Just to prove that statistics don't matter -- even though the odds are under 15% of relapsing after 5 years of sobriety I have managed to do it twice (made it 6.5 years sober the 1st time and 7 years the 2nd). I'm creeping up on a third attempt at the "magical" 5 year mark as I will have 4 years in a few weeks.
The thing is that both times I got better but I never got well. I would treat the symptoms and they would go away, but since I hadn't gotten to the root of the problem they would always come back. It was kind of like treating the symptoms of an infection but never taking an antibiotic to get rid of the infection. This time I decided to take the antibiotic.
