The Abstinence Violation Effect and S.H.I.T. Press enter or click to view image in full size Photo by Author | Deep Gap Trail, Mount Mitchell “So, this is a relapse.” A young sailor, barely three years into recovery from alcohol, receives a Christmas cordial in a wartime care package — sent by a thoughtful and well-intentioned human. What happens next is up to him. He chooses the sip. Yet, there is still space between stimulus and response. The unplanned escalation continues to be driven by a series of increasingly more difficult choices. Agency under pressure. How will this story end? Is it already written? We can be hard on that lad. I know I was. I explore this personal vignette in my essay Cordial, My Ass . My focus at the time was on discovering that we tend to flatten this experience with the language we choose — relapse. I go into the role of complex vulnerability factors that went into that choice for me: divorce, isolated duty, wartime stress, heavy drinking culture, easy access, etc.…