It’s butch’s birthday today, would you guys post on ‘motivation and meditation posts’ ?..he’s a solid patron like you guys are too. He doesn’t appear around that much tho… just on his thread. 
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I’m active addiction we have no choice In using or not. With that I agree. However once you have started on the path of recovery then it is all choice. I understand there are differences in some addictions, but I have never been walking down the street and had a crack pipe fly into my mouth. My two relapses came fairly early in my recovery but it was 100% my choice. I made that choice because I was not really working on my recovery.
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Not so much doing one’s recovery well enough. I see two things happening. First is the extremely loose user of the word “relapse”. There is a return to use that supplants or is concurrent with efforts at recovery. E.g., I hope I don’t get struck drunk! Oh damn, I got drunk! This was the case with me, I would retreat into AA when the heat was on, but always with the idea I would one day return to drinking. And one day was never too far in the future.
Second thing is that true relapse, after a portion of wellness, is the end of a long chain of events that always starts in the mind of the addict. And that is 100% under the control of the addict. Refusing to recognize the danger or refusing to get help or actively placing oneself in a failure scenario, all these can be averted by positive action by the addict.
The sports analogy is only partly applicable. If I skip some training or underestimate my abilities and that leads to injury, that’s on me. But if a car hits me while I’m out on a bike ride, that is more liable on the driver than me. Yes, Dr. Freud would talk about my choice to be out on the bike l at all and at that time and in that place, but unless I’m purposely steering into the path of cars, it’s categorically different from my responsibility for my sobriety.
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It’s not true the other way around. There are many recovering users that have regained their sense of choice and freedom. And I applaud that. I wouldn’t ask people to change what they’re doing if it’s working so well for them.
I’m referring to the ones that are on the wrong recovery path. As I mentioned before, what works for some will not work for others.
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And if someone is on the wrong recovery path, what then?
Where’s the choice until that person is doing something that finally works?
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There are many paths to recovery. If they are on the wrong one then I’d say it’s not recovery at all. A relapse wouldn’t be a part of their recovery. It would still be a part of addiction.
My two cents: We always have a choice. Whether in active addiction or in recovery, we make a conscious decision to choose our actions. I chose to drink, every time. I chose to smoke, every time. I chose to snort coke, everytime. And now, I choose sobriety, every time. Everytime I relapsed, I chose to relapse.
If using is not a choice, then how did any of us get sober? We always have a choice. Some times our decision making ability is hijacked by the pull of addiction, but we still choose our actions.
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Addiction affects our reptilian brain. A part that we have no control over once we have consumed our DOC. Hence why we don’t stop at one drink (or one game/video in my case). When your DOC is a substance, you are in control of what enters your body. And since the reptilian brain only is triggered once the DOC is consumed, we are in control until we consume. Therefore, that first consumption is completely our free will(except for some rare instances where consumption is 100% accidental). Ergo, relapse is always choice when talking about substance addiction.
With behavioural addiction, it isn’t as black and white. When someone shows me an interesting video, I usually lose control for about 5 seconds as it in essence counts as consumption. I don’t count that as a relapse though. I did not choose that they’d show that video.
With pmo addiction I assume that when you see someone who is your type/kink, you lose control over your eyes for a moment.
These instances can lead to a relapse if the loss of control is strong enough. I do often have moments of clarity when abusing where I do have a choice and I think that’s the case with most behavioural addictions.
So I think that with behavioural addiction, a relapse is often a choice, the severity of the relapse is always a choice.
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Excellent stuff. Thankyou. 
…
There is one thing nagging tho…
…" You’re in a Relapse before you pick up…"…
So my point is, that a ‘relapse’ is not the last thing of picking up the DOC, Its the behaviour, old habits, wrong way to do things that leads to picking up a DOC because the path is forgotten, the mentality is forgotten, such as in focusing on a sport, if an athlete starts procrastinating, loses focus, then there’s the injury looming,.
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I disagree, my point in post above,
picking up IS a choice, relapse is like a mentality before the action of picking up. I don’t believe relapse is a choice if the mental health is struggling, with their own mind, and dealing with life , some people manage deal with their mental health, others do not.
