I relapsed countless times. I know the hell of ‘coming to’ drenched in panic, not knowing whether it’s day or night, and wondering where your other boot is!
Then scrambling to find a bottle to seek oblivion again, quickly, before reality rears its monstrous head.
In those hellish days I framed each relapse as a binary event. I either stayed sober, or I’d failed. I was either progressing or going backwards.
This kind of thinking feels tidy, but it’s destructive. Because at its core, a relapse isn’t a behavioural event, it’s a collapse of awareness.
From a spiritual perspective, it is due to unconsciously identifying with the mind and acting on its impulses like a trained monkey.
Whether or not you relapse depends far less on strength or discipline than on how conscious you are of your inner world.
The danger signs always appear internally first. Long before the drink, the drug, or the behaviour, unconsciousness has already taken hold.
Relapse as a key to spiritual realisation
From an Advaita Vedanta perspective, spiritual realisation is the recognition that you are not the body, mind, or personality, but the awareness in which they appear.
Reality, in Advaita Vedanta, is non-dual. There are not two things, you and the world, subject and object, seeker and truth. There is one reality only. Brahman. God. Consciousness itself.
Relapse can become a doorway to spiritual realisation in this sense, if it’s used to see rather than to self-punish. It exposes the limits of ego, willpower, and control. That exposure is the lesson.
Think about your last relapse. In that moment, were you conscious of the mind, or completely inside it? Were you the Witness, or had you collapsed back into the Participant?
If you have relapsed, this is not a reason for punishment. It is an invitation to look more closely.
Relapse reveals identification with thought
Relapse is not a moral failure or a lack of discipline. It is a moment where identification with thought goes unnoticed.
Before relapse, there is always belief. A thought is taken to be true. A feeling is taken to be authoritative.
The mind presents a convincing argument, and awareness quietly steps aside while that argument is obeyed.
In the moment of relapse, this process is exposed with uncomfortable clarity. You can see how quickly awareness collapses into identification, and it feels like you’re acting on autopilot as you lift that first drink.
You were acting with zero awareness. In fact, you can’t do anything that is harmful to you whilst acting with full awareness.
If a relapse is met with self-punishment, nothing new is learnt. But if it is met with observation, something shifts. Instead of “I am failing”, there is the recognition: identification with thought is happening.
That recognition matters. It marks the beginning of the Witness. Not the Witness as an idea, but as lived experience. Awareness starts to see thought rather than be swallowed by it.
Freedom does not come from perfect behaviour but from seeing clearly what you are not. Relapse, painful as it is, can expose this truth more directly than long periods of apparent success.
Used in this way, relapse becomes less about falling back and more about waking up to the mechanics of the mind. The lesson is not how to control thought better but how to stop mistaking it for the Self.
Relapse exposes craving as impersonal
Relapse exposes craving in its raw, unfiltered form. When it arises, it does not negotiate. It does not care about values, promises, or long-term consequences. It simply appears and demands satisfaction.
In those moments, craving reveals something important. It operates impersonally. It is not interested in who you think you are or who you want to be. It behaves more like a force than a choice.
When this is seen clearly, a subtle but crucial shift can occur. Instead of “this is me wanting”, there is the recognition: this is craving arising in awareness.
That shift weakens craving’s authority. It is no longer owned. It is observed.
Craving may still arise, but it loses its command. Freedom begins when inner world phenomena are seen rather than fused with.
Relapse, when met with awareness rather than shame, makes this impersonal nature of craving impossible to ignore. Once seen clearly, it is difficult to fully believe in it again.
Relapse collapses false identity
Relapse has a way of collapsing false identity very quickly. Stories like “I’m doing well”, “I’ve got this”, or “I’m fixed now” tend to survive only while things are going smoothly.
Relapse punctures those narratives and exposes how much of our sense of self is built on conditions remaining favourable.
This is painful. It often comes with shame, disappointment, and a sharp sense of having fallen from somewhere. But from a spiritual perspective, it is also clarifying.
When those stories fall away, what remains is far more simple. There is no grand self-image to defend, no future version of yourself to uphold.
That is all egoic noise.
There is just awareness, responsibility for the next right action, and the reality of the present moment. No identity to maintain and no performance to continue.
In that simplicity, something more honest can emerge. Not the idea of being “recovered” or “sorted”, but the quieter recognition of what you are beneath those labels.
Relapse reframes recovery as awareness
Relapse has a way of reframing what recovery is actually about. When abstinence is treated as the goal, recovery easily becomes another project of the ego. Something to achieve, protect, and measure.
Relapse exposes the fragility of that approach. It shows that behaviour, on its own, is not the foundation. You can be abstinent and still be deeply identified with the mind.
From a deeper perspective, recovery is not the absence of substances or compulsive behaviour. It is the presence of awareness and self mastery over thoughts, urges, and emotions without immediately acting them out.
Relapse makes this distinction hard to ignore. It reveals that unconsciousness, not substance use itself, is the real problem. Using is simply an expression of unconsciousness.
Seen this way, abstinence becomes a consequence rather than a target. As awareness deepens, the grip of craving loosens naturally. Not through force, but through clarity.
Recovery, then, is not about never falling. It is about becoming less and less willing to live unconsciously.
Relapse exposes the void you are trying to avoid
Relapse often exposes the void that was being avoided all along. Beneath the substance or behaviour sits a deeper discomfort. Emptiness. Restlessness. A sense that something is missing.
Addiction works because it offers temporary relief from this inner gap. It distracts, numbs, or fills the space just long enough to make it feel manageable. Relapse brings you back into direct contact with what was being escaped.
This can feel stark and unsettling. Without the usual coping mechanisms, the void becomes harder to ignore. Many people interpret this as proof that something is wrong with them.
From a spiritual perspective, the opposite may be true. The discomfort is not a defect. It is a signal pointing toward misidentification. A life lived too closely fused with thought, identity, and narrative.
The work is not to fill the void with something better or healthier. It is to stay with it long enough to see what it actually is. When observed closely, the void is not an enemy. It is a space in which awareness can recognise itself, once the urge to escape subsides.
From Participant to Witness
A relapse is painful, destabilising, and often humiliating. But it does not have to be meaningless. When viewed through the lens of awareness rather than shame, it can become deeply instructive.
If you relapse, the most important question is not “Why did I do this?” but “Where did awareness disappear?”
Recovery, at its deepest level, shouldn’t be about perfect behaviour or a flawless record. It should be about learning to live from awareness rather than reaction. Each time unconsciousness is seen for what it is, its grip weakens.
And eventually, the need to escape dissolves not because life becomes easy, but because you are no longer lost inside the mind that demands escape in the first place.
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