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What constitutes a relapse? #addictionrecovery

17 Nov 2023 · 1 min

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1:00

A short video commentary by Amber Hollingsworth discussing how to define relapse in addiction recovery. She distinguishes between brief sobriety during supervised detox versus sustained abstinence after detox, suggests counting multi-week sobriety as a relapse when followed by return to use, and considers psychological and practical factors (hopelessness, refusal of aftercare) that can create a relapse cycle.

Chapters

So if they're staying sober for one to two weeks and then relapsing detox and then back to the homeless shelter over and over again, I think the answer to your question would really depend on whether they get out of detox and then they stay sober for one, two, three weeks. If that's the case, I would call it a relapse, because if you're sober a few weeks out of detox, that takes some real effort. So I'm going to count that. If they're going to detox and they're staying sober only while in detox for a couple of weeks and relapsing right after they get out, then I would probably just say that's a continuation of active addiction. If they are stuck in a real relapse cycle, there could be a number of things going on. Part of what could be happening is the person just doesn't believe that they can make it past a certain time point because they always seem to fall back, you know, within a couple of weeks or something like that. Or it could mean that they just don't want to take some kind of recovery advice they're ignoring, like aftercare or something.