Relapse

I had a weird dream yesterday.  I dreamed I was at an NBA playoff game, sitting courtside as I watched the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors play.  At halftime, all the lights went down except for a single spotlight on me.  I looked at the Jumbo Trons, and my face was on them.  A cheerleader approached me and handed me a tray of drinks—just me, in the spotlight.  There were five tequila shots on the tray, and as I looked down into those shot glasses, I heard the cheerleaders begin to chant—a cheer I hadn’t heard since high school:  “Rebound that basketball!  R-E,  R-E-B,  R-E-B-O-U-N-D!  Rebound!”   Except the cheer sounded different to me, and as the crowd began to join in, I heard it—they weren’t chanting “rebound.”  They were chanting “relapse.”  R-E-,  R-E-L,  R-E-L-A-P-S-E!  Relapse!”  As the crowd watched me and cheered, I drank one shot after another.  And I woke up.

Before I was fully awake, I was so angry at myself for throwing away years of sobriety in one bad moment.  As I woke up and realized it had been a dream, I felt overwhelming relief and gratitude—I was still sober.  Yet as I got up and went about my day, I couldn’t shake the darkness of the dream.  Or the questions I had about it—why was I dreaming about relapsing now, six years into recovery?  Was it just a dream or did it mean something?  And if it did mean something, did it mean that I was headed for a relapse?  And why couldn’t those cheerleaders at least find a rhyme for that awful cheer? 

Every addict’s worst fear is relapse—a full-blown return to addiction.  We fight so hard to get clean and sober.  We go through withdrawal so severe that we beg God to either take it away or take us away.  And then the real work starts—we go to meetings.  We work the steps.  We spend every day of our lives cognizant of our gratitude for recovery and our desire to stay in that space.  And still—many of us don’t make it because we grow complacent.  Complacency is the enemy of recovery.  I know too many people who stopped going to meetings, who let up on their vigilance, and eventually decided that they could be a casual drinker or a weekend drug user.  That’s not possible for an alcoholic or addict.  No matter how long we’ve been in recovery, we’ll be back to full-blown addiction in a matter of days—and this time, many of us won’t survive.

I’m not just talking about alcoholics and addicts here.  We all have a behavior or a relationship or a situation that we resolved to quit or walk away from.  But then that first insidious thought pops into our heads, we start the what if process, and before we know it, our resolve is gone and we’re right back where we started.  Maybe you decided to end a relationship but keep relapsing by going back to that person who hurts you because you’re afraid of a future without him or her.  Maybe you resolved to stop a behavior that was ruining your health, and you’ve been successful at it for years.  And then one night, you make a poor decision, and you relapse.

For me, relapse is the stuff of nightmares.  And yesterday, I just couldn’t shake the sense of darkness and defeat that that ridiculous dream had left me with.  So I decided to bring my fear out of the dark and shine the light of Philippians 4:8 on it.  The Philippians challenge doesn’t simply apply to what I watch and read and listen to; it’s also about the people I spend time with, the words I speak, and the thoughts I mull over.  So I read the verse again:  “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

I started going down the checklist.  First, is this the truth?  No.  The truth is that I didn’t relapse.  The truth is also that I’m in recovery and will never be completely free of the disease of addiction.  The truth is that I need to have a healthy respect for the possibility of relapse and never grow complacent.

Is it noble?  Does it “have or show fine personal qualities or high moral principles?”  The dream wasn’t noble, but neither were my thoughts afterwards—I started fixating on the people I knew who had relapsed.  My fingers practically itched to Google “celebrity relapses.”  Before the Philippians challenge, I would have looked up how long they’d been in recovery, when their relapses had happened, and what the fallout was.  But that’s not a noble pursuit.  And it only makes my fear darker.

Is it lovely?  The dream wasn’t.  My fears after the dream weren’t.  But something lovely came out of it—I remembered 2 Corinthians 12:7-10:
Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 
The lovely part of my fear of relapse is that, like Paul with his thorn, it keeps me close to God.  I have absolutely no doubt that God’s grace and love are the only reasons I’m still clean, sober, and alive.  And because I have no desire ever to go back to where I was, I cling to Him.  At my weakest, He makes me strong.

Is it excellent or praiseworthy?  My fears aren’t.  But every single day that I live in recovery is excellent and praiseworthy.  And I do praise God again and again that I’m still here.  I’m still fighting.  And I’m so grateful.

Yesterday, I added Philippians 4:9 to my study:  Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice.  And the God of peace will be with you.

I didn’t get this far in the recovery process by myself.  I did it with Him.  And though I may deliberately ignore them from time to time, God has given me all the answers I need—the way to avoid relapse.  I just need to put those answers into practice: continue going to meetings, do my step work, and stay vigilant.  Whatever your battle is, you already know the answers, too.  So put them into practice.  Every time you do—every time I do—every time we put one of those true, noble, lovely and praiseworthy principles into practice, we take another step forward along our journey.  I took a step today, and my fear and darkness are gone.  Once I brought them out into the light and saw them through the filter of Philippians 4:8, they vanished quickly.

My sponsor calls those of us in recovery “warriors.”  I’ve always discounted that title—I’m a fighter, sure.  I don’t want this disease to win.  But a warrior?  To me, that word conjures up images of battles, weapons, and war cries.  And that doesn’t feel like me.  Yet today, I won a battle using the weapon of Philippians 4:8, and these words are my war cry.  Today, I am a warrior.  Today, the cheerleaders in my head are chanting “R E B O U N D” —and I have.  I’ve bounced back.  And so will you.  Raise your head, stand up, and fight with me, fellow warrior.  I’m cheering all of us on, every step of the way.  No matter who wins the NBA championship, my money’s on us warriors.

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