This post is a continuation of the latest podcast episode where I will share the second half of a chapter titled “Hope” that captures the first moments and days in rehab.
I hope you enjoy! This is an unfinished product with a target publication date of early 2026, but this chapter in particular has been worked and refined to a point that I am excited to share it with you. Please drop me a comment or email about what you think if you feel so inclined!
Picking up where the podcast ended…
“Well that’s everything, there’s not much here besides the basics to get you healthy.” Aaron said as he raised his eyebrows and smiled at me, “Just remember that everyone is here to help you recover.”
Suddenly a stream of people started exiting out of the corridor that led to a large community space.
“Looks like group just wrapped up and everyone’s headed to lunch.” Aaron said, smiling and waving at the patients as they walked by, “Why don’t you head to the cafeteria and get some lunch with them?”
I let the mass of moving people pass me and followed the final person as the group made their way to the cafeteria. Meals consisted of grabbing a tray and walking yourself through a serving line to have whatever that meal was placed on your plate by a smiling kitchen staff behind the counter.
“Welcome, honey, you’re doin’ the right thing.”
The comment snapped me from the daze that I was in and surprised me enough to look up and crack a quick smile at the cook serving me my meal from behind the counter.
“Thank you.” I replied, feeling slightly self-conscious that my fear of being here must be showing through for someone to make a comment like that.
I turned from the food line and scanned the scene. A hand suddenly shot up and waved itself around that I picked up in my peripherals and I moved my vision in that direction. Someone was waving me over to their table, and finding quick relief at the idea of not having to make this decision myself, I moved towards them.
“Hey, man, welcome. You want to sit here with me? My name is Gary.”
“Yeah, thanks.” I said, noticing eyes in the room looking my way as I slid into the spot across the table from Gary.
“People are always interested in what the new person’s story is.” Gary commented, turning around and making reference to the glances that our table was receiving from around the room, “So what are you in here for? What’s your drug of choice?”
The bluntness of the question slammed into me and froze me in place as I was reaching for my water. I was stunned and frightened.
How could someone ask such a deep and personal question within the first seconds of meeting me?
My mind seized up.
How do I even respond to that?
As if he caught onto my hesitation, Gary quickly followed up the question by saying, “I’m an alcoholic and a coke addict. Coke’s my real weakness, but I can’t drink and avoid coke too, so it really all starts with alcohol for me.” Gary shook his head, smiled and looked up, seemingly staring into the ether, “Coke just completely ruined my life.”
I didn’t think the shock could hit harder, but it did.
How was this guy talking about his addiction in such a casual manner?
“So, what’s your drug of choice?” Gary asked me once again.
I readied myself to respond. I had been running from this question for so long, hiding from it and suppressing it every time that it would pop up as an idea in my mind over the past twelve years. Suddenly, I was faced with the opportunity to speak it for the first time in my life and I found myself in need of courage that I never realized uttering a single word would require.
“Al-”, the word got stuck in my throat, “Alc-”, I cleared my throat in one final vain attempt to buy myself another second before having the word finally exit my mouth, “Alcohol.”
Gary looked back at me and nodded, absolutely unphased and completely non-judgemental.
“What did you drink? Were you a beer guy or hard liquor?”
Holy shit, does this guy not understand that I just want to spend the next twenty-eight days alone, figure my issue out and go home fixed?
This was not what I was expecting within my first few minutes of being let loose in rehab. I have just been asked two questions in a row that have been the deepest secrets that I kept hidden from the world over the past years, and here Gary sits just shooting straight to the point.
As those thoughts raced through my mind I recognized something that had already happened to me. In answering Gary’s first question to me, a small bit of relief had descended over me. I had never admitted to having a problem with alcohol before that moment, and I could sense a small transfer of power that had shifted within me.
I looked straight into Gary’s eyes.
Fuck it, I’m going to just tell this guy everything.
With that I launched into a conversation with Gary that altered the course of my life. I opened up and was completely honest with another human being for the first time in well over two and a half years. I hid nothing. I felt myself finally being freed of the shackles that I had bound myself with throughout the years of lying.
Gary reciprocated. He shared the details of his struggles and the maddening symptoms of his addiction. We had incredible commonalities from playing financial games to hide our addiction from loved ones, to talking out loud to ourselves prior to entering into a bender, begging ourselves not to take that first drink and always losing out to the drink.
Suddenly, the cafeteria was empty and it was just Gary and I sitting alone. I glanced down at my plate and realized that I hadn’t eaten a single bite in the time that we were talking.
