Relapse Apathy…

Don't be hard on yourself for having an unproductive day, or for relapsing. This is all part of the recovery process. Try and focus on making progress... each time by a small step.

I've also reached a point of relapse where I didn't even realize how it happened. You may feel apathy, or you may feel that you reached a point of no return with your urges and rituals, when you relapse. Triggers can lead you to it. Loneliness, depression or boredom can also lead you to it. Different types of rationalizations for why it's not that bad can lead you to it.

You're right that you need motivation in order to quit. You can't rely on the initial positive emotions and optimism to reach your recovery, which for many of us, is typically a long journey. Right now it seems that you're in a depressive state, that it's not positive enough, or negative enough. Most of us in such state would continue its use, until we find ourselves in the lowest of lows, where we make the decision to start all over again. But more seriously this time.

What's important here to realize is that you rationally know the answer. You know the negative effects it has in your life. What I find useful, is to try and take notice in how you're feeling right now. The fact that you didn't get rid of the frustration. The fact that all your problems are still there. Meanwhile, you have to work on thinking about your long term goals. Why do you want to be healthy in the first place?

Continue doing what you did that made you feel great. You should expect many many bad days. I suggest the following reading, which I found most useful:
https://www.recoverynation.com/recovery/recovery_workshop_contents.php

Take care and stay strong my friend

 

I’ve been there. In fact, I was there recently. In all honesty, I’ve had my best streaks following relapses that had no particular rhyme or reason to them, I just did the act on autopilot. Feeling intense guilt, shame, and remorse isn’t an indicator of how capable you are of quitting. As someone who was addicted to alcohol for a long time, the shame, guilt, and remorse that I felt after a binge were never indicators that I was ready to change. It was just more of the same.

Apathy is a tool that addiction uses to get you to say “f*** it” and let it do what it wants with you. Apathy, in my experience, is also a result of building up these grand resolutions in my head concerning quitting, and then failing. For me the best thing to do has been to “not let the left hand know what the right is doing”. That is, just quietly going about turning over a new leaf. No grand actions. No swearing on God’s throne. No resolutions. Just dusting myself off and going about my business.

Emotion isn’t always the best guide to action. Emotion never moved me towards doing the right thing. Emotion often leads me away from doing the right thing, because I want to feel good…all the time…at any cost. It can be scary to not feel anything after relapse, as if your conscience is fried, but trust me that’s not the case.
Emotion is great for art-making and love-making, but not for changing your life, at least in my experience. What does make for change is one, small, productive act at a time, one day at a time, one moment at a time. Hope this helps. Stay up.