Make It Make Sense: What Addiction Treatment Gets Backwards

I remember sitting in treatment, newly sober, raw, shaky, but determined. I had just ripped my drug of choice…alcohol…out of my life, and everything hurt. My brain, my body, my heart. I asked the staff if I should quit smoking too. I wanted a clean slate.

“No,” they said. “That’s too much at once.”

Too much at once? I had just quit the substance that nearly destroyed my life, and now you’re telling me I need to keep a highly addictive substance around to stay sober?

It didn’t make sense then, and it still doesn’t now.

Here’s another one:

“You can’t take anything mind-altering in recovery.”

And yet, I watched people be loaded up with antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds within days of arriving. No shame in needing meds, by the way some people absolutely benefit from them. But where do we draw the line?

Why is it acceptable to alter your brain chemistry through pharmaceuticals, but not through something natural, like marijuana, if it helps you eat, sleep, or function?

What no one told me is this:

YOU are the only one who knows the truth about your relationship with a substance.

  • Are you using something to numb or to heal?

  • To escape or to connect?

  • To avoid life or to engage with it?

This is where recovery gets deeply personal and where so much of mainstream treatment still gets it wrong.

We’re taught that recovery should fit inside a specific, rigid box. But real healing doesn’t always look like what’s written in the workbook.

I’ve met people who take prescribed benzos and still call themselves sober. I’ve met others who use marijuana for PTSD symptoms, sleep, or appetite, and feel healthier and more present than ever. And I’ve met people who “followed all the rules” and still relapsed because they never addressed why they were using in the first place.

Sobriety, for me, means living awake. It means not running from myself. It means being honest about what I need and when I’m hiding.

And you know what? Sometimes that means asking hard questions like:

  • Is this helping or hurting?

  • Am I truly showing up for my life?

  • Am I just swapping one numbing agent for another?

  • We deserve more than cookie-cutter answers.

  • We deserve to heal in ways that work for us.

  • We deserve to be trusted with our own stories.

So no…..I don’t blindly accept the idea that it’s okay to stay hooked on nicotine, or that antidepressants are “clean” while marijuana is not.

I believe healing is complex. I believe your recovery is your own.

And I believe you’re allowed to question the system because honestly?……Some of it just doesn’t make sense.

Let’s talk about it!

Have you ever been told something in recovery that didn’t sit right? What rules have you questioned in your own healing journey? DM us @unscriptedsobriety this space was made for your voice, too.

#UnscriptedSobriety #RecoveryYourWay #SobrietyTruth #HealingNotHiding #SoberCurious #QuestionTheNorm #MindfulRecovery

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When Traditional Treatment Didn’t Work..