Relapse is a conditioned emotional response for many people. Let’s be realistic, for someone who has spent 10, 20, or even 30 years using drugs or alcohol every time they had ‘a feeling’– 30 days in treatment is nowhere near enough time to turn something like that around. You can drill the 12-steps into someone’s head all day long, send them to meetings to repeat witty rhetoric like a robot– but if you have not given them some realistic alternative emotional responses…. (even better, a chance to develop those emotional muscle over an extended period of time) then you cannot lay the blame entirely on the user.

If a horse breaks his leg and the owner only bandages it up and hands the horse some Neosporin before sending him out on the race track full speed- can the owner really get mad at the horse when he breaks his leg again?

Recovering from addiction takes a lot more than a Big Book– it takes a strong support network, encouragement, alternative responses, and time to develop those new muscles.