Relapse & Recovery | Motivational Interviewing

After the Fall: Working with Relapse and What Comes Next

Why relapse is not the end of the story — and how MI helps people find the thread again

There is a moment that many people in recovery dread — and many have experienced. The moment after a relapse when the phone doesn't get picked up, the appointment doesn't get attended, and the voice in your head says: "See? You can't do it. You never could."

Ryan had been abstinent from alcohol for seven months when he relapsed at a family event over Christmas. He didn't come to his next session. Or the one after. When he eventually returned — almost six weeks later — he sat down, looked at the floor, and said: "I knew you'd be disappointed."

He was wrong. But his assumption told me something important about where he was — and about the shame that was keeping him from the very support that might help.

Heroin, Hope, and the Long Road Back: James's Story

Exploring opiate dependency through a Motivational Interviewing lens

James had been using heroin for eleven years when we first met. He had been through treatment twice before. He spoke about those experiences with a mixture of resignation and dark humour — not because he had given up, but because he had learned not to promise himself too much.

Opiate dependency is profoundly misunderstood by the general public. It is not, at its core, a moral failing or a lifestyle choice. It is a complex condition shaped by neurobiology, trauma, social circumstance, and — very often — an original attempt to manage unbearable pain. For James, heroin had entered his life during a period of severe loss and had stayed because, for a long time, it had worked. It had numbed what he could not otherwise survive.