For the substance abuser who concerns you, relapse prevention counts just as much as getting started in substance abuse recovery. The more knowledgeable you are about what your recovering alcoholic or drug addict requires for relapse prevention the more you’ll be able to assist in his or her recovery.

At this point you’ll probably wish that all the time and effort it took to get this far in the recovery process were over for you and your recovering alcoholic or drug addict. You’d like to forget about the whole possibly traumatic experience and that now the substance abuser’s problems are over for good.

Unfortunately that’s not the way substance abuse works. Those who know this fact the best are the millions of recovering substance abusers in Alcoholics Anonymous. Researchers are still trying to figure out all the complexities of addiction and there are many complex issues including biological, psychiatric, and social. Relapse prevention must address all of these issues to be successful.

Recovering addicts who have come to grips with the seriousness of their addiction realize that alcoholism and drug abuse are incurable, progressive, and fatal unless the destructive behavior is ceased completely. When it comes to relapse prevention, there is no halfway. It’s as clear cut as pregnancy. A woman is either pregnant or she’s not. There’s no such thing as “kind of pregnant.” And the same holds true for addiction. The addict has either stopped the substance abuse or he or she has not stopped abusing alcohol or drugs. There is no in between.

AA has developed simple sayings as reminders for each of the key features in an effort to assist relapse prevention efforts. The saying for incurable is: “Once you’re a pickle you can never go back to being a cucumber.” “The elevator only goes down, never up - but you can get off at any floor.” is the reminder for the progressiveness of addiction. Addicts are reminded of the fatality that can result if there addiction is not addressed with this reminder: “Our disease wants you dead, but it will settle for miserable.”

To AA members these are more than just clever phrases. Addicts understand the truth behind the words from their own personal experiences and from those experiences of other addicts they have come to know through support groups. Most addicts also know people who never made it to recovery before their addiction killed them. They can also point to real life examples of addicts who were in recovery but relapsed and drank or drugged themselves to death.

While it’s a fact that addiction lasts a lifetime, relapse prevention programs go a long way towards creating a better life for addicts. Addicts who have made it five years or more since their last drink or drug report their life is much better in recovery than it was in addiction.