What is Euphoric Recall?
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.
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.