Should I Keep My Time In Drug Rehab Secret?

While you’re in alcohol and drug rehab, it is relatively easy to speak about your experience. You are among a group of people who have been through similar things as you. Your addiction is why you are there, after all. But what happens once you leave rehab? Should you keep your time in drug rehab secret?

This is a complex matter that has no simple answer. There are compelling reasons to speak openly about your time in drug rehab. However, there are also practical reasons to keep it secret.

Here are some of the factors you need to consider.

Have you owned your addiction?

Denial is both a symptom and enabler of addiction. People struggling with addiction deny that they have a problem even to themselves. That denial prevents addicts from getting treatment. Even as it becomes obvious to everyone else that you have a problem, you may not see it.

But without accepting that you have a problem, you are unlikely to recover. The steps towards recovery take work and commitment, which no one will undertake if they think they have things under control.

This is one of the problems with keeping your time in drug rehab secret. While you may have conceded that you have a problem in going to rehab in the first place, the instinct to lie about it hints at a difficulty in owning your addiction. Of course, stigma may be the main reason for your secretiveness, but denial to others can lead you back into a state of denial to yourself.

When considering whether or not to tell people about your time in rehab, ask yourself whether you have truly owned your addiction. If you believe you have, ask yourself the real reasons you want to keep it secret. Are these reasons practical?

Who do you want to keep your addiction secret from?

The question of who you want to keep your addiction secret from will be revealing. If you are trying to keep it secret from family and friends, this hints at your difficulty in owning your problem.

While in rehab, you should come to accept your problem without self-judgment, and to find pride in your recovery. Outside of rehab, this becomes more difficult, as your friends and family have not been through the same process as you. However, revealing your problem to them will be a declaration to yourself and to them that you have come to terms with what you have been through.

Keeping your time in drug rehab secret from family and friends can lead to bigger problems down the line. A pattern of secrecy is one of the damaging symptoms of alcohol and drug addiction. The temporary feeling of shame in sharing your experience is a small price to pay for maintaining your recovery.

But what about employers, colleagues, and networks?

What about your career?

Unfortunately, sharing that you have spent time in drug rehab may be damaging for your job or job prospects. America’s working world has not yet accepted on a broad scale that addiction is a disease. Many employers may reconsider hiring someone based on their experience in rehab.

When it comes to your career, keeping your time in rehab secret might be the most practical choice. As long as you are doing so to improve your prospects or keep your job, the secret should not become too toxic. However, if it no longer threatens your career, keeping it secret out of shame can lead to that cycle of denial.

In terms of your career, the line between secrecy for practical purposes and denial is somewhat clear. That line becomes blurred in a romantic setting.

What do you tell your date?

Dating is difficult for recovering addicts. You are going to be meeting new people who you want to impress, in a context that is often facilitated by alcohol. Furthermore, any relationship based on secrecy and lies is bound to become toxic.

On the other hand, telling your date from the get-go that you are a recovering addict may be too much for them to process. It starts the relationship off with a level of intimacy most couples work up to over time.

The reality is that, when you start dating, it may be wise to keep details about your addiction to yourself. If a first date is going particularly well, you might feel like it is the right moment to share this part of your life. Otherwise, filling the person in on one of the first few dates is advised. At this point, you have gotten to know each other better, and if you continue to keep your time in rehab secret, it will only become a toxic elephant in the room.

Keeping your time in rehab secret is not ideal, but it can be necessary for practical reasons. Assess each case in context, while trying to be as open and honest as possible.

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How Mindfulness Can Give You Perspective In Recovery

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference” – the Serenity Prayer

In the Serenity Prayer, we ask for the wisdom to know the difference between what we can and cannot change. Without that wisdom, we can get stuck trying to “fix” things we need to accept or accepting things about ourselves that really can be changed. The question many recovering addicts ask themselves is how they can achieve this sense of wisdom.

It is a tough question for addicts to answer, considering that we have made decisions that led to terrible consequences. Can we really learn to trust our instincts over what we can and cannot change?

One of the most popular strategies in treatment of addiction and mental illness today is mindfulness. However, without a proper understanding of mindfulness, you are probably wondering how sitting in meditation can help give you perspective.

But mindfulness really is the key to implementing the lessons in the Serenity Prayer. Here is how mindfulness can give you the perspective you need in recovery.

The attitude of Non-Judgment

Jon Kabat-Zinn, the father of Western mindfulness practice, speaks about 9 attitudes of mindfulness. One of the most important is that of Non-Judgment.

Non-judgment requires you to put aside your ideas of “good” and “bad.” Usually, we think or feel something and immediately assign a value judgment to it. We feel happy, and consider it good. We feel guilty, and consider ourselves bad. Mindfulness tells us to try to reserve judgment.