“We have a bit of a break before the afternoon session and people tend to hang out in the central courtyard.” he said, motioning through the glass walls that separated the cafeteria from the open central space of the facility.
“Why don’t we head out and I’ll introduce you to some of the people in our group?”
With that I threw a few pieces of food in my mouth that would be sufficient to hold me over until dinner. I wasn’t all that hungry, anyway, still dealing with the shock of entry into this surreal experience. The medication that I had been given upon entry to minimize the risk of seizures during my detox period was setting in as well, making me feel slightly lethargic.
Yet, as I rose from the table I noticed something different. A lightness and freedom existed in my movements after that lunchtime conversation. It was the first time that I had been brutally honest with someone in over a dozen years.
Gary and I stepped out into the fresh air of the courtyard that was immediately overtaken by the stench of cigarettes. Looking around I realized that a healthy majority of individuals sat, talked and smoked at various tables and seating areas spread throughout the courtyard.
Gary walked me around, introducing me to individuals who were in our group. The greetings were cordial, overall, and I settled into a seat to observe the scene before the next group session began.
Aaron emerged from the doors across the courtyard. As he walked across the space, I noticed a playful and caring mannerism as he engaged with every single patient in the courtyard walking in my direction.
He took a pass from someone at the basketball hoop and threw up a shot, jawing court approved insults and jests the way of the patient, a tall, tatted up man he called Red.
He stopped and chatted with a group of women a generation older than I and something he said made the table burst into laughter. Finally, he approached me.
“Hey Kyle, your roommate is out of the space now with the nursing team, we can go get your stuff moved in.”
I rose quickly, happy to be invited along by the most familiar face that I had in these walls right now, and someone who was clearly held in high regard by the other patients. We walked back to my room, a space that we had skipped in the initial tour of the facility because my roommate was coming down in a big way from his latest bender on alcohol and meth.
“Your roommate got in late last night. You two will be bunked up together for almost your entire time here.” Aaron stated.
I have to share a space with a meth head for twenty-eight nights?
I felt an incredible amount of fear and judgment fall over me as Aaron opened up the door to the room.
“These spaces aren’t much, just the basics. We don’t expect you to spend a lot of time in here.”
I took in the room, noting the two tiny beds, placed a mere five feet from each other, an open dresser to stash my clothes and a bathroom that looked as if it belonged in a Motel 6 in Aberdeen, South Dakota.
“Here’s your bag that you brought in. Get unpacked and settled in, the afternoon group session starts in forty-five minutes if you want to join.”
It took me all but a minute to unpack my things and I decided to take a quick shower to try to clear my head and take a moment to myself before the start of the afternoon sessions.
The shower cleared my mind from a bit of the fog that was setting in from the meds, and walking out of the bathroom to change I caught a movement in the room with me that reminded me of the second promise that I had made to myself. I stopped in the doorway and turned back to face the mirror above the sink.
This is so stupid.
I wiped the small layer of condensation from the mirror’s surface so that I could see myself in its reflection.
I found myself staring at the sink faucet after clearing the mirror and oddly having to will myself to look up. In doing so I stared right into a set of eyes that I felt that I didn’t recognize. It was uncomfortable, I didn’t like it but I made myself continue to make eye contact with myself.
I realized that in the past two and a half years the only time I actually looked at my own eyes in the mirror was when I was filled with rage. I would make eye contact with myself as I was going through my detox symptoms, usually having upset Alyssa in some way and I would yell profanities at myself, lashing out verbally and then most often striking myself physically.
All of this was done in a desperate attempt to beat this senseless behavior from me and to rise above the numbness that I was beginning to feel in life.
But this time in the bathroom of rehab was different. I looked into the eyes of someone who was beaten down, tired and scared and I felt no desire to lash out at them. My eyes were bloodshot, and had a yellow tinge to them that I knew indicated my body was fighting the effects of the alcohol I had been throwing at it for over a decade.
I felt pity and sadness looking into my own eyes. I did not know if those eyes would ever shine bright again as I sat there leaned over the sink facing the mirror.
There’s no way this actually works.
But a promise is a promise. So I took a breath, stared right into the eyes in the mirror and said,
“I love you.”
The words caught up in my throat and sounded unconvincing and weak exiting my mouth. Nothing happened nor changed at that moment. I held my gaze for a few more seconds and then stepped from the bathroom.
Weird.
