Self-sabotage in recovery is when an addict intentionally or unintentionally interferes with their goal of remaining sober. It’s when someone who wants to recover from addiction works against themselves by engaging in behaviours that undermine their sobriety efforts.
For example, they may engage in self-sabotaging behaviours, like frequenting the same locations they used to while in active addiction or purposefully ignoring advice or support structures.
This type of self-destructive behaviour is usually due to fear or deep-rooted beliefs that pull them back into old patterns.
If you feel like you or someone you love is dealing with self-defeating behaviours, we want you to know that it’s not too late. You can still break the cycle, rebuild momentum, and protect your progress.
In this article, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about addiction recovery self-sabotage. Including:
- How to recognise it
- The “why” behind it
- Usual ways of doing it (so you can stop)
Our clinical experts will also help you learn how to stop self-sabotaging, regain control, and understand how professional treatment can support long-term success.
Read on to learn how to recognise the patterns, break them early, and live a fulfilling life free of drugs and alcohol.
Key Takeaways
What is Self-Sabotage in Recovery?
Self-sabotage is the act of disrupting your healing process through thoughts, choices, or destructive behaviours that actively work against your progress.
Some examples of self-sabotage in recovery include:
- Skipping meetings and making excuses
- Hanging out with old friends or at old places, despite knowing it produces cravings
- Romanticising addiction and thinking you can handle “one drink” or “one hit” again
- Not accepting help and saying you “can handle this on your own”
What makes self-sabotage in recovery difficult to recognise is that it can happen consciously or unconsciously. Sometimes, you may know exactly what you’re doing, like skipping a support group meeting because you feel demotivated.
Other times, you may be totally oblivious to what’s happening but still sabotaging the recovery process in subconscious ways.
A good example is not setting an alarm, thinking you “can wake up early on your own”. Then, you sleep late, miss a meeting, and blame it on “being stuck in traffic”.
This type of sabotage is almost always due to fear, but it manifests itself as poor time management (more on this later).
In 2020, a paper released by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) entitled Treatment and Recovery reported that relapse rates for substance use disorders range from 40% to 60%. While not all of these cases are caused by self-sabotage, many begin with it, especially during the early emotional and mental stages of relapse.
Why Do We Self-Sabotage?
People self-sabotage for different reasons. However, fear and low self-esteem are two major driving forces behind this behaviour.
Fear is your brain’s way of trying to protect you, but in substance abuse recovery, it often misfires and treats growth like a threat. Your mind is “comfortable” with the status quo and doesn’t want to change, even though it’s slowly killing you. This is why addiction is often called a trap.
Since your brain fears any type of change and sees growth as a threat, it makes the addict want to avoid or even sabotage their own recovery to keep things “safe”.
People may also self-sabotage due to low self-esteem. We’ve heard from many addicts at our clinic that they felt as though they “didn’t deserve” to lead a better life and that they wanted to stay addicted. If you believe you don’t deserve to get better or are bound to mess things up, you may act in ways that confirm those beliefs (e.g., a self-defeating behaviour like sabotage).
You don’t want to fail, but it may feel familiar and strangely safer than growth. This isn’t conjecture. It’s been scientifically proven.
A neuroscience research study published in PLOS One called The Self-Liking Brain: A VBM Study on the Structural Substrate of Self-Esteem by Agroskin, Dimitrij, et al. supports this link. Brain imaging studies show that people with low self-esteem have less grey matter in areas responsible for emotional regulation and stress management. These regions help you cope with discomfort, assess social cues, and regulate your stress response. If you’re lacking in this area, it may make you more likely to sabotage your own recovery process.
The good news is that if you can identify what’s fuelling the self-defeating behaviour, you can remove its power. These are the two main reasons, but let’s discuss the ways self-sabotage manifests.
Ways We Might Self-Sabotage
The four usual ways self-sabotage tends to manifest during recovery are negative thoughts, risky behaviours, procrastination or avoidance, and perfectionism.
Here are the ways we may self-sabotage in recovery in more depth:
1. Negative Thoughts
Negative thoughts are distorted ideas you tell yourself that reinforce shame, guilt, or hopelessness. They often sound like:
In our experience, these thoughts are usually rooted in anxiety, depression, trauma, or other mental health issues.
When you’re in a poor mental state, your brain tends to focus on failure and ignore evidence of progress. This “all-or-nothing” thinking distorts reality and increases emotional stress.
Our advice is to practise self-compassion. We tend to sabotage our own recovery efforts because we feel like we are unworthy or that we’re not capable of doing better. That’s simply not true. The fact that you’re reading this article proves that. You are not a failure. You have a disease, so be kind to yourself.
2. Risky Behaviours
Risky behaviours are choices that put your sobriety in danger, often as a way to test limits or feel a sense of control. They’re driven by impulse, overconfidence, or unresolved emotional tension.
Examples of risky behaviours include hanging out with old friends, going back to bars and drinking occasionally “just to prove you’re fine”, or skipping medication because you’re feeling better. While these actions may seem harmless at first, they often lead to addiction relapse.
