Preparing for Life After Sex Addiction Rehab
Let’s face it: Your time in rehab was probably different than you expected. Maybe it was harder than you thought it would be, bumpier than you’d planned for. Those first few weeks are the hardest. You hadn’t realized there would be withdrawal symptoms or that they’d be just as real as drug or alcohol withdrawals. Maybe you found yourself agitated and shaky, nervous or sweaty, unable to focus. Maybe you experienced panic or you simply shut down. All of these things are to be expected. Breaking away from a life of addiction isn’t easy, and some say sex addiction treatment can be the hardest of all.
Sex addiction recovery forces us to examine some core truths about ourselves—how we’ve been dealing with intimacy, physical and emotional, and whether we’ve been using sex to mix a mortar for the wall we’ve built around our hearts. It’s a wall a lot of people have, not just sex addicts, but it’s one we must confront. We’re so good at building this wall that we’ve been doing it on autopilot—going through the motions of addiction, laying one brick at a time between ourselves and the rest of the world.
Sticking It Out
It’s important to stick out your treatment stay. Lots of people want to leave early and many make the mistake of doing so. The relapse incidence in those cases is extremely high. People have all kinds of reasons for wanting to leave early. Some of them are:
Not liking rehab rules or structure—It can be very hard for newly recovering addicts to submit to orders and rules when their lives have been primarily dictated by their addictions. Newly recovering addicts also tend to be self-focused and may lack awareness of why rules and structure are good for their recovery. They are good for your recovery!
Problems with authority—Newly recovering addicts tend to be demand-resistant. They frequently rebel against anything but their addictive urges. Respect yourself; respect your treatment providers.
Withdrawal symptoms causing distress—Withdrawal symptoms such as anxiety, agitation and panic may cause distress or withdrawal. Many addicts may feel the need to flee recovery to the safety of their own environments, but it is very unwise to do so in this vulnerable state. Let the withdrawals pass safely.
Not liking living with others—Some addicts come to rehab to learn just how much they never wanted to live with others, though many others make deep connections to last a lifetime. Which group you’ll fall into may only be the matter of your state of mind. Choose.
Feeling no one there is anything like you—Among recovery specialists, this is called “terminal uniqueness,” and it’s fairly common among addicts. We all like to think we’re special little snowflakes, and in many ways, we probably are. But addiction doesn’t discriminate.
The urge to use—All the other reasons that can be listed for leaving rehab are just a psychological cover for this last one, the urge to use. Your addict wants you to leave early so it can be in control of your life again. The end.
Staying through to the end of rehab and electing to continue with your aftercare treatment is vital to your recovery. You will find many rationalizations not to, and maybe only one good reason to remain, but it is the most important—you need to recover. You need to get your life back.
When Leaving Feels Too Soon
Sometimes the final day of rehab comes and we are ready to fly out the doors, eager to get back to our lives and our routines. But just as often, after the first hurdles have been handled, recovering addicts find themselves surprised by new growth, new feelings, new possibilities. When they think of leaving, suddenly they feel vulnerable—will this new growth feeling last when I walk out that door? It can be hard to say goodbye to something that has given you back to yourself, hard to say goodbye to the feeling of safety. But it’s important that we choose to walk through the doors on our final day with a sense of hope and optimism—we can do this. Nothing is to be gained by letting fear unravel what we’ve built here. That fear voice is the addict within trying to take away something fragile but potentially monumental, something we’ll eventually be able to stand on and say, “Hey, this made me who I am today—strong, courageous, amazing.”