I changed into my clothes, grabbed the binder of material that they had given me at check in and readied myself for my first group session. I stepped into the bathroom one last time to steady the small amount of nerves that I was feeling inside.
I caught my reflection in the mirror as soon as I entered the bathroom.
Now I have to do this again!
I noticed the tiniest smile flash across my face as I thought about that gut reaction to realizing I had to do this practice again. I leaned forward on the sink and stared back at myself, making sure my eyes were locked on the eyes in the mirror.
“I love you.”
This time the words didn’t catch up in my throat as much.
—
The first three days during rehab were a blur. The shock coupled with the side effects of the anti-seizure meds that they had all alcoholics on during the detox period distorted reality and time in a manner that I had never experienced before. I was conscious and felt like I was in control of my actions, but at the same time I had moments where I realized I felt more like an outside observer to the scene than I was in control.
I continued following up on the two promises that I had made to myself during intake. I was there for every group session from the first afternoon and I continued my still uncomfortable practice of speaking the words “I love you” to myself every time that I encountered a mirror.
I still had the new guy relationship with those in my group, but as my third day came to a close, I was actively participating in the conversations during our group session and I was starting to establish a few relationships with others as we sat out in the courtyard during breaks between sessions.
The closest bond that formed in the early days was with a man named Jeramie who had checked in the evening prior to me. Jeramie was in the other group, so we would get together during breaks and chat about our early experience, how we were feeling on the detox meds. We began getting into sharing our personal stories of what brought us here.
Connecting with Jeramie gave me another example that there were people out there that exhibited the same traits and behaviors that had made me feel completely alone and crazy during my time fighting in an isolated battle with alcoholism.
As Jeramie and I sat chatting one afternoon in the courtyard, Rich, the head nurse, came sauntering through reminding folks to go to the nursing station to get their afternoon course of medication if they had any to take. He spotted Jeramie and I and walked our way.
“You fellas are graduating” Rich said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small set of scissors.
“Give me your hand, and let me take these from you. There’s no more detox pills, so you both should be set with your morning round of antidepressant and multivitamin.”
With a quick pass of the scissors he removed the large, yellow detox bands from our wrists.
Jeramie and I looked up at each other in excited amazement and without saying a word both excused ourselves as we separately headed to one of the two phones located in the men’s corridor of the facility to call our wives for the first time since checking in. I was anxious as I held the phone to my ear and heard the ringing of the line, waiting for Alyssa to pick up.
“Hey you!” exclaimed the sweetest interruption to the ringtone that I had ever heard in my life. “I have been thinking about you all day and wondering if today was the day you could call.”
My heart exploded with love and joy at the sound of Alyssa’s voice. We did not have much time to talk, given the strict 15 minute limit on outbound phone calls during the hours that they were permitted, so I hurriedly told her about my first few days. The group sessions, the weirdness of detox and the first few friendships that had started forming in rehab.
With our time rapidly coming to a close for the day, Alyssa asked, “Well what are you going to be doing the rest of the day?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but right now I’m about to go move and try to break a sweat. The gym space has been off limits to me during detox.”
We said our goodbyes and I headed straight to my room, almost as eager to move my body as I had been to talk to my wife. Three days of living like a zombie on anti-seizure medication had me itching to move.
I swapped out my clothes, quickly relieved myself and stopped myself at the mirror once again.
Looking into my eyes, with a new lightness in my heart after talking to Alyssa and excitement brewing at the idea of getting into the workout space, I maintained the promise I had made to myself.
“I love you.”
I was unexpectedly sideswiped. Something felt completely different this time.
I actually meant that.
I paused a moment longer, looking into my eyes and noticing something else. The whites of my eyes seemed less bloodshot, and there was a difficult to describe glimmer that seemed to exist in them that hadn’t existed before.
I flashed a brief smile to myself in recognition of this moment and exited my room, heading for the cramped gym space for the first time since coming to rehab. Entering the gym, it took all of a millisecond to take in the space. A treadmill, a stationary bike and a rowing machine with enough open floor space for me to lay my large frame out for push ups or other similar movements.
Having a fundamental disdain for treadmills and exercise bikes, I seated myself on the rower, sensing that I was about to become very familiar with this machine. Strapping my feet in the footholds, and taking the row bar in my hands, I coiled my body, looked down at the display that read 0 for distance. I took a pause, then a big breath in and I strained as I extended my body and pulled back against the machine.
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Kyle, I am so inspired by your art of writing!