As told to Sarah Miller
Levi crawled into the doors of AA at 3 years sober, just before he was about to drink or kill himself.
Matt relapsed. He wasn’t as lucky.
Keeping sober when the insides of you want to use drugs or alcohol is fighting a force determined to topple you.
Shira, a woman in her mid-twenties, immigrated to Israel soon after a Birthright trip. Her drinking brought her into the emergency room. She recognized her problem; she decided to stop drinking. She tells us what it was like trying to keep sober on her own:
Three months later and I still couldn’t stop thinking about it. All I wanted to do was grab hold of that bottle, pour the entirety of its contents down my throat in one swift move. I could see it, I could feel it seeping through my veins like life-saving blood, reaching to the edge of my fingertips.
She quit drinking. But the same obsessive thought remained in her head: Sobriety just isn’t for me. She couldn’t sleep at night without her bottle, she barely left her home other than for work, and she’d gained weight. She began to self-harm.
I was haunted by memories of my past. Sometimes, I wouldn’t consciously remember, but my body did: hot flashes throughout my back, a constant headache. I would lie with my stomach touching my sheets, waiting for the cold to ease the millions of shattered pieces stuck inside.
I’d drag myself to work, sometimes showering, usually not. Most days I called in sick, and if it wasn’t for the fact I was working for a family member, he would’ve fired me. My face was covered in pimples from all the fast food I was stuffing in my face. I drank more coffee than ever.
Everything smelled of cigarettes: my clothes, my hair, my sofa, my bedroom, my bathroom, the small living room. My arm bore the brunt of its stubs, a hundred black holes where my hopes should have been. I looked at the random trail on my flesh, heading nowhere. It was just like my fear: random, constant, black holes sinking me inside, stopping me from leaving my house and facing the world.
For addicts, drugs and alcohol is the coping mechanism they use to deal with life. They cannot face the reality of life and find relief through using. In order to heal, addicts need to face their own reality and find alternate ways to deal with life. Without learning healthy coping mechanisms, most addicts will find other destructive ones. They may turn to self-harm, to sex, food, shopping. Some will obsess over movies, internet, exercise… anything that eases the burden of life.
Statistics for long-term sobriety aren’t good. When being alive feels like a daily walk through hell the path of drugs that leads to a walking death doesn’t feel much worse.
It’s when neither choice is an option that Retorno steps in. We address the issues that lead people to use drugs and alcohol in the first place so that they don’t need to pick them up again. We help them deal with all the muck that’s stuck inside, so once it’s gone, they’ll be able to live life fully and not merely muddle through it. They’ll begin to appreciate all the little things: a cup of coffee, a hot shower, a good book. Fresh linen, new flip flops, a funny tweet.
We help them discover their own personal likes and dislikes, to rediscover their dreams and goals, their deepest wishes. We guide them to find who they were, who they are, and who they want to be.
We offer hope. We embrace the person who has nothing to lose because all has already been lost. When faced with the choice to deal with their life or to die a certain death, and they don’t know which is better, we show them a new way.
We help them shed the reasons they used in the first place. At Retorno it’s okay to cry, to shout, to break free.
After a year of painful sobriety, Shira suffered a bad relapse and entered Retorno.
I was right: sobriety wasn’t for me. I held onto it with all the energy I could muster, but who wants to be unable to sleep nights, to be too afraid to face their own shadow? I drank, because what did I have to lose? I drank, because I was an empty shell just waiting for death to find me.
Shira stayed at Elah, Retorno’s detox center, for a couple of months before entering the seven-month program for women.
I didn’t know what hit me, when I first got into treatment. We sat in a circle for group therapy a few times a day: groups on relationships, on the 12 Steps, on dealing with emotions. We had animal therapy, horseback riding therapy, art therapy, individual therapy, so much therapy!
It took me weeks before I finally broke down, before I began to share with these strangers all the emotions I had locked inside. I cried every day. I went to the cave and screamed and broke chairs. I punched the tall punching bag as if it were the person who had hurt me most. I was driven by desperation: all the moments before picking up that bottle. I knew I wouldn’t have another chance.
I finally found a safe place, surrounded by nothing but hills, and nobody to hurt me. Sure, therapy hurt – it was burning out all of my dirt so that I could begin again. Slowly, I became friends with the others and I learned to be part of them. We had jobs in Retorno, and I learned responsibility. I was given consequences for my actions, and I learned to be humble. I was taught the very basics of being human, things I had somehow missed throughout the years: keeping to a schedule, basic hygiene, basic manners.
We cleaned: our rooms, the offices, the horses’ stalls. We worked in the kitchen, the garden. Simple, brainless exercise. Slowly chipping away at the very depth of my soul, so that in its place I became a person, respected, respectable.
At Retorno, we offer a place of healing: therapies, support, safety. We give people space to complete the process, to breathe in the country air. To just be.
We teach them tools: to stare their demons in the eye, to face it, deal with it, live with it. We offer a myriad of tools; they find the ones that work for them.
We give them time: time to heal, time to breathe, time to dig deep inside and find the little bit of hope that made them come here instead of choosing to die.
Shira describes how ultimately Retorno saved her life:
Retorno gave me the chance to shed my past, to find it in me to look myself in the mirror and to love, to care, and accept the image staring back at me. I hated treatment, but it saved my skin. I don’t want to ever drink again, I’ve learned how to deal with my life without needing to drink. Sobriety is the biggest gift I’ve ever received. Finally, I’m free to be me.
