I believe relapse can start long before someone actually picks up a drink. I’ve seen how much can change in someone’s thinking and behavior before alcohol ever becomes the obvious problem.

The harder part for me is recognizing those changes when they’re happening to me.

Looking backward, relapse warning signs can seem obvious. I can connect the dots and see where I was going to fewer meetings, talking to my sponsor less, praying less, helping fewer people, and becoming less connected to the recovery community. But while it’s happening, I’m not looking at the whole picture. I’m living one decision at a time, and each one can seem perfectly reasonable.

That’s what makes some of the warning signs of relapse so difficult for me. They can happen subtly and gradually enough that I don’t recognize the danger I’m in.

Sometimes It Starts With How I See Other People

One of the changes I’ve noticed in myself is that I can start becoming more judgmental of other people.

There have been times when I’ve sat in meetings and heard someone start sharing something I’ve heard them say many times before. Instead of listening to what they’re saying, I start judging them. I know their personality. I know their story. I already know what they’re going to say, so why do I need to hear it again?

I’m not necessarily becoming critical of AA. I’m becoming critical of the people in AA. Other people start bothering me more. I become less tolerant of them. I get restless, irritable and discontent.

What I eventually had to recognize was that they weren’t changing. I was changing.

That’s hard to see when I’m in the middle of it because, from my perspective, they really are annoying. The person really does tell the same story. Somebody really does have a personality that gets on my nerves. I can find plenty of evidence to support my opinion of them.

The problem is that while I’m busy finding fault with everyone else, I may not notice what’s happening to me. My tolerance for other people is decreasing, and I’m becoming less able to live life on life’s terms. That change in attitude can start affecting what I do next.

I Start Trusting My Own Thinking More

If I’m already convinced that I know what people are going to say, it becomes easier to stop asking what they think.

I’ve been sober for a long time. I’ve been through a lot. I know what I’m doing. That can sound pretty reasonable to me.

I wrote about this in Why Would I Relapse When Everything Is Going Great?. When my life got better, I started doing less for my recovery. I didn’t think I was putting myself in danger. I thought I had this.

The same thing can happen with my decision-making. I can convince myself that something is a good idea, and once I’ve done that, I don’t see much reason to run it past somebody else.

It isn’t necessarily that I know something is a bad idea and I’m afraid my sponsor will tell me not to do it. That would probably be easier to recognize. The harder situation is when I genuinely believe it’s a good idea.

Why would I need another opinion? I already thought it through.

Now I’m the person having the thought, the person evaluating the thought, and the person deciding whether the thought makes sense. There’s nobody else in the conversation.

Obviously, I’m an adult and I make decisions for myself. But I’ve learned that I can be very good at convincing myself that what I want to do is also what I should do. Sometimes I need another person in the conversation.

Isolation Can Become a Way for Me to Control Things

For me, isolation usually doesn’t come first. Judgment comes first, then the desire to control things can creep in. Eventually, isolation becomes one way to get that control.

If people are annoying me, there’s a pretty easy solution: don’t be around them.

I don’t have to make some dramatic decision that I’m done with everybody. I just start showing up less. I go to fewer meetings. I volunteer less. I stop keeping current with people.

If someone directly asked me for help, I would still help them. But I wasn’t putting myself out there the way I once had. And if I wasn’t showing up very often, I also wasn’t getting “volun-told” to do things.

The same thing happened with phone calls. It wasn’t just that I stopped calling my sponsor. I became less interested in keeping current with anyone. And the people I wasn’t talking to anymore were often the same people who might have asked questions.

Where have you been? Haven’t seen you lately. What’s going on?

Isolation solved the problem I thought I had. If they weren’t there, they couldn’t annoy me.

The problem was that if they weren’t there, they couldn’t see me either.

The People Annoying Me May Be the People I Need

That’s where isolation can become particularly dangerous for me. I’ve removed some of the people who might recognize that something about me is changing.

Maybe I’m not thinking seriously about drinking. Maybe alcohol isn’t even the obvious problem yet. But I’m showing up less, listening less, helping less, talking to people less, and becoming more comfortable handling everything myself.

Some people describe this kind of period as emotional relapse. The important part for me is that I don’t necessarily have to be planning to drink—or even seriously thinking about alcohol—for changes to already be happening in the way I’m living my recovery. I’ve written more about the progression from emotional to mental and eventually physical relapse in Why Relapse Starts Long Before the First Drink.

None of these things by itself has to mean I’m headed toward a drink. That’s important to say. Missing a meeting doesn’t mean I’m going to relapse. Wanting some time alone doesn’t mean I’m going to relapse.

For me, the pattern is what matters.

That’s also why I don’t want to wait until I seriously want a drink before asking whether something is happening with my recovery. By then, there may have been changes going on for quite a while.

The problem is that the farther I get into that pattern, the fewer people I may have around me who can point it out. The very people I decided I didn’t want to hear from may be some of the people I need most.

And sometimes one of them says something anyway.

My First Reaction May Be Defensive

I wish I could say that whenever somebody points out that I’m drifting, my immediate response is gratitude.

It isn’t.

My initial human reaction can be defensive. I don’t know how to get around that. If I’ve already convinced myself that what I’m doing makes sense, somebody telling me I’m straying from the actions that got me sober and have helped keep me sober can feel like criticism.

Depending on who says it, I may need to take what they said to somebody else I trust and talk it through. What has helped me is when someone can walk me through what they’re actually seeing: what I used to be doing, what I’m doing now, what has changed, and where they believe that pattern can lead.

Now the conversation is different. I’m not defending one missed meeting, one phone call I didn’t make, or one decision. I’m being asked to look at the whole pattern.

And I’ve seen that pattern before.

I’ve watched other people begin drifting away. I’ve seen changes in their thinking and behavior, and I’ve seen where that road can lead. At some point, I have to be willing to consider that if I can recognize it happening to somebody else, somebody else may be able to recognize it happening to me.

That takes humility.

Sometimes Protecting My Sobriety Requires Humility

Humility doesn’t mean everybody else is right and I’m wrong. It doesn’t mean I have to accept every opinion somebody has about how I should live my life.

It means I have to be willing to accept the possibility that somebody who knows me may be able to see something in me that I can’t see for myself.

Sometimes I have to get past my initial defensiveness, have the conversation, and look honestly at what they’re telling me. There have been times when I’ve had to surrender to the fact that they were right.

I’d rather have people in my life who care enough about my sobriety to say something than surround myself with people who will leave me alone while I slowly head in the wrong direction.

When I think about relapse warning signs today, I don’t only think about whether I’m craving alcohol or seriously thinking about drinking. I pay attention to the quieter changes too. Am I judging everybody around me? Have I stopped listening? Am I convinced that I don’t need anybody else’s perspective? Am I showing up less and becoming disconnected from the people who know me?

And if one of those people tells me they see something changing, am I willing to hear them?

Looking backward, it can be easy to connect the dots. The challenge is recognizing them while I’m still living them one at a time.

I’ve learned that I can’t always see myself clearly from inside my own thinking. Sometimes protecting my sobriety means having people around me who know me well enough to notice the changes—and having enough humility to listen when they tell me what they see.

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Related Video

In this video, I talk about how sobriety can move through different phases and how subtle changes—boredom, less action, less connection, and old thinking creeping back in—can become signs that I need to pay attention.