Relapse is very dangerous. However, relapse can be a symptom of the disease. Sometimes there are multiple relapses before you get sober and stay sober.
Interpretation
Relapse is a common part of the recovery process and should be understood as a symptom of addiction rather than a failure.
David Sheff highlights the challenges faced in the journey to sobriety, emphasizing that relapses can occur multiple times and should not be viewed solely as setbacks. Instead, they are indicative of the complex nature of addiction, showing that recovery often requires perseverance and understanding of the disease.
In practice
In a support group, someone might use this quote to remind others that setbacks are part of the recovery process.
If you subscribe to the idea that # addiction is a disease, it is startling to see how many of these children - paranoid, anxious, bruised, tremulous, withered, in some cases psychotic - are seriously ill, slowly dying. We'd never allow such a scene if these kids had any other disease. They would be in a hospital, not on the streets.
If you love someone who's an addict and their use is life-threatening, you don't wait until they hit bottom because that can mean that they're going to die. You have to do everything you can to get them in treatment.
This stigma associated with drug use--the belief that bad kids use, good kids don't, and those with full-blown addiction are weak, dissolute, and pathetic--has contributed to the escalation of use and has hampered treatment more than any single other factor.
Anyone who has lived through it, or those who are now living through it, knows that caring about an addict is as complex and fraught and debilitating as addiction itself.
Through Nic's drug addiction, I have learned that parents can bear almost anything....I shock myself with my ability to rationalize and tolerate things once unthinkable. The rationalizations escalate....It's only marijuana. He gets high only on weekends. At least he's not using hard drugs.
Along with the joy of parenthood, with every child comes a piercing vulnerability. It is at once sublime and terrifying
Go, stranger, and tell the Lacedaemonians that here we lie, obedient to their commands.
Had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends...every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.
Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.
You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.
From the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let freedom ring. From the mighty mountains of New York, let freedom ring. From the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania, let freedom ring. But not only that: Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
Ali’s got a left, Ali’s got a right, if he hits you once, you’re asleep for the night
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