Is Missing Your 12 Step Meetings A Relapse Warning Sign? + Podcast

Attending 12 step meetings is a relapse prevention strategy endorsed by many people.

Sometimes, however, attendance by members may start to slip. For those people who are finding it sometimes difficult to maintain consistency attendance at 12 step meetings, this may be the beginning of the relapse thought process. Here are some danger signals of relapse you may want pay attention to.

You may be heading for relapse if:

1. You start to miss meetings for any reason, imaginary or real

2. You start to become critical of the way other members are thinking and talking, especially those who may not agree with you.

3. You start to build the idea that someday, somehow, you can start your addictive behavior again and have control over.

4. You start to hang out on the fringes and let other people do the 12 step work. You become too busy to get involved.

5. You start to think of yourself as a 12 stepper “with a lot of time in the program”, and start to view newcomers with skepticism and judgmentalism.

6. You become a very self satisfied and pleased with your own interpretations of the program, you consider yourself an elite ” elder statesman”.

7. You form a small clique within your group. These are the few members who agree with you in almost all matters.

8. You start telling new members that you, yourself, are in control of your recovery and working the 12 steps is not a serious endeavor.

9. You start to let your mind wander more and more, on how valuable you are in helping other people, rather than how much the 12 step program is in fact helping you.

10. If a Member has a relapse you shun him and write him off your list saying “He just can’t get it.”

11. You start borrowing money, or asking material favors, from other members, and then start to avoid going to meetings so you will meet them.

12 You look at the concept of a ‘day at a time’ as a critical thing for new members but you have let it slip for yourself. You’re way beyond that now.

The rooms and meetings of 12 step groups consist of people were largely trying to head down the sobriety path in the same general direction, that of stopping their addictive behavior. But you are you, and people are people, and sometimes we do not see eye to eye. I look at 12 step programs as being kind of guardrails along the highway of recovery. As we head down the road of recovery the 12 step program can keep us in straying too far. Although on the road you’re bound to bump into people, some people stand around and become obstacles, some get spun around and head in the wrong direction, and still others jump the guardrail.
Careful attention and persistently working your own twelve step program can keep you moving forward in your efforts at addiction recovery.