Is Relapse a Part of Recovery, or Does It Mean You Failed?

It's after midnight. You told yourself you were going out for milk, and there's a receipt in your jacket that says otherwise. The app on your phone that had you at 52 days says zero now. Tomorrow someone who helped pay for your month in rehab is going to ask how you are. And somewhere in your head a counselor is still saying that relapse is part of recovery, which tonight sounds like what a rehab says when it hasn't worked.

No, relapsing doesn't mean you've failed at recovery. For many people, relapse is part of recovery, and three US health agencies say in plain words that it isn't a failure. It also isn't harmless, and nobody has to go through it. It's a sign that your treatment or your plan needs to change, starting this week.

All of this applies if it was a drink, a pill or something stronger, and whichever rehab you went to. How to build a plan that holds is the job of our page on relapse prevention. This post is for the part before that: tonight, the verdict you've given yourself, and what to do next.

What could hurt you tonight?

Three things can't wait until morning: your lowered tolerance, stopping heavy drinking too fast, and thoughts of suicide. They're the parts of a relapse that can kill, so they come first.

• Your old amount can kill you. NIDA, the US national institute on addiction research, warns: "If a person uses as much of the drug as they did before quitting, they can easily overdose because their bodies are no longer adapted to their previous level of drug exposure." That's especially true of opioids: the WHO lists "resumption of opioid use after an extended period of abstinence" as a risk. Don't use alone. Naloxone reverses an opioid overdose if it's given in time, so ask a pharmacist how to get it where you live. If someone can't be woken or is struggling to breathe, call your local emergency number.
• Stopping heavy drinking all at once can be dangerous. If you've gone back to drinking heavily every day, don't just stop on your own. The NHS warns that "stopping overnight could be harmful", and MedlinePlus says: "Alcohol withdrawal is a serious condition that may quickly become life-threatening." Talk to a doctor today about how to come off safely, and ask the same question before stopping benzodiazepines.
• Shame can come with thoughts of suicide. NIMH, the US mental health institute, lists "Great guilt or shame" and "Using drugs or alcohol more often" among its warning signs. Denise O'Leary, Jintara's Clinical Director, gives a best guess that more than half of incoming clients have had some level of suicidal thinking, so you wouldn't be the only one. If you're thinking about killing yourself, call or text 988 in the US, call Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK and Ireland, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 in Australia, or call your local emergency number anywhere else.

Once you're safe, you can message Darren, who owns Jintara. Every message goes to Darren and usually gets an answer within a few hours. It isn't an emergency line.

Is relapse a part of recovery?

For many people, yes. Relapse in addiction recovery means going back to drinking or using after you've tried to stop. NIAAA, the US institute on alcohol research, says "It is rare that someone would go to treatment once and then never drink again." It also says a return to drinking "can be seen as a temporary setback to full recovery and not as a failure."

NIDA says the same about drugs: "relapse doesn't mean treatment has failed." It compares addiction with other long-term illnesses, and the rates sit close together. These are NIDA's figures:

None of that makes it harmless, and nobody has to relapse for their recovery to count. A relapse can still cost you a job, a marriage or your life. So hold both halves: it isn't a verdict on you, and it needs action now.

Is "relapse is part of recovery" just what rehabs say when it didn't work?

It can sound that way, and you're allowed to be angry about it. The line only means something if a change comes with it. NIDA says relapse "indicates that the person needs to speak with their doctor to resume treatment, modify it, or try another treatment." So when someone tells you it's part of recovery, ask them what changes now.

One relapse can't tell you whether your last rehab was any good. A month of your life and a lot of money went into it, and it's fair to want more than a phrase in return.

If you've relapsed twice, are you the one rehab doesn't work for?

Two relapses can't prove that. A US survey published in 2019 asked about 2,000 adults who had resolved an alcohol or drug problem how many serious attempts it took. The typical answer was two. Among those who'd made at least one attempt the typical answer was three, and some people reported many more.

Read that with care. Everyone in that survey had already gotten there, so it can't tell you your odds, and more attempts went with more distress today. Jintara doesn't publish a success rate, and no figure from anywhere can tell you how your next try will go.

A more useful question is what your tries had in common. Was it the same kind of treatment each time? Did anything happen after you left? Did anyone look at the anxiety, depression or trauma underneath?

Can feeling like a failure make the next drink more likely?

It can. Researchers call it the abstinence violation effect. A 2011 review says "Viewing a lapse as a personal failure may lead to feelings of guilt and abandonment of the behavior change goal." In plain words, that's the voice telling you you've blown it, so you may as well keep going.

The same review describes the other way to read it: a slip "is seen not as a dead end, but as a fork in the road." You can't undo the last drink, and the next one is still undecided. Being hard on yourself can feel like something you owe people, but it may do the opposite of keeping you safe.

What do you do in the next 24 hours?

Get safe, tell one person, talk to whoever treats you and leave the big decisions for later. You don't need to work out your whole recovery tonight.

If a rehab sent you home with a plan, start there. This is Denise's advice to former clients when early warning signs appear:

What came off first?

