 Bismillah alhamdulillah wa salatu wa salam ala Rasulillah. So we've gone over staying one step ahead of relapse in the past. I won't go over that over here, but we'll summarize it briefly and move to the last section of this book. Staying one step ahead of relapse, page 198. The idea is that when we maintain a period of abstinence from our behavior, our addictive habit or our substance. So we've got a little bit of a period of being away from that, being sober. And we're starting to experience the benefits, whether that be feeling good in terms of our relationships and connections with people, whether that be just enjoying things that we previously did not enjoy. We start to reap the benefits of being sober. One way to think about it is when we first started our addictive behavior, when you first start your addictive behavior, you get a really intense, pleasurable feeling from it. So think back to that first time of whatever addictive habit you have. You get this, you can think about this as feeling normal. Think of a line. And then every day you can have ups and downs. So for example, let's say you get a good grade on an exam, that's it, you feel up. And then let's say you have a really difficult day. Let's say you don't do well on an assignment or at work, or you get in trouble by your boss, you get some negative feedback, you feel down that day. And you go up and down, but you stay within this margin that you tend to not go out of in terms of highs and lows in life. Once in a while, you'll have a really big high and a really big low in your life. So let's say, for example, the birth of a loved one, of a child, that's a really big high. So you're gonna exceed those margins and go up to this high. And once in a while, you'll have a really big low, let's say a death of a loved one, a really significant crisis. And you'll exceed those margins and you'll go really low, okay? Now, what happens with addictive substances and behaviors? The way they work is that they target your reward pathway. Forget about the drug, and we've talked about this a lot in the past, forget about the drug, forget about the behavior. It's the target. They target your reward pathway to then get you to not have your everyday ups, but have a super normal up and high, okay? So that high that you would get once in a while in life, now it's hijacking that system and it's releasing that high. Now, your body responds to that, your brain responds to that because it says, you don't really have the neurochemicals in your bank to support that. So then that's always followed by a low. Even when you have a natural high, it's gonna be followed by a low. So if you pay attention to after you have a big event, let's say you've been working up to a marathon or you've been working up to a big event that can cause a high or you have that baby, you're gonna experience a low in order to recuperate from that. So when you use a drug, a digital drug, a chemical drug, you get that high and then you come down with a low. Now, what happens is that can be called a hangover and you experience a low. And that low is gonna also exceed those margins. It's not gonna be your everyday low, it can actually be quite significant. Over a period of time, high, essentially what happens is you have this high and then you come back into your margins in terms of a low. Then you have this high and you come back into your margins in terms of a low. Then you have this high and then you start dipping below your margins and having a significant low. Then you have a high and then you go lower because again, you're depleting more and more of your neurochemicals and you're having less and less of a chance to replenish that. Does that make sense? Okay, all right. So over time, what happens now? Fast forward. Now, when you're getting high, you're not even going into exceeding your margins. You're just having a normal everyday feeling of high. So that feeling you get when you pass an exam or that feeling you get when you have a good day, now you're just getting that from your addictive drug. So it's not even getting you super high anymore. The converse is, although you're getting a sort of normal everyday high, now you're exceeding the margins significantly in terms of your lows. So now you're getting kinda high and really low. But when you go from that really low to kinda high, that differential is significant. Just like in the beginning, that differential is significant. So what happens over a period of time is eventually you just go below your margins. Your everyday low turns into your high. Your everyday low turns into your high. And then your low becomes a huge dip below your margin. So what that means is you're getting high just to have a bad day, just to kinda feel normal. But the idea is is that here's where the people make the mistake. Hold on one moment. Here's where people make the mistake. They feel that differential from really low to high and they say, I need this drug to make me feel better. I need this drug to make me feel better or this drug gets me high. They feel that differential in the beginning of the game. They feel that differential in the end of the game. Now what happens is afterwards, if you have the blessing of getting a period of abstinence, a period of sobriety, whether that could be getting locked up in the county jail, whether that be a prison bit, whether that be moving or going on vacation somewhere where you can't use or somebody comes and visits you and you can't use or that you have an important deadline and you can't use or whatever reason, if you have an opportunity to have a significant period of abstinence, then what happens is it allows your brain to slowly reset and replenish and heal, which is an incredible blessing that your brain doesn't stay like that and that you have an opportunity to heal. And then eventually what happens is you start to have your normal highs and lows again. You start to have your normal highs and lows again. And for many people, that's like a honeymoon phase in their recovery. They'll