Andrew W. resumes Church Basements, his tales from the world of Alcoholics Anonymous:
Jilted by his girl friend and desperate, the boy had written on his arm, “Without you, can’t live. “ Then he got into his dad’s methadone stash and killed himself. Experts in the field have studied relapse more than any other aspect of addiction, and have so far arrived at few useful answers.
In the church basements, where the real experts gather, relapse is a constant topic. Preventing relapse, after all, is why most of those “in the rooms” are there. They learn as much about this mysterious syndrome as they can from books and academic studies.
“One thing I know for sure,” Tom shared, “is that relapse begins long before I pick up.” This observation is widely accepted by alcoholics. Something happens in the way they think or feel that leads them to begin again. A few will point to stressors as the cause, like, “When I buried my brother I picked up again to ease the pain.”
This reasoning, though, is rare because alcoholics know that the addiction is really “baffling,” as AA’s Big Book bible teaches. It is baffling because there is a major element of irrationality in relapse.
Harry, an alcoholic and a drug counselor, tells this story:
“A patient of mine had been sober for 26 years, active in AA, constant meeting goer, and 12 stepper. He was returning from a regional AA meeting in New York, and drove past a bar he once patronized. ‘I just pulled in without thinking, and began drinking,’ he told me. No warning, no reason. He stayed out for three years.”
Cliff has “Don’t forget the pain” tattooed on the back of his drinking hand. AA members talk a lot about “keeping it fresh” — every day reminding themselves of the destruction their drinking caused. Although this device is obvious, it remains one of the primary ways addicts control their demons.
Still, alcoholics, in hindsight, believe something mysteriously changed in their “thinking” long before they relapsed, and they spend a lot of time in church basements probing for a description of that “something.”
As they say, “relapse is not required,” and many members avoid it for their lives. AA members use the “tools” taught them in AA — relaxation, living in the moment, finding strength in a “higher power,” among many others — and find they work most of the time.
Yet AA meetings that turn to discussion of relapse, are among best, members say, because they gain strength in the recovery of others and the support of other alcoholics.
As for exactly why relapse occurs anyway, the rl experts in church basements continue their often self-destructive research.
