You want to quit. It’s too hard, you think. There’s no way that I am going to recover. I’ve failed so many times that it’s time to give up. I’ll just keep failing. Well, recovery is possible for anyone and everyone, no matter the degree of your addiction. Everyone slips up at some point.

It seems like the easiest option out there, to quit and give up when you’ve made a mistake. These feelings are common to everyone going through addiction treatment. You’re going to have these thoughts no matter what. Every addict must go through the motions of relapse, whether from drugs or alcohol. And every addict goes through a series of negative thought patterns that can only be combated with therapy. With negative thoughts come negative results. If you beat yourself up, you’re just going backwards, more and more.

But it becomes more and more difficult to quit, the longer you relapse. However, this shouldn’t discourage you—it should become easier to make the decision to quit, and to stick to it.

Really, what are you going to do—keep going? Continue avoiding relapse, forever? If you want to quit, you want to quit—no point in looking back. Every addict goes through relapse, and every addict knows just how difficult it can be. Plenty of other addicts have experience relapse—some have gone years without returning to addiction.

So what can you do when you relapse? Give up? No—there are plenty of options waiting out there.

• First of all, you need to combat the thoughts that cause you to self-medicate. That’s talking about those thoughts that eat away at you—the “I’m not good enough,” “I’ll always fail.”
• Reach out. If you’ve been in recovery before, chances are you have a friend or two who is going through the same thing. Give them a call and tell them what’s going on.
• Have faith in yourself. Though you may have slipped up once or twice or a dozen times, lasting recovery is still waiting for you.