Relapse

Hi, my name is _____. I've been clean for about 9 months now. Mostly I've been good, filling my time with more constructive activities and looking to healthier places to focus my energies into. I even got past the suppressive stage of "kill it with work," and onto a real platform I felt like I could actually make a real start from, a place I could really use to move on with my life... I screwed up tonight.

At least that's what he felt like he should be saying. The problem is that he wasn't exactly an addict in the traditional sense and there wasn't a support group he had access to to get past his problem.

For months he was fine, rather dandy actually, which was a good thing since it took a long time to get there, and it was a journey fraught with endless struggle and countless sleepless nights. He could finally see the end of the woods.

However, vines entangle easily when one isn't vigilant, and with a click of a button he had successfully undone several months of progress.

Though, to say with a click of a button would be rather misleading, wouldn't it? Like all addicts, there was a trigger that started this entire mess. An addict clean for any substantial amount of time doesn't just wake up one morning and decide "hey, today might be a good day to revisit that bad habit I've been fighting for months to break,". There is always something that triggers the regression, something that reminds them of how much easier it would be if they satisfied their craving just that one time. Their training says no, but eventually, if left to themselves, everyone breaks. For him it was a picture.

His problem wasn't one of hard drugs, alcohol or even gambling, it was much more subtle and by far, much more difficult for him to deal with; curiosity.

The picture was barely noticed at first glance, but as he came to realize upon what he was looking, something sinister appeared in his mind, something so sinister that under any other circumstance but this it would be seen as nothing as an innocent question; what, if anything, does this mean?

For the next few weeks he fought with himself, telling himself he didn't care. He should have known lying to himself wouldn't work. The truth always has its way of clawing its way out of the deepest of pits, and this truth crumbled his resolve. A click later he had his answer; it meant nothing. He felt somewhat better, for now.

Like all drugs, however, time would come when the soothing effects wore off and he would be, once again, in trouble. He hoped it wouldn't come. After all, now that the question was answered what could possibly cause another relapse. It was a short-sighted pathetic excuse for an attempt to logic away the possibility of a re-occurrence and he wasn't fool enough to buy another of his own lies, so he steeled himself the best he could for the blow back and now sought to rebuild -- one day at a time.