"It's almost as if I've relapsed": an interpretative phenomenological analysis of addiction therapists' experiences with supporting their clients through repeated relapse

Substance misuse relapse – commonly understood as the resumption of drug using behavior after sustained periods of abstinence - has been found to increase the risk for overdose death by 80% (Smyth et al., 2010; Sureshkumar et al., 2021). As drug overdose deaths have, worldwide, significantly increased in recent years (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC], 2021), relapse is an important aspect for relevant scientists, practitioners, and policymakers to consider. Nevertheless, relapse remains a relatively misunderstood aspect of addiction in both, its conceptualization and in how it is approached in treatment. This paper fills this gap.