Coming Back From A Relapse

Hey, guys. Chris here from Cadre and from St. Paul's sober living and sobriety lifestyle. And we live in. I live in St. Paul, Minnesota, which is Recoveryville, USA, and I have a lot of insights about recovery, especially early recovery, because I work with people every day in early recovery. So I wanted to share today a specific context, which is coming back after a relapse, which I have done another video on. You can look back and find, and I'll touch on some of those points. But this is also specifically about people who have gotten a lot of time or really sort of engaged with the community to a point where they might even be working in the industry, or there's someone who sponsors a lot of people, the sober community and AA in general thrives on you becoming part of and getting involved and having people know you and being of service.

And some people take that a step further and they run meetings or they become sober coaches or they work at treatment centers or, you know, somehow put a. Become sort of a face or a known entity or a name in the sober community, and people look up to you and it's a wonderful thing, and it's. It's really great. It's not any different than pretty much normal society, which is important. That recovery lifestyle doesn't look that different. So. But coming back, you know, from a relapse in a position like that, and I just had somebody who's in that boat come to me recently, and this person was well known, worked for a program, had a few years, several years.

I can't remember three or four years of sobriety, but everybody knew this person and everybody looked up to her, and it was difficult for her to come back. How messy the relapse was plays a little bit into it. But I think what's really important to, for the purposes of this, in terms of if you know anyone in this position or you're, you yourself are, there's a couple of really good ideas, I think, that might help with that, that return transition, because it can be really hard. If you make it hard and people go back out, because they don't, it's a lot of shame.

And you can't just come back and put it all together again, and you have to suck it up, so to speak, for a little while. I think that how much of a shaming, embarrassing, oh, my God, I fell from here to here thing that we. That people do and the way that they. How they can, how they've got it in their mind about how bad it was or how bad it looks is probably ten times worse than what actually other people see. I don't think people see the failure, the shame, the fall, the sadness as much as the individual does.

So it's really good information to go find the people close to you, talk about it, and you might, you know, here I've this myself to somebody, you know, that's not what we see, what you're saying you are, or who you are or what you did, that's not what we see. We just see, you know, John or Chris or Jenny, we just see you and we care about when we want you to be okay. They're not. Your community of others isn't judging you every five minutes. They're thinking about themselves mostly. So the self examination piece is important.

You should look at what you weren't doing in the context of maybe a twelve step program. Were you doing the steps? Were you willing to do service? Were you willing to be honest? Were you getting involved in jobs or relationships or stuff that was too much, too fast? Some of the old adage is about recovery and taking the sober job and doing things slowly and staying out of entanglements and all the recommendations that you get in early recovery have a purpose and a reason. If you think about them all at one time on one person.

And that's what happens to a lot of people coming back. They're like, oh my God, I got to go back and do all that stuff again. It kind of seems absurd. The truth is, is that you don't have to do that. What you have to do is tell yourself the truth. How bad? What was I not doing? What was I not, where was I not, where was I not being honest? What was I unwilling to do? Where was I half doing stuff? You know, how. How can I be more engaged on a deeper level? Right? And I think the way to do that is to just go right back into your scene of recovery and just tell the truth.

This is what I was thinking, this is what I was doing and this is what happened to me. Instead of trying to create a context where I know exactly what I did wrong and I didn't do the four step at 90 days and I didn't go to 14 meetings a week. That's all crap. This is about having a life and being the person you want to be. And if you go out there and be the person you want to be, which transparent and honest, then the truth really kind of an antiseptic for a lot of the other bullshit that gets in your mind.

And it's. It can help clear you of thoughts that are just. They're kind of self defeating. Right. So when it comes to, you know, coming back from, I don't know the right way to say it would be from. From a high place. I think that's. It's dangerous to get caught up in that. It's dangerous to think, oh, my God, I've. I've fallen so far. You have not given away all that you've gained thus far in recovery. It's just an. It's just a go back to go. And don't collect $200. It's just a number. And I think if you feel a lot of shame and you feel a lot of, like, burden about this thing, and I let people down, I let my family down.

That's normal. I think if you go through that stuff, feel it, go through it, but don't stay in it. And here's another reason to have a really good sponsor who knows you, right? So you go to them and say, oh, I'm a piece of s***. I did this and I did that and they're like, that's not what I see. And that's not who I know. Being transparent in the community with your people and your tribe. And I always tell people, find your tribe because you're going to need them one day. And if you've got a tribe around you and you go to them and say, I'm feeling this, they can, you know, respond by saying, I know you're feeling it.

You might feel like a loser, but you're not a loser. And that's really, really, really important because you have to live in what's true, not just what you think. For the moment, you got to operate off of what's actually true. Right? Which is that you're not a total loser and you slipped and you're going to go back and you're going to do the best you can. And everyone in recovery, almost everyone has done it. So there's a ton of information for you in what you did, you can learn from. But here again, what the importance of having your tribe and your people around you in this engagement will help you tremendously transition back in if you need to.

And that's super important. So, you know, you don't go to medallion ceremonies at AA meetings where people are getting medallions for time and hear people say, I did this all by myself. I live in a tent in the woods. You never hear that. You hear, I did this with these guys or these girls and this is how I did it and that's what you hear. And so that is incredibly important when it's. When you're gonna need that. You need that safety net. I think that there are parts of, you know, counting days and getting medallions and placing importance on time and how long have you been sober?

And I get that, and I think there's real value in that. Like, you wanna get your chip, but it can't. You can't let it turn back on you and become a shaming mechanism. It's just not worth the time. It's not even worth. I mean, and if you do stick it out and you do stay sober, you're gonna look back and go, why was I stressing so hard about that? So the message for today's video is if you're around somebody who's come back or you are, and they're stuck in that shame and that, oh, my God, I lost everything I built.

That's all crap. Let's try to get them to operate in what's actually true, which is you're not. You didn't lose everything. You slipped. It doesn't mean you lost all of this integrity or all of this importance or all of this self worth. It's a feeling. It isn't true. So let's operate off of that and try to get up to a higher level of, let's just. Let's just operate off of what's actually true and then go do the next right thing. Right? Go to meetings, go back to your service work, jump in, maybe ask yourself, where wasn't I doing stuff?

Where could I do something differently? Be really good to go to a couple of new meetings, meet some new people, maybe refresh it a little bit. And I've seen people do this over and over and over again, and you get another six months and you're fine, and it's good. And you place so much less importance on all those numbers of days or numbers of months. I mean, this is, and I always say this. This is about having a life and being the person you want to be. It's not about a contest for numbers. So it's messy and it's difficult to get sober, but there's a lot of really great parts about it.

And you've got to engage with other people, and you've got to find your tribe because you're going to need them one day. And with that, take it easy.