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So the journey of finding out what actually works until success is not recovery? Only after success, should it be considered recovery? I don’t agree with that.
I recall the Big Book states the following:
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path
and
Some suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest
Even the Big Book agrees that not 100% of members will get sober after doing everything right. Does that mean that those members aren’t really doing recovery? I disagree. Some are working just as hard or even harder than the other members.
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And yes again. That’s the point I am making, it starts in the mind, and picking up is not ‘the relapse’… The relapse is the mind switching to old connections in the brain that we used to find comfort in.
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Oops! I left out some important words.
It’s supposed to read,
But many do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.
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This gave me a lol.
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@Mephistopheles I agree that you totally have a choice. I wasn’t saying that addicts are and forever will be incapable of resisting their DOC. What I was saying, is that when in active addiction, users often find that they are indeed powerless over their DOC. After some recovery time, there is a transfer of power.
And Kevin, I like your points here. I think that PMO Addiction and Drug/Alcohol Abuse Disorder are essentially the same chemically speaking. There is something that I’ve noticed though, that PMO Addicts seem to have a more difficult time retaining long term sobriety compared to drug/alcohol users. I’d like to see stats on it, though there likely are none. This is also just my perception, and therefore an opinion.
I think someone can be in recovery and relapse. I don’t think that means they are still in Active Addiction. I think they just had a lapse in sobriety. Not that this is okay or anything, but no one should feel that their struggles are worthless because they relapsed. I myself am not a model of sobriety. I relapse, then have an extended period of sobriety. I wish it was permanent sobriety, but it hasn’t been. It is, however, better than when I was actively using daily, binging for hours at a time.
Know what I mean? Am I making sense here? No one is obligated to agree with me.
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Rob, thank you for sharing that. I’m sure others here can relate as well. I certainly can.
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Yes. Your words here Dan describe my recent experience and lapse very well. I would like to be able to place the blame elsewhere, and I had/have many things - emotional and otherwise - happen that are easy excuses, however, the brutal truth of it is, the idea to drink again all started in my own head and was a decision I made. rather than get help or support to not drink. I could have made another decision - one not to drink and I could’ve found help. I knew this, deep down. But I didn’t make that decision. I was 100% in control (even tho at the time it didn’t feel like it and I was convincing myself I wasn’t - I was). Now, here I am…Had 2.5yrs alcohol free and now it’s 24 days. drinking did not help me in any way, it did not solve my problems (made me feel worse tho) and the justifications I’d come up with in order to drink, were simple BS. I wanted to escape my thoughts and feelings. I thought I’d be able to control my alcohol consumption. I wasn’t able to. It was not a part of my recovery. The action I took was in direct opposite of what recovery IS and means. I was back to being a person with Alcohol Use Disorder. I was back in my problems, trying to numb and escape. Not in recovery.
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I love cycling back to this, but man oh man am I the creator of my own problems. Every problem in my life is caused by me. I am, and always will be, the problem.
The other night someone mentioned to me that I had been more negative than normal lately. And I said of course! Work is stressful. Covid is overwhelming. My personal relationships are stained. Basically I listed all my excuses to be miserable.
But I took the feedback seriously and decided to be more positive. Well wouldn’t ya know ya that things got drastically better and it got there quickly. Buuut those external forces didn’t change that quickly. In fact they were exactly the same. All of my “problems “ were still there, but life got so much better. Why is that? Ohhh wait, nvm, I’m the problem. Not the things in my life.
But let me tell you the truth about this. This situation isnt unique to me. So if you are reading this and thinking how great it is for me, but then thinking about all your problems I can assure you that you only have one. And it’s you.
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Good evening! It’s great to see you are still dishing out plenty of tough love!! I reached out to you and you gave me a kick up the a## I needed…… still a long road ahead for me but a much easier one these days!! 101 days sober in the bag 
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I think Jay-Z said it best when he declared 99 problems and I’m every single one
…or something like that. Not sure of the exact lyrics but they’re pretty close I’m sure
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