Dallas Bragg argues that relapse often means you're not ready for sobriety yet, not that you've failed. Before recovery sticks, your mind, body, and soul need to develop. He uses the image of giving a child a million dollars to show how unpreparedness leads to misuse, and suggests treating addiction as a teacher instead of a source of shame.
Consider that you're not through with your addiction cycle because you are not ready to be through with it. There could be some advancements and developments in your mind, body, and soul that need to happen first before you can totally grasp life in recovery. The relapse experience and the addiction experience is actually pointing you to those growth opportunities in your mind, body, and soul that get you ready to handle what it's like to be sober. For instance, you wouldn't give a 7-year-old a million dollars. He wouldn't know what to do with it. He would just ruin it and be poor the next day or so. The same thing goes with us. Maybe you're not ready to be sober. Maybe you're not ready for that chapter of your life. When you can embody this possibility, then the guilt, the shame, the woe is me all moves out of the way so that you can freely see what this addiction is trying to show you.
