Single-speaker podcast/video (Nick Stumbo) arguing that relapse is typically an extended process rather than a single event. The speaker explains relapse as a "bender" of repeated behaviors that can last weeks ("one relapse really means like three or four weeks of behavior") and ties this to pre-existing neural pathways/habit circuitry that put the brain on "cruise control," making it easy to return to an old lifestyle.
A relapse isn't just a one time thing. It ends up, you go on this bender where it's this extended thing, and you're now living the same way that you used to before you started your recovery process. And so I think that that's what it is, is we already have these neural pathways in our brain, and so it's like lighting those up again. And our brain just goes on a cruise control. And we may get to the point where, you know, one relapse really means like three or four weeks of behavior, of stuff that we've been trying to stop doing. So I think that that's what you're talking about, is that it can really set you up for getting back into that old lifestyle you've been working really hard to get out of.
