12-step program Archives | Genius Recovery

John Kennedy Jr. was killed in July of 1999 when he was caught in a deadly graveyard spiral while flying his airplane at night over the Atlantic Ocean. The official report suggested that Kennedy fell victim to spatial disorientation while descending over the water at night.

For pilots, a graveyard spiral happens when you become disoriented, have no visual reference to the horizon, and happen at night when you cannot see. The pilot mistakenly believes his wings are level when they are banked left or right. When the pilot does not increase back pressure on the yoke, the plane starts to descend faster and faster in a banked descent. Pulling back on the yoke, without bringing the wings level, tightens the spiral and in most cases, increases the rate of descent. The harder you pull back, the tighter the spiral, dooming the plane to ground impact.

Physiologically, the pilot can’t see the horizon. Most pilots are unable to feel the turn at the beginning of a graveyard spiral. When the pilot does not trust his/her instrument readings for whatever reason he/she is vulnerable to a graveyard spiral that quickly becomes fatal without course correction. Pulling out of a graveyard spiral requires that a pilot trust their instruments.

Addictive relapse is a graveyard spiral. When an addict fails to trust the instruments of recovery, a crash-and-burn relapse is inevitable.

Here is a list of instruments to be aware of that can prevent a graveyard spiral in recovery.

Accountability: Responsible recovery is built on accountability through cultivating purposed vulnerability. Addicts want to isolate themselves and live life in secret. Accountability intercepts dysfunction because it insists that you develop the commitment to tell on yourself. The strength of a sobriety contract is your willingness to be held accountable to people in your support network for what you put in your inner, middle, and outer circles. When this breaks down the graveyard spiral begins.

Living in Consultation: The 12-step community is a space to cultivate connection. Addicts deepen sobriety and clarify values by living in consultation with a 12-step group. Addicts lose their way when they distance themselves from connection with others in recovery. Your best-isolated thinking puts you into a graveyard spiral that creates crash-and-burn through addictive behavior. Living in consultation is a proven lifestyle that helps you course correct and avoid graveyard spirals. Awareness remains keen to addicts who are open to the considerations and guidance of a sponsor and other 12-step support people. When addicts withdraw, become defensive or compromise consultation, the light of awareness dims. Addicts are not pathetic nor do they lack the capacity to make decisions. However, it is critical to recognize the need to live within limits and seek the guidance of a recovering community. Consistent consultation increases awareness and relapse is avoided. No one cultivates relational intimacy alone. Building a foundation of recovery requires consultation.

Commit to telling on yourself. This tool is absolutely necessary to stay the course in recovery. Vagueness fuels the possibility of relapse. Checking the boxes in recovery is a setup for a graveyard spiral. Checking the box is doing recovery without connecting to heart. This happens when you engage the fringes of recovery community. It comes from a subtle shift in attitude. When there is an opportunity to be vulnerable and share discord and incongruence you gloss over the invite and remain at a surface level of communication. Recovery healing is only present when addicts tell on themselves. This vulnerability must be cultivated at every level of life. As an addict, when you are vague in your check-in, you are in danger of a graveyard spiral. Relapse doesn’t happen all of a sudden. However, when the conditions are right and mature, backsliding happens in an instant. Crash and burn happens quicker than any addict ever thought possible. It is critical to cultivate a resolve to tell on yourself about every aspect of living. Take time to reflect. Is there any level of life that you are vague or unwilling to discuss with your support community? You will know this by examining the stones in recovery that you have left unturned and not surrendered to discussion. Examine all the aspects of your life, your attitudes, your behaviors, and your decisions. If you are vague with yourself or others in your support community you may be in a graveyard spiral and not know it.

Awareness is the third critical tool to add to your toolbox of relapse prevention. It is a skill that requires rigorous honesty with self and a commitment to open-hearted sharing of every aspect of your life with your recovery support community. Examine the congruence of your shares. Are you accountable for your hypocrisies? Have you accepted your inconsistencies as casual without answering to your support community? These dynamics fuel a graveyard spiral that leads to relapse. Awareness is everything.

