Giving Something Back To The Place That Helped Me Get My Life Back
The topic at a glance
- “I truly believed that the pain and difficulty that would likely be involved with stopping using drugs was less than that which came with my addiction.”
- The drug use was a symptom of the way I perceived things.
- One of the best things about Hope rehab was that I was ‘treated like an adult’.
My Old Life
I was living in San Francisco when my decade long addiction to Heroin finally got a point where I could no longer bear it.
My relationship of over 4 years was a mess, my performance at work had been getting worse and worse, my social life had become pretty much non-existent, I had lost any ambition and passion of which I once had a great deal of for anything that mattered to me or that I had once loved and valued and I was generally very unhappy all the time.
I was suffering from depression and pretty bad anxiety which I believe were bought about as a direct result of my using as opposed to the other way around. I truly believed that the pain and difficulty that would likely be involved with stopping using drugs was less than that which came with my addiction.
In many ways I have been very fortunate. I have a family who care about me and although they have come very close at times and have wanted to at certain points I’m sure, they have never given up on me.
I decided to move back home to London and get myself into a treatment program and attempt to figure out why I had begun using drugs in the first place and why I felt like I was destined to need them forever.
I had made countless attempts to stop using in the past and the conclusion that I had come to was that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. I realise now that I had just learnt to perceive things and behave in a way that wasn’t very conducive for a happy and healthy life and that my drug use was a symptom of this and would persist until I decided to change.
Finding Hope
During the year I spent trying to get placed in a treatment program I discovered that detox and rehabilitation centres within the U.K were incredibly expensive and pretty difficult to get in to as the demand for substance misuse treatment at home seems to massively overwhelm the support and services available. A family member had suggested Hope Rehab in Thailand to me and honestly, at that point I was so desperate that I would have gone just about anywhere.
After two detox programs I finally arrived at Hope. I had never been in a rehab before, I was very scared and had no idea what to expect. I very quickly began to feel comfortable. The staff and counsellors were incredibly welcoming and have proven to be amazing at what they do here throughout. I engaged with the physical activities and my health immediately improved. Straightening out my thoughts and behaviour proved to be a little more demanding but the environment here at Hope consistently promotes and provides the necessary support for mental recovery and encouraged me to make some very necessary changes.
I remember feeling very lucky to have found this place. While I may have no experience of other rehabs to compare it to I can’t help feeling that Hope is quite unique in many ways, one of the most important of these for me is that I was treated like an adult.
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