uncorked

To me, there is a HUGE difference between having a couple of drinks and resuming sobriety the next day vs going on a 3-month bender. That's one thing about AA I don't agree with (well, there's a lot about AA I don't agree with....) Giving back a "chip" because you had a drink or two seems punitive and counter-productive. I wouldn't worry about semantics, though.

Carlotta

That was brilliant Hawkeyes!
I don't like the word slip since it really minimizes what happened. Either someone drank or they did not.
Uncorked: AA is not like the police where you are asked to give back your badge or the old fashioned army where they broke your sword.
I don't attend AA anymore but I have been to well over a thousand meetings at dozens of different groups. I have never witnessed someone being asked to return their chips because they drank.
When I came back to AA after a six year "slip" everyone was very kind and welcoming to me. The AA police was not here to tell me:
Now, give us your chips back or else!!
People told me they were glad I was there and an elderly lady gifted me with a copy of the Big Book.
And I people coming back treated kindly over and over again.

Dee74

I understand why people might use the term slip, especially as a newcomer...but the longer I'm sober the more I see slip and relapse as the same thing.

A return to drinking is a return of my active alcoholism...it's the 'sick' to my 'welllness' in recovery.

D

rahrah

Slip / Relapse.....Both put you back to day 1.

rahrah

I'm not an AA'er...but from what I know the chips represent sobriety....drinking doesn't.

MIRecovery

I had a minor slip that only lasted 4 years

Andante

I can see calling a single isolated drinking event surrounded by an otherwise strong and consistent recovery effort a "slip," but the problem is, where would you draw the line between "slip" and "relapse?"

To me, you have to have made some serious and consistent effort towards recovery before you can "relapse." Mostly, what people call "relapses" are simply a resumption of drinking after a (usually brief) period of abstinence.

Gottalife

I don't suppose it really matters, but the words do mean something to me. I had a lot of slips in the year I was trying to climb out of the alcoholic pit. In reality, the dry spells were just time between drinks. Because I hadn't found a solution I enevitably slipped back into the alcoholic ooze. Some of those slips were connected with AA but most were not.

Eventually I found the solution and stayed out of the pit. I was able to recover. Now I have something to relapse from.

My friend Zac had apparently recovered. He had been sober 10 years when he relapsed. He returned to his pre AA thinking, all his recovery work and knowledge was gone from his mind and he never regained his recovery. He was dead in three months.

A slip may be an event on the road to recovery, a relapse, from a recovered state, can be an event on the road to the next world.

stevieg46

No difference both mean lifting the first drink whether its for a short or long period .

S obriety .
L oses .
I ts .
P riority .

Regards Stevie. recovered 12 03 2006 .
words are easy music is much harder .

Hawkeye13

I really like this

Nic233

I could never slip as I can't stop drinking once I even have a sip, but personally I do think there's a big difference with having an isolated wine or beer, and completely falling back into old drinking habits for months...each to their own I guess X

Music

My sobriety is a personal thing to me. There's a saying, "to thine own self be true." I heard a person say at a meeting one night, "slips are just part of getting sober." What a load of crap! Slips are part of drinking. If a slip is just part of getting sober, then the periods of time between my drunks, were sober times.....REALLY? I'm either sober, which means no alcohol and no drugs of any kind unless prescribed by a physician, or I'm not sober which means I'm slipping and sliding or popping pills and if I think that's being sober, I'm being true to myself. How many drinks or how many slips does it take to get dead? People die every day from ODing or running into stuff after a couple beers. If having a drink or two is that important to you, you've got a big problem.