We drink again and tell ourselves we’ll stop tomorrow. Tomorrow arrives, but we feel rough, disappointed and nowhere near ready to start again. So we move it to Monday.
Then there’s something happening on the weekend. Work is busy. We’ve already bought the alcohol. Or we just want one more night before we stop.
And without making any big decision to keep drinking, another week is gone. I call that gap between wanting to stop again and actually stopping the Sober Time Factor. And while we keep putting it off, alcohol starts rebuilding its place in our day.
We don’t plan to keep drinking for weeks
Most of us don’t sit down after a relapse and decide to keep drinking for another month. We make a much smaller decision: not today. That decision can sound reasonable. We’ll stop when the pressure eases, after the social event or when we’ve had time to get ourselves ready.
But the same reasons can still be there tomorrow. So we make the same small decision again. And before we know it, all those small delays have added up while we still feel like we’re about to stop.
Shame can keep the drinking going
After a relapse, we might feel like we’ve ruined everything. We don’t want to look closely at what happened. We don’t want to tell anyone.
And we might not want to try stopping again when the last attempt now feels like a failure. So drinking gives us a way to put off that feeling for another evening.
Then the drinking creates more shame, which gives us another reason not to deal with it yet. As we covered in Understanding Relapse, the relapse is serious, but it doesn’t erase the sober time or everything we learned during it. Facing it now will do less damage than another week of drinking. We drank again. Now we need to decide what happens next.
Waiting to feel ready can keep us drinking
We often think there’ll be a better day to stop. A day when work is calmer, we feel more confident and there’s nothing awkward coming up. But life doesn’t normally clear a perfect space for us. And drinking itself can make us feel less ready. We sleep badly, feel more anxious and lose a bit more trust in ourselves every time we move the date.
So we keep waiting to feel ready. And the longer we drink, the less ready we tend to feel. We don’t need to feel perfectly ready. We need to stop treating “later” like it’s a plan.
Alcohol can rebuild the old normal quickly
Every extra drinking day makes the old routine feel normal again. We start drinking at the usual time. Alcohol is back in the house. The pours get familiar.
And the thought of drinking starts turning up without much discussion. If the amount rises, tolerance and physical dependence might return as well.
And that’s the danger in delaying. We’re losing sober days, and we could be rebuilding the same drinking and withdrawal cycle we worked hard to leave. The longer drinking feels normal again, the bigger the restart can feel.
Close the gap, but do it safely
So once we know we want to stop again, we need to act as soon as we safely can. That could mean telling someone today, cancelling tomorrow’s drinking plans, contacting a support service or making the medical appointment we’ve been putting off.
If we've returned to heavy drinking, dealing with the physical side is part of acting now. We follow any stopping plan that applies to us instead of using the risk as another reason to delay.
Acting quickly doesn’t mean being reckless. Getting the right help is still acting now.
One relapse doesn’t have to become weeks or months of drinking
We don’t have to wait for a Monday, a new month or another frightening morning. And we don’t need to make a huge speech about starting over.
We deal with what happened, take the next safe step and start recovering after the relapse before alcohol gets any more time.
The Sober Time Factor keeps going because of one sentence: “I’ll deal with it later.” We break it by doing something real today.
— Brent