Relapse doesn’t just happen. It’s a culmination of weariness, dishonesty, and ‘not telling.’ It’s easy to forget, with a few years under your belt, that it’s OK to be having a bad day. Or days.

Everyone has bad days.

Right?

When you’ve been sober a few 24 hours you learn to give back. And it feels good. After years of hurting and causing pain to yourself and others, you stop. Little by little you make a difference, in your life and in the lives of others.

You feel better, you look better, you do better. You are better.

You are better? Aren’t you?

Addiction is not a curable disease.

It is treatable. You can put it into remission.

But you can not cure it.

They say it’s always with us, just waiting, doing push-ups. Like any hungry predator it hides, stalking.

Thing is we don’t see it anymore. At least not like we used too.

We suspect relapse comes in a bottle, or a line, or a pill, or various other mood altering capabilities.

But it doesn’t.

It comes in weariness, and forgetting to pray. It comes in secrets and resentments and self-pity. It comes in arrogance and compliance and justifying.

And it doesn’t come right away.

It comes over time.

A bad day stuffed behind a fake smile.

An “I’m fine.” When I’m not.

A ‘yes’ to just one more thing, when all you really want to do is rest.

A skipped meal, less sleep, it all adds up.

Without balance we lapse back into needing something to help us sleep, or give us the energy to fulfill our obligations.

And for many of us, our obligations grow over the years, tending to over fill our plates.

Then, one day the pill you were so terrified of using becomes helpful “just to sleep” After all you’re needed, and important, and have to be on your game.

You might even get away with it…… for awhile.

But it will catch you. It always does. And it doesn’t start back at square one, it starts worse. Much worse.

If you think addiction had you by the throat before, just wait!

I’m humbled by this disease. Cunning, baffling and powerful. And oh yeah…. patient.

It’s alcoholism, folks, not alcoholwasim, and I need to remind myself of this every day.

If you’re coming back, pick yourself up, start over, and know nothing.

For the rest of us, I wish us another 24.

Have a very Merry Christmas and a safe and sober holiday season.