feel like a certain glow after 30 days or 60 days or 90 days or a six month mark or a year mark. There might be these increasingly better sort of feelings and senses of wellbeing. So that's important to keep in mind because when we're on that cusp of sobriety and we're experiencing a period of sobriety, it's important to really remember how that feels. That good feeling in the beginning, that sense of self-respect, that sense of feeling accomplished, that sense of like feeling like we're connecting with people again and doing our responsibilities, being the person in public that we are in private and being the person in private that we are in public, so on and so forth, that's a really good feeling. That's a really strong feeling. So once we experience that, it's really important to document that, to remind ourselves of that, to tell people about that, to tell other people about that because there'll come a time where we forget that and it becomes a distant memory and thinking of using again or thinking of going back to our addictive habit again becomes more appealing. And in the rooms of recovery, they always talk about playing the tape out to remember not just the first time you get high, which is that big differential, but playing the tape out of what that ends up leading to, which is a lot of lows and a little bit of highs. And then eventually you go through the cycle, not everybody does, but some of us go through the cycle where it gets to a point where even if we have a period of abstinence and we go back to our addictive habit, it doesn't do much for us. It doesn't do what it used to do for us and we get back to that low state really quickly. So it's important to remember and play the tape out. So going to the book now, page 198, staying one step ahead of relapse. It's important to when we have that period of abstinence to think back to the last time that we slipped or relapsed and remember that there are warning signs before you enter the situation in which we actually relapsed or engaged in our addictive behavior. There were warning signs before it. There were signs that said, stop, trouble ahead. And then we get closer and it's like a bright red sign and a sad smiley face upside down, things saying, stop, trouble ahead. Pretty soon it turns into the skull and bones and it's like, no, don't do it. And then eventually it gets to a point where we reach a critical mass and it's hard to turn back. But there are warning signs. So going on to the next page, my warning signs of relapse. So I'm gonna go through a couple. We went through this again in a previous session on staying one step ahead of relapse of some time back. So some of these are, number one, stopping or cutting back your attendance in recovery work, like therapy or counseling. And then number three, fantasizing often about how good it would feel to go back to our addictive habit. While blocking out or thinking very little about the potential negative consequences of the addictive habit. Here's a good one, placing yourself in risky situations. So I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it, but I'm gonna start hanging around with so and so who does whatever. Or I'm not gonna go to the website but I'm gonna watch this movie, which I know is gonna have some bad scenes in it or so on and so forth. Or I'm not gonna gamble, but I'm gonna play whatever I like to play without money. Dominoes or something. Avoiding talking about feelings of unhappiness. Avoiding talking about feelings of unhappiness. So not talking about what's going on within you and not being aware of what's going on within you. Rejecting help from others. Acting defensive. Oh, here's a good one. So this is the last one they have here because this is often what I see when people leave our sober living homes. They often have this really clear sign of acting defensive when others around you express concern about their wellbeing or their recovery. It's almost like a telltale sign that something's not going right. When somebody holds you accountable or expresses concern about you and you're sort of like taking it as a personal insult or taking it more so as like a conspiracy theory or there's something more going on beyond, I just need to perhaps pull myself up. And then it goes to other relapsed warning signs. So this is like a couple of lines they have of writing. So I think what we'll do is after the session, things like this, we'll just, instead of doing the talking, we'll just sit here and spend more time on the exercises like this, like in this chapter alone, there's so many exercises. So I think what we'll do is we'll focus on that, focus on skills. Okay, so the next paragraph, now looking back at the list, identify which one of these are your top three signs that you are at risk, three signs of you being at risk of relapse. And then you need to start creating a plan. So it's not enough to be aware of the signs. That's a huge step by the way. That's a huge step to be aware of the signs. But then you need to figure out what do I do about it when it happens? And again, you don't have to be perfect at this. Nobody's perfect at this. This is a lifelong endeavor. This is a lifelong endeavor. The important point is just staying in the ring and being aware of this and being better than your previous self. And that doesn't mean like always being better than your previous self. The path to getting better is two steps forward, one step back. But what you generally wanna see is a trend of improvement. So it's not a straight line that we start to improve and become better than our previous selves. It's like I'm doing great and then I'm not doing so good. I'm doing great, not doing so good. Doing great, not doing so good. So when I say the goal is to be better than our previous selves, it's gonna be like this, what we wanna see is its jagged line that's going upwards. So our one step back is still progress moving forward. That's what we wanna see. That's a realistic, looking back, that's a realistic expectation of how people change