Amber Hollingsworth breaks down how to spot relapse in someone you care about. Watch for obvious red flags like missing money and new drug paraphernalia, but also subtler ones: emotional distance, sudden mood shifts about recovery, and that nagging gut feeling. Patterns matter more than single incidents.
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So you have a sneaky suspicion that your loved one has relapsed, but they haven't quite owned up to it yet and you're not sure whether or not you should confront them. Because first you need to figure out whether or not they really have relapsed or not. In this video, I'm going to be telling you the subtle and not so subtle signs that your addicted loved one has relapsed. So you can put an end to all your own questioning and self doubt and just crazy making that this kind of thing can cause for. For those of you who are new here, my name is Amber Hollingsworth and you are watching the YouTube channel put the Shuffle Down. This channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction from the perspective of the addicted person and the perspective of the family member so that you can stay five steps ahead of it at all times and get your life and your family back on track. So let's start with the more obvious kinds of signs. I'm going to give you a few of those and then we're going to move into the gray area kind of signs. And honestly, it's those secondary, maybe not so obvious signs that I want you to pay particular attention to. Alright, so you know, you got the obvious like missing money or missing time, as in they were supposed to be somewhere but they weren't, or it took them way, way longer than they should have. Or maybe they just stopped answering the phone calls. The whole going MIA thing is a big sign or hanging around the wrong people. Or there's the very big, most obvious one which is finding the substance or the paraphernalia of the substance or even just flat out catching them red handed. Now all of these signs may seem very obvious, but you can almost guarantee that your loved one, if they're in a defensive state, they're just gonna deny it. And they're so convincing, even if you find the evidence like the paraphernalia or the substance, they're going to tell you something that's gonna make you doubt yourself. Like they're gonna say something like it's old or that's my friends. Or they'll just change, shift the argument on you and say, why are you always accusing me? You just don't trust me. If you're gonna accuse me all the time, I might as well keep doing it. You know the drill. You've heard all though those feel like they're very concrete, tangible signs, which they are. You can still have that doubtful feeling in the back of your mind. So I want you to pay attention to some of these other signs. But before I tell you those other signs, I don't want to forget this. What you're looking for is more than one sign. Any one thing can happen, and maybe there really is an excuse for it. But when you start to see combinations of things and patterns of things, that's a very strong indicator. Let's get into some of those not so in your face kinds of signs. The first one is you just have a gut feeling that something has shifted. Maybe you have a hard time putting your finger on it, but you've been having this lingering feeling, and this feeling's been sticking around for more than, you know, five or 10 minutes. We're talking about more than just your loved one came home late, and you're just freaking out and panicking and reacting. It's like you have this, like little whispery thing in the back of your mind that's kind of been talking to you, and maybe you've been shoving it down and ignoring it. You should pay attention to that. The next thing that you might want to look for is does it seem like your loved one has started to pull away from you or even avoid you? And you can't really figure out any real reason why that would be happening. I mean, maybe they're, like, still around, maybe they're not physically, like, you know, being around you in the house or something, but emotionally you feel them pulling back. It's like you can feel that wall starting to develop. Even though you haven't really had an argument. Nothing that you can put your finger on has happened, but you can feel the distancing going on. A lot of times that means someone is keeping a secret, to be honest, that they're struggling with something that they just don't want to talk about. Now, one of the biggest signs that someone is relapsed is you're going to see an attitude shift. It's like their mood, their demeanor, their attitude towards you, towards recovery, towards the situation. It may even feel kind of sudden. Like, where does this come from? Like, maybe they used to always call their sponsor or go to meetings or tell you what was going on. But all of a sudden, they don't like their sponsor, they don't like the meetings, and you're getting on their nerves and their whole. They have, like an irritability or an anxiety, and they just generally are shifting the way they're to the whole recovery situation. In fact, usually it means there's been some backtracking, and if there hasn't already been a relapse, there's probably one coming. So pay very close attention to this. Now, another big, giant, huge indicator is if you start to hear what I call bargaining language again, meaning they start to, like, backtrack on the whole being sober thing. They say things like, well, if I can do it occasionally or a little bit won't hurt, or I can do that as long as I don't do this. When previously they've been all about none or not doing that. It's. They're backtracking out of what they've said to you, and now they're changing their tone as far as what they're trying to accomplish. This is another one that means that either they've already relapsed or they're thinking about it, or it's very close. It's right around the corner. Okay, but before you go and lose your cool and call this person out and confront them, I want you to watch my video about what to do when your loved one relapses. Because there's some steps here, right? Figuring out whether or not they have relapsed, and then there's the figuring out what to do with it. So I'm going to link that video right up here so you can watch it next.