Our best advice to help overcome self-sabotaging behaviours like this is better self-awareness. Once you recognise that this is the disease of addiction pushing you towards acting out, maintaining recovery becomes easier.
3. Procrastination or Avoidance
Procrastination and avoidance are common forms of self-sabotage that are rooted in fear of failure, rejection, or emotional discomfort. Instead of facing a difficult task, like applying for a job, attending therapy, or having a hard conversation, you delay it, telling yourself you’ll deal with it later. Procrastination or avoidance are coping mechanisms to help you deal with negative emotions or unresolved trauma. Once you are aware of this, it’s easier to deal with it.
The problem is that these two behaviours are just short-term coping strategies. They offer temporary relief, but in the long term, they are extremely harmful to your recovery. They prevent growth, keep anxiety alive, and disconnect you from the support and structure that recovery depends on.
4. Perfectionism
Perfectionism is the belief that you must do everything flawlessly or not at all. It often stems from poor self-esteem, fear of judgment, or the need to control outcomes. You put too much pressure on yourself, so one mistake (a missed appointment, slip, or bad day) feels like total failure.
We can’t overstate how dangerous this mindset is for your emotional well-being. We see it at our clinic every single day. It can sabotage a relapse faster than just about any type of behaviour. If you can’t celebrate small victories or practice self-care by congratulating yourself for managing to stay sober another day, your recovery won’t last. And, if you feel unworthy just because you didn’t do something perfectly, you’ll almost certainly slip back into old habits.
Perfectionism can trick you into thinking that the recovery journey should be linear and that those who succeed did it in one go. The reality is that life is not a fairy tale or a movie. Recovery doesn’t happen that way. At our clinic, we teach our patients to expect these downtimes and stay committed until the end. We hope you can do the same.
How to Overcome Self-Sabotage
The four evidence-based ways to overcome self-sabotage include celebrating small wins, joining a support community, identifying negative beliefs, and getting professional help.
Let’s break each one down.
Celebrate Small Wins
Small wins are meaningful milestones in recovery that often go unnoticed but matter a lot to long-term sobriety.
These include the moments you resist a craving, attend a meeting when you didn’t feel like it, or even just make it through the day without giving up. Recognising and reinforcing these actions builds confidence, strengthens motivation, and rewires your brain to seek progress instead of perfection.
Here’s how you can celebrate small wins in healthy ways:
Join a Support Community
Joining a support network is the best way to stay sober. Period. We have a saying in the recovery community: addiction is a disease of isolation, and connection is the opposite of addiction.
Isolation encourages self-sabotage, while connection creates accountability. Having support groups or communities provides encouragement and a reminder that you’re not the only one struggling.
A peer-based environment can also act as a direct intervention. A 2008 NIH-published study titled “Effectiveness of a Peer-Support Community in Addiction Recovery: Participation as Intervention” by Boisvert, Rosemary A., et al., found that being part of a community built on self-determination had a measurable impact on long-term recovery. During meetings, you’ll learn healthy coping mechanisms, hear stories from other recovered addicts, and get your mind off of addiction and back on recovery.
Here’s how to find a support community near you:
Identify Negative Beliefs
Negative beliefs are like poison to your mind. They create emotional pain and drive you to want to use again.
They also distort how you see yourself, ruin your progress, and convince you that you’re unworthy of a better life. In recovery, these deep-seated beliefs can fuel relapses by making you feel hopeless, ashamed, or beyond help.
You can’t change what you don’t recognise. The first step to disarming negative beliefs is identifying them. Here’s how:
Once you identify these beliefs, you can replace them with a healthier, more realistic view of who you are and who you’re becoming as you heal. In our experience, the best way to do this is by starting your day with affirmations or writing down one thing you’re proud of. This alone can begin to shift that internal narrative.
Get Professional Help
Getting professional help is the best thing you can do for yourself. While having supportive family or friends is great, clinical care offers a different level of expertise and accountability.
As Paola Vidauri Luna, a licensed marriage and family therapist, explains: “Therapy helps individuals explore and uncover underlying causes of addiction in a safe, supportive, and professional environment.”
Start by speaking with a qualified healthcare provider who can assess your needs and guide you toward the right level of care. This could be a doctor, a licensed therapist, or a specialised addiction recovery centre like ours. At our clinic, we offer personalised support designed to treat both the substance use and the drivers behind it.
Here are some ways to get professional help:
Struggling With Self-Sabotage in Recovery? The Cabin Can Help
Nobody understands self-sabotage during the recovery process better than we do. It plays out the same way time and again: you try to get clean, but then you miss a meeting, isolate, or pick a fight with someone who cares about you. Then, you tell yourself you’re not cut out for recovery. Why try if you’re just going to relapse anyway?
At The Cabin rehab Thailand, we understand this cycle. We help you see where these patterns come from, usually deep pain, shame, or trauma, and give you tools to break them, like cognitive behavioural therapy, trauma therapy, group support, or even medication if necessary. Countless thousands of people have overcome addiction in spite of their self-sabotage by using our unique blend of Western medicine and Eastern holistic treatment. Through therapy, structure, and real support, you can finally get out of your own way. Contact us today for your free evaluation.
