If your candidates won elections last night, do not relapse. If your candidates lost elections last night, do not relapse.
If you are on the winning side, you may feel an elation that seems to take you beyond the daily grind of life. You may feel some vindication and connection to all those others who voted alongside you. You are now on the winning side. Life is better now, you may tell yourself; things are trending in your direction. You might tell yourself that you deserve to revel; there is so much to celebrate. You may want to pop some corks. Or crack open some bottles of the good stuff or the bad stuff. Light up and lighten up.
Might there be some elation in those first drinks or hits? Most likely yes because if you have been sober or abstinent for some time, your tolerance will have decreased. You will get a bigger bang for the buck. Drugs and alcohol are false friends, though. They make promises they can never keep and exact a price that you may not be able to imagine. Life will go on, presenting new challenges while the old ones reappear in new guises. Those old problems may be quite familiar to you since you’ve wrestled with them before. Ask yourself: Will my drinking or using help me to meet these challenges?
Even if you are on the winning side of an election, you may not be on the winning side of your own life if you relapse. You may miss the very things you took yourself to be fighting for.
If you are on the losing side of the election, you may feel a despair that swallows you and your loved ones whole. You may feel a dread that extends to the state of the world. Numbing the pain, anxiety, fear, and anger with your drugs of choice may feel like the only option. How can one expect to live in this world that seems so hostile and callous? You may tell yourself the only way to survive is to numb yourself or escape for a while. You may want to crack open whatever bottles are handy. Light up and lighten up.
Might there be some reprieve from the suffering in those first drinks or hits? Yes, for the same reasons why the celebrating person experiences the effects he wants. The reprieve, like the elation, is seductive but temporary. Life will march on. Being anesthetized will amplify the new challenges while giving the old ones new intensity. Ask yourself: Will my drinking or using help me to meet these challenges?
Even if you are on the losing side of the election, you don’t have to lose your sobriety. If you do relapse, you may miss the very things you took yourself to be fighting for.
Our addictions have taken so much from so many of us. Let’s not be persuaded by the false friends of alcohol and drugs and lose what we’ve fought so hard to achieve. It is a matter of life and death for us.