and move forward. Okay, so what's gonna be your plans? So every time you see a warning sign, what is gonna be your plan? So bullet point one, discuss it with your counselor, your therapist, if you have one, your sponsor, other people in recovery, if you're in a group discussing it there, if you just have a friend that you work on being better with, discussing it with them. Like you might have a friend that you are just making a commitment to be better with. And you can just text it to them. And that's the thing, you gotta go around places where other people are trying to work on themselves and be better. And when you find those places, then you find other people that are trying to do that. And in that context, you can find those types of people and then create those types of relationships because those are important. People are so important in this. The number two is if you don't have a therapist, a sponsor, a counselor, then finding people like that. So maybe the warning sign or the relapse is an opportunity to, if you don't have it to get it. And then the next bullet point is increasing your attendance at self-help meetings. And the next bullet point is call your 12 step sponsor if you have one or seek out a sponsor. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about this because a question came up about this 12 step program about the last, after the last session. So some thoughts that come to mind that I wanna share is, number one, the course, and we went over this in previous sessions in more depth because this book goes over the 12 step program in earlier chapters. So number one point I wanna get across is, and what the book says, is the core therapeutic benefit of the 12 step programs is just being around other people that understand what you're going through and other people that can give you practical advice about how to get out of it. For many of us in the beginning, we feel this sense of it's hard to really relate to other people. It's hard to really get other people to understand exactly what we're going through. It's almost like this feeling of you can't really understand how difficult it is in terms of what I'm going through or what I've tried or how hard it is. There's almost like this sense of exceptionalism that can happen if you spend too much time in that and you don't have an opportunity to learn about other people who are going through exactly what you're going through. So on one end, if you have this sense of exceptionalism that keeps you away from working with other people, that can be really dangerous. But on the other end, if you're able to relate to people, that can be really helpful. So when you do find other people in the, let's say in a peer support group or in a support group or in a group, it can be really helpful because now you have other people that understand what you're going through. But the kicker is here and this is the point I was trying to make. If you can find somebody who understands what you're going through, that really gets it. And then on top of that has made it out of this, whatever that means to you, made it to six months, made it to a year, made it to five years, made it to 10 years, really what you want to do is, you want to look for that person in your life that's always a step ahead of you. So if you're the intern, don't go to the CEO and be like, how do I get to you? You just go to the person that's a little bit ahead of you that was an intern and was able to secure the job. So yeah, if you've got a month, maybe you look for somebody who's gotten six months or a year and then here's the kicker. If you're able to find somebody that can resonate with where you've been who you are, and then they tell you, look, it's possible. You can get out of this, you can lose the urge to drink drug or engage in pornography or engage in a gambling addiction or whatever the addiction is. If you can find somebody to say that to you, that's incredibly convincing and it's worth doing. Now you can like go to the ends of the earth, like you can go and climb a mountain and then pick a lotus flower and then that's your assignment to then take it to a wise man and the wise man says, this is where you can find that person. You can do that. Or you can just sort of hope and pray that that person will come or you can increase your chances of finding that by going to groups that are organized and have those types of things, like smart recovery, there's other recovery groups. The 12 step program is just the most common program. So you might like another recovery group, but whatever city I'm in and I'm trying to refer somebody to a peer support group, it may or may not have another group, but it tends to always have some sort of 12 step group. So in terms of just being available and also having some evidence and study behind it, the 12 step programs shine in that light. One thing I will say though is it's a group. So if you're coming to a group, this is what I wanna respond to that came up last week is if you're going to a group and you find people that are critical or judgmental or coming on just a little bit too strong, you can always try to find another group or if it's a meeting club, just go to another timing at that club or try to find another area. It's actually common, it's the norm. It's not the exception. It's the norm that people have to go to a couple of meetings to try to find a fit because essentially what's happening is you're meeting people. So anytime you're meeting people, there's different personalities. Even if you have, so there's different personalities, there's different likes and dislikes, there's different types of people. So what you wanna do is try to find and survey different groups and try different groups until you find a fit. And what a fit typically feels like is you go into that meeting and you come out of that meeting feeling better. It's a pretty rough standard, abstract standard of what a good meeting is, but it's essentially how you can think of it. You don't go into that meeting and come out feeling