What is Euphoric Recall?
Euphoric recall is the E in the RELAPSE acronym. It is particularly dangerous because it feels like simple reminiscence. The person is not consciously planning to use. They are just remembering. But the memory has a direction.
Euphoric recall is a cognitive phenomenon in which a person with addiction selectively remembers the pleasurable aspects of substance use while minimising or forgetting the negative consequences. The memory is not fabricated — it is incomplete.
How the memory lies
Human memory is not a recording — it is a reconstruction. For a person in recovery, the brain’s reward system replays the relief, the warmth, the ease. What gets quietly edited out is the next morning, the relationships damaged, the promises broken.
The E in RELAPSE
Euphoric recall is the E in the RELAPSE acronym. It is particularly dangerous because it feels like simple reminiscence. The person is not consciously planning to use. They are just remembering. But the memory has a direction.
Working with euphoric recall
The intervention is not to suppress the memory but to complete it. When euphoric recall arrives, the person in recovery learns to follow the memory further — past the warmth and relief, into what came next. Not as self-punishment, but as accuracy.
Book a consultation with Philippe Jacquet — psychotherapist and Jungian analyst, London.