Hi my name is V I am 28 years old from Israel and I am freaking the fuck out. I managed to get 18 months of sobriety under my belt but the last few months have been all kinds of fucked up and rough and I genuinely thought I was doing good keeping my urges to relapse at bay until last night. Last night i hit a breaking point - isolation, financial issues, mental health, recurrent disappointments from my treatment team, and I just kept.getting worse and worse over the course of months until i couldnt take it anymore and redownloaded telegram, bought a bunch of drugs with my remaining grocery money and just broke down completely. I told my best and only friend i relapsed and long story short shes thinking about cutting me out of her life. The worst part is that im feeling so broken i cant see how i can recover from this. 18 months sober gone down the drain and potentially losing my best and only friend…..
Well that is rough for sure. But all is not lost. Delete telegram, flush any remaining drugs, do not buy more and get some food, water and rest. Nothing is irreversible. Your 18 months are not lost. Use what you learned and get back to sobriety. I am sorry all hard things were hitting at the same time, I know how that can be. But you can turn this around.
Two years ago I relapsed after nearly two years sober. Similar conditions, I felt like things kept piling up and I abandoned my sobriety plan until finally I gave in and drank again. Someone in a meeting I was in a couple of weeks ago made a point that stood out to me, sometimes these moments are necessary in recovery because they help chip away at our view of our drug of choice as a good answer for us. Whatever your drug of choice is, using is a symptom of something underneath the habit. When you take away the habit you are able to examine the person underneath which is what I’ve begun doing this time around in sobriety.
What I’ve discovered about myself is that I carried a lot of anger and resentment inside and I drank to avoid it. Now I’m working to address those things inside so I can not only live a life free of alcohol but of peace from the root causes of my drinking so that I can live a full life! @SassyRocks is right, your sober time is not lost, this is just a moment in time to learn from and continue on your journey, wish you well.
Relapse may not be a requirement in sobriety, but for some of us it happens and the pain of that actually helps to get us back up and focus even harder. That’s all you can do now. Your desire to be sober is there if you reached out this quickly for help and support. That’s a big thing actually. Some people relapse and say screw it and never try to get help again and I’m sure you can guess where those roads lead. I’ve relapsed before so I know how awful the feeling is, but just get back to it. To get a year and a half sober means something was working so just really stay vigilant and you’ll be ok