judged, criticized. And lo, you go into that meeting, you come out and you feel motivated, encouraged and feeling better. And so just keep that in mind that if you find a meeting that's not working for you, you can always try to find another one. There are certain factors that are associated with good outcomes. So consistent attendance, typically two to three meetings per week or more has been associated with more better outcomes and less meeting attendance. So there is a dose that can be helpful for particular people. Getting a sponsor has been shown to be more associated about outcomes and not getting one. Actively working the steps has been shown to be more helpful than just working a few and then going to commitments and things like that. So the important thing to keep in mind is it's not necessary to agree with everything that occurs in the 12 step program to derive benefit from it. You probably won't agree with everything in the 12 step program. But again, the core benefit lies in just networking with other people and the social support. Even if the program's not suited for you, every aspect of it is not suited for you. And then yeah, keep in mind it's a, there's a spiritual component to it. So there are gonna be spiritual idea principles and ideas that will resonate with you and resonate with you as a Muslim. And then there might be things that are not going to resonate with you. There's a really good book called Overcoming Addiction, An Islamic Approach to Recovery. Can you see that? It's by the Theba Foundation. Have you heard of this? We've talked about it here before. Okay, all right, great. Okay, good. So it talks about the 12 step program. And then it talks about it from an Islamic perspective and integrating spiritual aspects into it. There's one thing that comes up is sometimes in some groups and also in some parts of the literature, it uses the word our father, which of course is something that is not acceptable in Islam. And we don't refer to God as a father. That's a hard line for Muslims. But it's not about, it's probably less to do with the 12 step program trying to impose a type of religion on the people there. And it's probably more so to do with the spiritual vocabulary of its birthplace in Ohio in the 1930s in the United States. Because what's overwhelmingly the message in the 12 step programs is finding a higher power that resonates with you. And finding a God of your understanding. So essentially it's open to you being a Muslim or from a different type of religion and coming in there and practicing and then very quickly focusing on how do I improve myself as somebody with an addiction. So 12 step groups. One great thing about relapse and catching relapse is it may be difficult to get on the books of your therapist for an extra session. It's gonna be difficult to get into an aftercare program from the perspective of immediacy. You gotta look for insurance matches and so on and so forth. Going to a 12 step program or a meeting or some other peer support meeting. If you're having a bad day, chances are you can just look up a meeting online and go to one. So from the perspective purely of relapse prevention, if you're living, if you're in this game for a long time in recovery and it's three years since the last time you've done any recovery work and all of a sudden you're facing a huge crisis or something's happening in your life. It's really easy to just simply start your meeting attendance back up. So that's something to keep in mind as we talk about relapse prevention. There is 12 step groups for alcoholics like alcoholics anonymous. And then there's offshoots, narcotics anonymous, crystal meth, cocaine, marijuana, pornography and other addictions as well. All right, so then it talks about on page 201 my top three warning signs. And this is an exercise where it says warning sign number one and then underneath the plan if I noticed this sign. Next section, putting a stop to the slip. So they make a distinction between a slip in a relapse and we've discussed that in the past. A slip is something you can catch before you fall into a full blown relapse if you're willing to address it immediately. And what it talks about on the next page is a slip doesn't have to set you back tremendously if you're willing to address it immediately by number one, talking about it with a counselor, therapist or sponsor, figuring out what went wrong and putting safeguards into place to prevent it from progressing into a relapse. Now here's some things you can tell yourself to prevent a slip from heading into a relapse. I can leave the slip behind me as long as I don't repeat it. And that's the important thing, okay? You have a period of abstinence and you make a slip because again, the circumstances are there and you accidentally slip and then those circumstances go away. The thing you can tell yourself is I can leave the slip behind as long as I don't repeat it. The next bullet point is I can use the slip as a learning opportunity. If I understand why it happened, I can prevent it from happening again. Number three, I may feel bad about it, but that will pass as long as I get right, as long as I get right back on the road to recovery without wasting any more time drinking or using or engaging in my addictive behavior. I'll feel good about myself again very soon. So what you tell yourself after a slip will decide if you get back on the wagon versus, ah, I did it, I might as well just do it again or let me just go on this binge because once I get back into recovery, it's gonna be a while or I might as well just continue using or whatever else we tell ourselves. So once you preserved a recovery mindset, brought yourself out of the spiraling lapse mode, accepted that the slip has happened. So you're accepting that it's happened. You just have to move forward with it and decided, because there's a sort of heartbreak that occurs with it. If you have all of these aspirations and dreams of what you wanna do, you feel like you're in a place where you don't have to go back to