Connecting With Others

Before I start with the topic I have in mind, connecting with others, I’d like to assure anyone considering treatment that we’re taking all precautions to deal with Covid-19 and to continue treatment at the same time. We space chairs sufficiently and we offer masks. We’ve cleaned so much we might have to rebuild the facility because we’re going to wear it down to the studs. Seriously, we’re doing well. Anyone with a fever or other symptoms is sent to the doctor and has to be cleared before returning to group. I’ll put it this way — we’re much safer than shopping at Wal-Mart.

One of the reasons we decided to continue treatment is because people entering recovery need human contact. It’s just not the same with online images. Making a solid, deep connection to others who understand addiction is vital to a strong, lasting recovery. Over and over clients tell me what they experience in group when they open up and connect with others — it’s a powerful experience that touches a person deeply. It’s one thing to receive facts about addiction and to understand how drugs affect the mind and body, that’s helpful, but a deep and spiritual connection to change and healing is the path to lasting recovery.

One main reason people relapse after treatment is they don’t follow up with group support, or don’t even establish an individual recovery connection with another person who understands and cares about what they’re going through. The client leaving treatment will go back to the hustle and bustle of their life expecting what they felt and experienced in treatment to last and sustain them, but it doesn’t. Addiction requires ongoing efforts to maintain the deep connection that inspires recovery. This deep connection changes perception, and what once seemed like an unchangeable lifestyle now seems small and self-defeating. Once a person enters recovery at that deep level of connection, they are pulled forward to a future that promises strength and change. It’s no longer a struggle to stay away from alcohol, cocaine, opiates or any other drug, because now there’s a powerful force pushing the person forward to great possibilities. It’s when this connection is broken that the person loses themselves in the chaos, forgets the pain of active addiction, loses inspiration, begins thinking they don’t need others, and forgets they are one drink or one use of a drug before going back to the same hell they left.

It’s much easier to keep the connection alive in recovery than to lose the connection and try to re-connect — that’s not easy. Many addicts never find the connection again, and that’s a tragedy.