not relapse-type thrill-seeking
the violence hadn’t been relapse-type thrill-seeking violence but simply doing the best he could at that moment and trying to stand up for himself and for a resident of the House.
Context
Pat drawing the distinction the recovery world lives by, reassuring the man who most needs to hear it: the shooting-fracas was not a relapse into the old thrill-seeking self but the sober self doing its best under fire. The disease is understood here as a quality of motive, not of act — the same violence could be a relapse or could be defense, and the difference is entirely a matter of what it was reaching for.