Relapse

The word “Relapse” suggests that you lapsed from something.

The book, Alcoholics Anonymous, says “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.” They say Bill would have changed rarely to never if he thought it would help the fellowship. Thoroughly – not quickly.

Our path – go to meetings, get a sponsor, meet with that sponsor once a week for work in the book, and go to meetings with him/her and call him/her whenever something comes up that you don’t know what to do with. Get through all 12 steps in a timely manner – meaning – Maybe a month on step 1, 2 weeks on step 2, 2 weeks on step 3, Step 4 – just make sure you write every day – so it should take a few months, Step 5 should be one long sitting or several shorter sittings but in the same week. Step 6 and 7 happen right after 5. Step 8 might take a little while – but no more than a month. Step 9 – I did 3 approaches of amends a week till I was done.

Is that what you Re-lapsed from? If not, you were not even IN the program. The Fellowship is meetings – you can’t relapse from meetings. The program is in the book, Alcoholics Anonymous. If you are not reading the book and doing what it says with a sponsor, you are not in the program.

There were a few newcomers there yesterday or retreads – they said they had relapsed. I don’t think so. I think they were just people who went to meetings for a while and did not do what was suggested and drank again.

The book says, in More About Alcoholism, that we redouble our efforts. If you want to recover, you first have to surrender. You can’t do it your way and expect results. When you get beaten down enough by John Barleycorn, you will do what we suggest – if you live long enough to get to that point. This is just the process. Most alcoholics don’t want to have to give their Free Will choice to an invisible Power unless there is no other options.