The Tsunami

The Tsunami

I have seen many people come out of rehab and expect everything to go back to the way it was.  They think that they have conquered their drinking or drugging and that life will fall back into place.  This is seldom, if ever, the case.
For starters, they have not conquered their addiction, we none of us have.  Even if you have been sober twenty years you haven't conquered addiction... You have merely tamed it for the time being.  If you stop doing the things that keep you sober you will fall right back down the same rabbit hole you clawed your way out of before.  If you stop being honest, if you stop going to meetings, if you are not in fit spiritual condition, you have shown your Achilles Heel.  When an addict becomes complacent and lets down their guard, they are ripe for the picking and the lies addiction tells us become louder in our minds and before they know it they are right back in the slag heap.
Nothing can go back to the way it was, nor should it.  If things go back to the way they were, then the addict and their families are living a delusion.  If the environment that helped create the addiction and the dysfunction is revisited then the problems will simply re-root and start creeping through the family like ivy climbing up the face of a stone building.
Addiction is like a tsunami that crashes upon the shore of a home, it floods and destroys.  When the water recedes there is debris and destruction.  Structures have been torn down and foundations have been rocked.  You can't live among the destruction, it isn't safe and nothing will hold up.  The answer is to clear away the debris and rebuild.  The structures have to be sturdier, built to tsunami grade code.
When I came out of rehab the first time, I tried to live among the muck and muddy depths of what alcoholism had done to myself, my relationships, my husband, my kids and my self-esteem.  It did not work, the whole thing fell apart again.  After my second stint in rehab we all seemed to know we would have to take life back down to the studs and re-build, slowly, steadily and with careful resolve.
I could not clear away my debris until I had done the steps.  Then, and only then could I pick up a hammer and start helping our situation by tapping and molding our new landscape.