As a leader in Orange County Rehab offering drug and alcohol treatment, there is one constant in the recovery process we finally had to talk about. Setbacks happen to us all, yet we don’t like to admit it. No one works a perfect program of recovery. To say otherwise is wishful thinking—at best and setbacks are all part of the recovery process for drug and alcohol addiction.

The real challenge comes with how we deal with those setbacks. Especially when new to the recovery process at our California drug rehab facility, sometimes the “life skills toolbox” can be pretty empty. You may want to handle everything the same way you did when you were suffering from addiction, which can sometimes be a form of dishonesty. As time goes on though, and you work towards a more improved program of drug and alcohol treatment, accumulating more and more tools as opposed to continuing that same negative behavior or holding onto those old ideas that become less and less appropriate. As they say, “Nothing changes if nothing changes.”

Perhaps it was an amends that didn’t go as well as you’d hoped. Maybe an old resentment popped up right after finishing the Fifth Step. Or maybe the concept of a Higher Power you previously had is no longer as versatile as it once seemed. These are all issues one personally faces in recovery. Some can be handled better than others, but none of them led to a relapse. Sometimes we hear that, “Relapse is a part of recovery.” While we don’t necessarily agree we have known far too many people who, once they’d been introduced to a new and better way of living through our Orange County drug and alcohol program or the Twelve Steps, never had to go back out and test the waters of addiction. Recovery is what prevents us from relapsing and successful rehab programs can prepare for that possibility. The process of the relapse may result in some unforeseen positive consequences, but unless one of those consequences is the unquestionable knowledge that you cannot, nor will you ever be able to, drink or use like a normal person; then the relapse is an unnecessary chapter in a person’s story.

And a setback is just that—it is something that ets us back from our continued progress. During a brief stint in one Orange County rehab, you may learn that a setback is not a restart from scratch. Sounds obvious now, but at the time of relapse it is not so obvious. Unless we are in a literal life-or-death situation, in which (for whatever bizarre set of circumstances would surround such a situation) if we don’t take a drink or a drug, then someone loses their life; any setback we face in recovery as part pf alcohol rehab can never solved by resorting back to drinking or drugging.

An alcoholic drinking or an addict using, though, is a bit like a cowboy who falls off his horse: no one should really be that surprised when it happens. The important thing is that the addict and/or alcoholic gets back on the horse. So if you’ve recently fallen face first into the (literal or figurative) dirt, we at 449Recovery have an Orange County detox program that is second to none. We have seen it all and we have helped countless alcoholics and addicts get through this difficult phase of starting recovery. 449recovery is the innovative leader for Southern California drug and alcohol treament; don’t let a temporary setback become an obstacle!