In baseball, a 5-tool player is one who excels in hitting, fielding, speed, hitting for power, and average. There are not many major league players who demonstrate all these skills during any given season. In 2022, Paul Goldschmidt of the St. Louis Cardinals was such a player. It is even more rare for a player to demonstrate these skills throughout a long career. Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, and Barry Bonds are all iconic players who demonstrated these five tools throughout their careers.

Long-term recovery from any destructive behavior requires a commitment to change and new behaviors must be incorporated to replace old destructive conduct. There are five tools necessary to achieve long-term sobriety in addiction recovery. Today, I will discuss one of the tools and follow up with subsequent blogs to cover the other four.

Failure is a reality in almost all aspects of life. Everyone desires to relate to short-term accomplishment and success. But long-term achievement requires more, including the ability to manage failure. People highlight spectacular victory but longevity teaches how to handle human shortcomings.

It is a common response to lower your expectations when encountered with failure. Sometimes it is helpful like when you attempt to achieve unrealistic expectations. However, in many cases lowering expectations is an attempt to soothe yourself from the sting of failure. Addicts tend to scale down expectations for sobriety after they announce their successes in a 12-step meeting but then slip into old destructive patterns of behavior. It is easier to lower expectations than to learn from the disappointment of failed behavior.

Relapse vs lapse are often confusing terms. Relapse behavior for an addict is a reconstitution of old destructive patterns in behavior that engages acting out with a drug of choice. Lapse behavior includes indications of failure in attitude and action around addiction management. It involves behaviors that are short of addictive acting out but engage high-risk patterns of thoughts and behaviors that inevitably do lead to actions of relapse.

There are very few addicts who do not relapse after engaging recovery, no matter the program. All addicts and everyone else fail with lapse behavior. This is simply a human element that touches everybody.

Addicts must learn how to extract the fruit of meaningful lessons and then throw away the rind of failed experiences. This treatment of failed behavior is absolutely critical to anyone who has successfully created long-term sobriety.

Tool #1 is about how to address times when you fail and stumble into old destructive patterns of addictive behavior. You learn what to do when you determine to quit destructive conduct but after your best efforts find yourself back to where you started. You learn how to manage times when you feel defeated with a strong urge to give up. Here are a few considerations to think about:

Tool #1: Engage in a Relapse Litmus Test

Geoff Hewitt wrote a poem about a sailor who was lost at sea and somehow made his way to the shore. Exhausted he fell asleep on the shore only to have the tide come in and sweep him back to sea. This is the story of many addicts in recovery. Managing recovery failure embraces the following components that comprise tool #1.

(a) A beginner’s attitude: The challenge of showing up every day hungry for one thing that will keep you sober and growing. This becomes more difficult the longer you are sober. The tendency is to lose urgency and back off from cultivating personal growth. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your beginner’s attitude toward recovery? Will you take the initiative to examine where you got off track from your recovery program? Are you willing to do what you need to do to get back to where you need to be? These are the questions required about the humility needed to engage a beginner’s attitude.

(b) Honesty: Recovery requires honesty. Deep emotional honesty is difficult to achieve. Few people achieve this level of honesty. Face the questions: Where am I dishonest with myself? Who have I been dishonest with? Am I willing to make amends and restitution for my dishonesty? Who will I be willing to be accountable to? These are important litmus test questions to guide you through failure.

(c) A willingness to do something different: Albert Einstein’s famous quote “you can’t solve a problem with the same mindset that created it”. Twelve-step communities like to croon “Insanity is doing the same thing over and again, expecting different results”. Ponder what it is that you would be willing to do differently to accomplish the level of sobriety you desire. When you don’t know what to do, brainstorm with your 12-step community for solutions that make sense. Are you willing to go to any length? What would you do differently in the next 24 hours/week/month?

(d) Do whatever it takes to stop the slide of acting out: When skiing on a steep slope and you fall and uncontrollably cascade down the mountain, you do whatever it takes regardless of how it looks to get stopped! Even if you look like the abominable snowman coming down the mountain, one thing matters and that is to stop the fall. It takes the same urgency and burning desire to stop the slide toward addictive behavior. There must be a burning desire within your heart. Although determination alone will never keep you sober, you cannot recover without it.

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