Judgment and reactivity

If you are trying to be a better person, non-judgment may seem counterintuitive. Don’t you need to know good from bad to make the right decisions? However, the automatic judgments we make do not make us better. They only make us more reactive.

Think about the following scenario. You meet someone you have hurt in the past while under the influence of substances and you feel guilty. This guilt leads you to think that you have been a bad person. You immediately try to make up for what you did in the past.

Chances are you forget about the present and begin to obsess about what you did. Instead of finding a way forward together with the person or letting the past go, you over-apologize, buy gifts, make promises you can’t keep. You are not actually helping the person. Rather, you are trying to get rid of the bad feeling of guilt, along with the sense that you are bad.

Non-reactivity

Only by being non-judgmental can you see things for how they are. In our example, you would feel your guilt and acknowledge that it relates to something you did. You acknowledge to yourself that you hurt the person. You even acknowledge the internal instinct towards self-loathing and self-punishment.

Then you see what your instincts are telling you to do. Instead of simply reacting, you take an objective look at how you would react and what that would do in the situation. Would it change anything for the better? Is there actually anything you can do to make the situation better?

This is where you begin to generate “the wisdom to know the difference.”

Wisdom

The mindfulness attitude of non-judgment is one of the most significant aspects of wisdom. While it is tempting to think that our automatic judgments of good and bad indicate our moral rightness, it is actually the opposite. Those automatic judgments are simply reactions based on instinct.

Mindfulness tells us not to take those judgments too seriously. You can’t suddenly stop yourself from having judgments, but you can acknowledge them and let them go. This will give you the space to become wise, seeing reality for what it is, not what you want it to be.

As addicts, we get used to making judgments about ourselves and the world around us. By letting these judgments go, we are not letting our moral compass lapse. On the contrary, we are allowing ourselves to put our flawed worldview aside and decide what needs to be done.

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Am I A Statistic? How To Deal With Addiction As An Individual

Something very disconcerting has been happening over the last couple of months in the midst of COVID-19. Instead of speaking about people, everyone has begun talking in numbers. Politicians, health experts, and the everyday person all have opinions which weigh up the numbers of dead. Some insist we must do everything to limit the number of dead. Others argue that economic collapse will cause more deaths than the virus.

The reason this disturbs me so much is this: for the individuals who make up those dead, the numbers don’t matter. If I die, the amount of people who died at the same time does not factor into my personal experience. In other words, when speaking about these numbers, we’re making flippant assumptions about deep philosophical and existential considerations.

I’m not going to discuss whether there is a “correct” way to speak about the numbers of infected and dead. But this has brought up something that used to bother me tremendously when recovering from addiction. Did I have control or was I just a statistic?

The addiction numbers game

The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that 40% to 60% of people with substance use disorder relapse at some point after treatment. This number used to terrify me. I was determined to get clean and stay clean. I had committed to never use substances again. I had made promises to family, friends, and myself. But so had each individual who made up that 40% to 60%.

The numbers proved to me something I’d had no intention of accepting. I did not have control. No matter how hard I tried, I might end up becoming part of that number, even if treatment had worked.

Turns out, this discovery was not a bad thing. In fact, without it, my recovery would have almost certainly been cut short.

Acceptance and control

A crucial aspect of recovery from substance use disorders is the relinquishing of the control we think we have. As addicts, we thrive on denial. We see the world and ourselves as we want to, rather than as they are. We continually insist that we have control, even when it is clear to everyone else that we do not.

When I entered recovery, I had not relinquished my supposed control. Yes, I had accepted that I had a problem and that I had no control right now, but I intended to wrestle back that control in rehab.

Every recovering addict can relate to the terror of starting at day 1. Once you have made it one day sober, you still have the rest of your life ahead of you. The thought of having to survive until you die sounds like no life at all. And this is exactly the reason giving up control now and in the future is crucial.

One of the mantras of the 12 Step Program is that we do it “just for today.” This is an assertion that all we have is the present. Whatever happens tomorrow cannot retrospectively change what happens today.

Relapse

Relapse happens. The numbers reflect that reality. As an addict, you have to accept that you may well be among those numbers at some point in the future. And you have to accept that it does not matter right now. Yes, you will do everything you can to augment your recovery. But if you do eventually relapse, you can only deal with that reality at the time.

The current crisis has had me thinking about numbers and statistics a lot. These numbers are just one indication that we do not have control. No matter what we do, we may end up a part of them. However, as recovering addicts, acknowledging this reality is what gives us hope. Only when we stop obsessing about what we cannot change can we find peace in what is happening right now.

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