your addictive behavior again, but then you slip. There's almost like this loss that happens. It's a similar type of loss of losing a job or losing a loved one. You almost go into this denial of this isn't happened or and then you go through anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. So there's almost like this denial that happens when you lapse. So once you've accepted that a slip has happened and decided that you're ready to put it behind you, there are a few more steps you can take to prevent any further engagement in your addictive behavior. So I'm gonna push through this because I wanna finish up today. And it talks about on the next page, learn from the situation. So why is a slip important? It's not just a failure. It's actually an opportunity to learn. Keep that as a mantra. A slip is not a failure. It's an opportunity to learn. A slip is not a failure. It's an opportunity to look at your behavior patterns and start to see where the cracks are. So learn from the situation. So bullet point number one, were there any warning signs before I lapsed in the past few days, weeks or months? So you don't want to be so consumed with denying that the lapse has happened or so focusing on other things that you don't use your mind and energy into the detective work of how did this happen? What were the warning signs? While it's fresh, you want to do the investigation of what happened. Otherwise the more days that pass, the more biased your memory is on what happened. Number two, did you address the warning signs? Was there something more that you could have done? Next, what was the trigger? How did you end up in the situation in which you relapsed? Is that situation going to come back up? How did the relapse affect you? And that's a good one because it's, before we lapse, it might seem like a small thing to relapse because that's in essence what we do. We discount, we minimize what a relapse is going to be. And that's how we get to relapsing. But if we use that opportunity to really think about how did this relapse affect me in reality? So I think it's not going to be that bad, but then I relapsed. Now it's really bad, I feel bad and there might have been some other consequences as well. So how did the relapse really affect me? And to hold on to that the next time that you start to see the warning signs, almost write yourself a letter for the next time that you might start seeing warning signs. How can you cope more effectively the next time you're confronted with a similar situation or trigger? All right, and then the second bullet point. So learn from the situation after a lapse. Number two, set up more support. So step up the support because what a lapse essentially is you've had a hypothesis that I can stay sober with this much work or this much in place. And what a lapse simply is is you've proven that hypothesis is wrong. So now you set up another hypothesis and you say, I need this much now to stay sober long-term. Look, this level kept me sober for three weeks or a month or two months or five days. Now, what is gonna be able to help me reach my goal three months or six months or a year? So now you set up another hypothesis as you step up the support. So what it says is more involvement in self-help groups, getting into therapy or increasing the frequency of therapy. So increasing the level of whatever you're doing if it's working, do more of it. Or for many people the lapse or the slip is the motivation they need to finally go to the meeting or finally get into a program or finally buy the book or buy the ticket and go through the journey. So use that motivation. That motivation after a lapse is golden. Take that motivation and squeeze your last drop out of it because it's not gonna last. Ideally make commitments while that motivation occurs. And that's how you almost use your addictive behavior against you. That's how you use your relapse for you. Of course, you don't wanna say, I'm gonna relapse so I get the motivation and then I'm gonna go to the program because that's just playing with yourself. More social contact with people in recovery. Step up the support with more social contact with positive people. And then finally, considering medication treatment for your addiction. So there's many medications out there that help reduce cravings for behavioral and chemical behavioral chemical and digital addiction. So you can look into those. And then it talks about revisiting these skills that we've learned through the whole journey of this book and then starting to check off which of these that we will want to learn. So inshallah with this, I think I'll wrap up because what I wanna do now is on page 204, we have a menu of options. On page 204, we have a menu of options of everything we've gone over in the previous sessions. And what it's telling us to do now is out of those many of options, put a check mark next to the ones that you're gonna commit to and use. So I think this will be a good opportunity for us to end here at the end of our journey through this whole book and kind of leave the door open to continuing to work on this. So inshallah next time what we'll do is we will go through like we will have us each go through this and go and make some check marks on what we would want to pick as from the menu of options. And then we'll use that to then go over the book. So for example, one thing it says is motivation enhancing skills. So they give a bunch of options and one of the options is thinking about what stage of change you're in rating your current motivation to quit. So if that's something that one of us checks off then what we can do is go to that section in the book and go from there. But what we'll do starting from next week is inshallah we'll just skip all the talking and the education part and then we'll just go directly into skills building and talking about how we can apply this because we've made it through the whole book. So with that inshallah we'll stop, have some questions and check ins and then we'll end with du'a and go from there.