Patients shared rooms, with five female patients to a dorm, and while there were probably several hundred patients in the facility, we were placed in small groups of five to eight for therapy and recovery sessions. I’d read about the daily schedule ahead of time – a mixture of meals, chores, therapy… and yet more therapy. But nothing could prepare me for the reality of what it would be like to detox and confront my addiction. Those lonely first few days were the worst of my entire life.

At first, the whole experience – and several of the other patients – terrified me. One, who I’ll call Dave, was a professional wrestler coming down from a package of painkillers and steroids. He was in immense pain, both physically and emotionally, and the medics were working on an almost daily basis to get his dose of medication correct. When they got it wrong, Dave suffered aggressive outbursts that led to him being removed from public areas by uniformed staff. He was a solid, powerful man and his rages were scary.

Even more frightening were the group therapy sessions, in which I had to admit my worst faults and wrongdoings to a group of strangers, and the counselling where I was encouraged to explore the depths of a childhood punctuated by parental alcoholism. But as the days wore on, something changed: I began to understand addiction at a molecular level, digging into the personal trauma that had tipped me into substance abuse. With this knowledge came power, and a growing sense of personal forgiveness.

This sense of acceptance built, until one day, as I sat in group therapy, something unexpected and beautiful happened. I realised I had fallen in love. Not just with one person, but with everyone – all of the people who had slowly become my small surrogate family during my time in rehab. Seeing them, and feeling their pain, made me realise that perhaps I wasn’t the worthless failure I thought I was. Perhaps, like them, I was just a human being in pain, struggling to escape an ill-judged habit formed at an age where I had very little judgment or even much say in the matter.

I learned that at the heart of addiction, there is often trauma – a pain that hasn’t been spoken about or processed. This is true for a suited businessman unable to stop working and a heroin addict living on the streets. And, as they say in rehab, your sofa is your park bench. There’s no point feeling superior because your addiction looks outwardly more palatable to society because you’ve managed to stay in employment and have a home. The work in rehab is to assess your trauma, identify it and hopefully speak about it in a way that enables you to process it and lessen the pain. You see in other people what you can’t see in yourself, and other addicts are exceptionally adept at helping you get to the heart of your issues. This can be painful, but it is also freeing.

“At first, rehab terrified me, but it taught me I had to confront my trauma to overcome addiction”