Often the routine slips before the drink does, so start there. At Jintara, one therapy group takes people back through earlier relapses, looking for "changes in thought patterns, changes in behaviors, changes in attitudes." Denise describes the usual pattern:

The time to notice is when it goes to two.

You can do a rough version of this review on your own. There's no score, and you don't owe anyone the answers.

• What was still helping a month before it happened?
• What came off first: exercise, meetings, sleep, calling people back?
• What had gotten hard to say out loud?

Not every relapse has a neat story. NIAAA says people are most likely to return to drinking "during periods of stress or when exposed to people or places associated with past drinking." Sometimes it was a funeral or a bad month at work. If you can't find a cause, don't invent one to blame yourself with.

You had years sober. Are they gone?

No. The years happened, and so did what you built in them. The CDC says a return to use "can happen even years after not taking the substance" and that it "is not a sign of failure." You still have the mornings you got up and went to work, the people who know you sober, and what you learned about yourself.

Your tolerance didn't stay with those years, though, so the warning near the top of this post applies to you most of all. Your life has probably changed too, so help that fit you ten years ago may not fit now.

Your brother says you never really wanted to stop. What do you say?

You don't have to win that argument tonight. Wanting to stop and being able to stay stopped are two different things, and the CDC says "Addiction is a disease, not a character flaw." Nobody asks a person with asthma whether they really wanted to breathe. Your family may hear this relapse as a broken promise, so skip the new promise and tell them what you're doing.

If they paid for your last stay, it's fair that they're upset, and you can say so once. After that, doing the next thing helps more than being sorry every day.

If you're the partner or parent reading this, our page on family support is for you, and Al-Anon is what Jintara recommends to families.

Is another try worth the money?

It can be, if something changes. A relapse doesn't automatically mean another stay in rehab. NIDA's options are to resume treatment, modify it or try another kind, and a local counselor or doctor may be able to do the first two. Residential care makes more sense when local help hasn't held, or home isn't a safe place to stop.

Nobody can honestly promise that you won't relapse again, and that includes us. So before you pay any program, ours included, ask these questions. NIAAA suggests the first one.

• "How does the program or provider handle a return to drinking?"
• What will you do differently from my last stay?
• What does the price include, and what costs extra?
• After I leave, who can I call, and for how long?

Will they look down on you if you go back?

You won't know until you ask, and the fear can send you away from the people who already know your history. Darren Lockie, who founded Jintara, has seen it happen with former clients:

If you were with us before, ask. Former clients can return for trauma work, and if there's been a relapse, the addiction work comes first. If you went somewhere else, you can ask them the same thing, or go somewhere new.

You may also be dreading the room, walking into a group as the person who keeps failing. Denise knows that feeling in newcomers:

At Jintara, clients read five written assignments aloud in a group, and the feedback has one rule: "to say one or two things that you could relate to from what you just heard." Denise says "it really addresses shame."

What would be different at Jintara, and when is it the wrong place?

Jintara is a private program for adults in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with a maximum of 10 clients and 32 staff. What might be different from your last stay is the size, the individual therapy and planning for home from the first week. None of that guarantees a different result, so compare it with what you actually had.

• Therapy. You get two individual sessions a week from the day you arrive, with master's-level therapists, plus mandatory group therapy. The program is led by CBT, a talking therapy for thoughts and habits, and it isn't a 12-step program.
• Detox. If you need medical detox, registered nurses are awake on site 24 hours a day, and therapy starts alongside detox on day one.
• Going home. Planning starts in the first week. You leave with your own warning signs, a home schedule and an emergency card, and there's a follow-up call once you're home. One-to-one sessions after discharge cost extra.
• Limits. We can't be your support for life. Denise says "we're not going to be able to provide lifelong support to every client," so the advice to clients is to "find yourself a local counselor." If trauma sits under your relapses, ask about EMDR, a therapy for trauma, which is reserved for stays of 60 days or longer.

Jintara is the wrong place for you in these cases. When it isn't the right place, Darren helps you find a setting that is.

If you want care in your own country, FindTreatment.gov and the national helpline on 1-800-662-4357 can point you to local care in the US. In the UK, call FRANK on 0300 123 6600, or Drinkline on 0300 123 1110. In Australia, the National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline is 1800 250 015.

Wherever you go from here, you aren't starting from nothing. You know more about what came off first than you did last time, and you can bring that to whoever you talk to next.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Does one drink count as a relapse? There's no single answer. The 2011 review says research "has yielded no consensus operational definition of the term." Some people call a first slip a lapse and a return to the old pattern a relapse. The name matters less than staying safe and telling someone.
• Can I message Jintara without my family knowing? Yes. There's no sales team, and Jintara shares client information with third parties, family included, only with written consent. Our page on admissions sets out the steps if you decide to come.
• What does a stay at Jintara cost? The 30-day program costs USD 12,500. You pay in 30-day blocks, and the program fee includes medical detox and the psychiatric assessment. During your stay, prescribed medication is the only extra.