Finding My Way Back: How Rehab Changed Everything

I never thought I’d be “one of those people.” You know the type—the ones who end up in rehab, broken and desperate. But there I was, three years ago, sitting in a stark room with strangers, wondering how my life had spiraled so completely out of control.

It started with pills after a back injury. Just something to take the edge off, the doctor said. Then it became something I needed to function. When the prescriptions stopped, I found other ways. You always do. I told myself I wasn’t like “real addicts.” I had a job. I paid my bills. Most of them, anyway.

My wife knew before I did. “You’re not you anymore,” she said one night. I screamed at her for going through my things, for finding the pills I’d hidden in an old pair of boots. I said awful things I can’t take back. When she left with our daughter the next morning, something broke inside me. I called her sister, crying like I hadn’t since I was a kid. That afternoon, her sister drove me to Riverside Recovery Center.

God, those first days were hell. Physical hell as my body raged against me for denying it what it had come to need. Emotional hell as the fog lifted and I had to face what I’d become. My counselor, Miguel, didn’t let me hide behind excuses. “Your story isn’t special,” he told me. “What will be special is what you do with it now.”

I hated him for that. Then I loved him for it.

Drug rehab isn’t what they show in movies. It’s not just group circles and tearful confessions. It’s mundane and repetitive. It’s learning to brush your teeth and make your bed when your body is screaming for relief. It’s eating when food tastes like cardboard because your brain chemistry is so messed up. It’s finding out you’re stronger than you believed when everything in you wants to quit.

The other patients became a weird kind of family. Dave, a former executive who lost everything to cocaine. Tanya, a young mom like my wife, is fighting to get her kids back. Old Jack, on his third time through rehab, who told the best stories and frightened me with the thought that I could end up cycling through this place for decades.

Week three was when things shifted. We were doing this mindfulness exercise, I thought it was complete BS. Sitting by this little man-made pond, just “being present.” I was angry, thinking about all the things I was missing outside. My daughter’s school play. The promotion I’d been working toward. And then—I can’t explain it exactly—I suddenly felt the sun on my face. Really felt it. Noticed the way the light hit the water. For just a minute, I wasn’t craving anything. I was just there, existing, and it was…okay.

My wife visited during family week. She brought pictures of our daughter, but not our actual daughter. I couldn’t blame her. The look in her eyes was cautious, like she was meeting a stranger who resembled someone she used to know. We talked awkwardly about nothing important. As she was leaving, she paused and said, “I’m proud of you for doing this.” I cried for hours after she left.

Sixty-three days. That’s how long I stayed. Longer than what insurance wanted to pay for, but my counselors fought for me. When I left, I was terrified. The center had become safe. Outside was where all the temptations lived.

I moved into a halfway house instead of going home. My wife and I agreed it was better this way. Three more months of structure while I found a job and started rebuilding. I worked at a hardware store. Took the bus to meetings every night. Called my sponsor when the cravings hit, sometimes at 2 AM.

It’s been three years now. I’ve been clean 1,097 days. I still count. My daughter lives with me part-time. My wife and I are divorced, but we’re friends now—real friends, not the bitter kind of “friendly” some ex-couples manage. I’m back in school, training to be a counselor myself.

Rehab didn’t fix everything. That’s not how it works. It gave me tools and showed me a door. Walking through it and staying on this side—that’s been my job every single day since.

Some days are still hard. Some are beautiful in ways I never noticed before. All of them are mine now, fully experienced, not numbed away. And that—even with the pain that sometimes comes with it—is the greatest gift rehab gave me.

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