The hyperbole is overstated, at times, and this distracts from the actual point being made.
If I drink or drug, there is a big possibility I will never find recovery again. The drink or drugs may kill me directly. Or I just may die at 50, 60, 70, or 80 after years of horridness with moments of oblivion. Or there may just be a gradual decline into despair. Who knows? If I go back into active addiction, however, what makes life life will be gone, and I might be trapped inside my own goldfish bowl of thought, passing through the world with the blinds down. That is a death, and a death that refuses to die and yield to what comes after.
So, the question, here, is really whether, if I remain trapped in self-centredness, I will eventually relapse. Eventually, yes. Because the state of extreme self-absorption always resolves into recovery or relapse, unstable as it is.