to actually think about how the decisions and actions that i have impact people before i actually do them that process of like giving it away to keep it or what i would call service to others is like the polar opposite or the antithesis of my self-centeredness you know what i mean if i’m thinking about other people and giving selflessly to others that’s the opposite of my attic state which is total self-centeredness and total self-serving so you know however i need to reach that place where i am not stuck in a self-centered mind you know that’s what’s gonna help me to not use to not relapse i can’t argue with that you should have saved that for like three more quotes so that we could be done and wrapped up on that because i think that’s i think that’s the solution for my problem at least my problem is me i’m stuck in my head with my thoughts about me and how everything affects me and the solution is to not be there right it’s to be about how can i help others how can i be of service we talk about service and so again i don’t even think that it’s just n a or just the steps that can help me get there just for me now for in my life like this is a place that i like being i like the program what it stands for what it’s about i can relate to the people there because of my struggles with addiction and it’s the process of the steps while it is some work that i hate [ _ ] writing and doing homework you know the process itself works for me it’s been continually beneficial to engage in this process service is the solution and and i don’t i guess for me that’s what i’m thinking right now just service is the answer for pretty much all my problems like if i’m just helping other people god damn it i feel good about me and life goes well relapse is never an accident i thought that was an interesting statement relapse is never an accident that reminds me i don’t know i was in construction and we had a company and their safety slogan was like every accident is preventable and and it just always bugged the [ _ ] out of me because by definition accidents are not preventable like yeah you can think ahead and try to avoid some possible pitfalls but an accident by definition was the unexpected one yeah and so that’s not true it just annoyed me but i get where they were coming from but relapse is never an accident so what does that mean we purposely did it no one ever fell on a loaded heroin needle i guess i don’t know yeah i didn’t rain crack pipes and one fell in my mouth and i had a lighter by accident uh if we begin to avoid our new responsibilities by missing meetings neglecting 12-step work or not getting involved our program stops these are the kind of things that lead to relapse so i thought that was pretty evident missing meetings neglecting 12-step work not getting involved it is not shameful to relapse the shame isn’t not coming back multiple this was an interesting one multiple relapses do not necessarily signify a lack of interest in recovery nor does the model newcomer demonstrate without a doubt a certainty of making it i didn’t think i wrote that down but i did and so that’s i mean yeah we we never know who was gonna get this or what one person’s actions today actually lead to down the line and so i guess just to kind of wrap that stuff up what what is like what is it the is it the ego is it not working steps is it not doing meetings is there what is it that really leads to that relapse is it just total self-centeredness is it pleasure seeking like is there any one thing or is it the combination of all these or yeah well a combination of all those or anyone at any given time it’s just like the almost what i would say the perfect storm of recovery like some people got to have the exact things in a right way that are really going to promote and support their recovery and what i mean by that is you know they may need to go into like a long-term treatment center a long-term treatment facility versus a short-term treatment facility you know or maybe their life situation they can’t go into an inpatient treatment facility so they find some kind of outpatient program that’s exactly what they need to encourage them but let them you know live their life i mean these are things that we’re individuals you know each one of us so what we need and what our tolerance for pain is is different again for me i found myself at a time in my life where i was at my most emotional pain using seemed like it could be an option that’s probably the only time in my recovery that i’ve ever thought using you know might be okay because it was always obvious to me like getting high will wreck my life there isn’t any way that i think i could use and be productive and and be the type of person that i am that’s just my history of using i know that i would wreck my life if i use there have been times where that doesn’t seem like it’s that big a [ _ ] deal you know that you know because of the emotional pain that i felt inside i don’t give a [ _ ] if i wrecked my life at this point you know doesn’t really matter that much i would say just my final thought on the topic personally is if you relapsed please keep trying right like i know we say keep coming back but that that is kind of narrow sighted to think that we’re the solution for everyone i would just say just keep trying something if that’s not where you want to be keep trying something because maybe something can work and i tend to believe that the victory is in trying right that’s all of life we we keep trying sometimes we fall short sometimes we don’t but i think the victory is the fact that we care enough and that we keep trying to be better people whatever that means and if that means mats if that means some sort of recovery program if that means church if that means moving into the [ _ ] woods and uh whatever right whatever it takes man keep trying [ __ ] until you find what works for you and and you can live the life that you’re looking to live and and truly find freedom yeah i totally agree i was just thinking the old spaghetti analogy where you throw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks you know it’s it’s that kind of thing there’s not a one size fits all to what what we’re looking for what recovery is or or what we’re doing find what works for you you know keep looking until something feels good so with all that we will end here today and we’ll look forward to seeing you next week keep praying reaching out to people doing our best maybe one day we’ll solve relapse and have better methods for treating this problem we suffer with we hope that’s in the near future and until then we’ll see you next week if you enjoyed this podcast please feel free to share it with people you think might benefit from the conversation look us up on facebook twitter and instagram to join the conversation also and share your ideas with us we’d love to hear it