Michelle a recovering addict and good friend has offered insight into her time at rehab below.

“…

Sometimes I like to write about the things I would’ve liked hearing back when I was sitting where u are.

I had my rock bottom, I went to WHOs, did my time, got out and did my own healing.

Through that I’m diagnosed now, back then I could only assume.

Being the sort of person I am, even amongst fellow addicts I was an acquired taste, 

only a handful of people ever really saw the real value in what I said and how I was

The vast majority quite visibly disliked me.

I didn’t have a great time at WHOs

I didn’t get sober in rehab I got sober outside

I had to take a few years to process long and hard that in the end WHOs gave me what I needed. 

The rehabs job is to get you sober and keep you sober, and give you a safe place to live while you did that.

Anything beyond that was not its job.

I was exposed to a lot of hypocrisy and had to learn to sit with it.

It’s not the rehabs job to be fair to you, 

you’ve been living your whole life being treated as if you had little to no rights and you suddenly decide that now it’s a problem, because you can’t lash out the way you used to in order to self soothe.

It’s the same ugly society, 

Rebounded, reflected and  concentrated into a little bubble society that mimics community.

I wish I heard from someone then what I know now. Not some generic fellowship jargon, not some positive spin on a bad situation and definitely not some lofty ideals of recovery. Not more delusion. I don’t put my faith in delusion but I should’ve.

I wish I heard some hard honest truth that you’re gonna question your reality in there every day because this is not a natural place. These are not natural interactions, every part of these groups are designed to aggravate, to single you out and test your ability to take whatever’s given to you, fair or unfair and to swallow it up gratefully. 

These are not natural interactions,

This is to conditioning designed to break you down until you become something docile and mouldable for the purposes of the rehab.

You’ll get your identity back when you leave, but for your stay you’re a sheep, 

If you hold onto your independence – it’s an attack on the community and your recovery by showing your unwillingness to change.

Everything feels unnatural because it is unnatural, 

the rules themselves are contradictory and the message vs the treatment is incongruent, and you’ll drive yourself mad trying to make it make sense.

Give up, in a different way, give up, 

Put on your baa baa clothes and take all the unfairness, misunderstanding, double standards and stop trying to apply real world logic to an artificial playground

They’ll teach you to be congruent, 

and so you’ll be congruent,

and they’ll tell you that you’ve been very very incongruent.

You’re at the mercy of the mood of the community each day in your own little chapter of addict in wonderland where everything’s backwards, nothing makes sense and everything should be taken opposite to how it’s supposed to

Trying to understand it made me mad, 

So it’s better to be a sheep and do what they say without trying to know why, 

If I were more susceptible to institutional brainwashing my time there would’ve had a lot less suffering.”