The Haunted House of Recovery: What Nobody Tells You About Coming Back to Life

So many people glorify their drug use and their recovery. I’m not here to do either. Sure, my drug use led me to things I value now, but there’s nothing glamorous about it. My experience has been unique in many ways and painfully average in others. Some people come out of addiction with the same personality, same quirks, same everything. Me? I hadn’t been “me” since I was a little girl. I had no clue who the fuck I was, what I wanted, or how to get anywhere.

Every step I’ve taken since leaving rehab has come straight from intuition. No plan. Just winging it. Raw-dogging life. How’d I make it this far? Simple: I knew who I didn’t want to be anymore. When you don’t know who you are, sometimes the only way forward is to base your decisions on what not to do and who not to become.

Why is this different from other recovery stories? Because yes—nobody knows who they are when they get clean. That’s universal. But I did it ass-backwards, and in doing so, I found myself. Fast. I learned to speak up, to say no. (Try it sometime. It might become your favorite word.)

Much like I navigated the dark of addiction, I stumbled into myself during recovery—chaotic emotions and all. I let everything else fall away so I could listen to my gut. And while AA/NA says, “do the next right thing,” I was mostly just trying to not do the next wrong one. Neurodivergent folks, this might actually make sense to you.

Clients ask me all the time what the most important part of recovery is. My answer? “Know thyself.” Self-awareness won’t just save your life—it will drag you kicking and screaming into clarity. Know your worth. Know your patterns. Know how your brain reacts when it’s cornered. You don’t have to know what you want yet. You don’t need to have a plan. But you do need to know what happens when you spiral.

Make a list of your past mistakes. Not to torture yourself, but to analyze them. Forgive yourself. Your past is part of your story—it doesn’t have to haunt your future. I built an entire ritual around letting go of that shit, and I still revisit it when I feel the ghosts sticking around too long.

You don’t have to leave rehab and suddenly have your whole life together. Healing takes time. Your chaos will still be there when you’re ready to handle it. You didn’t destroy your life in six months—it won’t be rebuilt in six, either. Be patient. Seriously. Patience might save your sobriety when nothing else will.

Learn how to manage your own weird. I count everything. Steps, sidewalk cracks, breath patterns. It grounds me when my brain decides people are too much. If that sounds like you, lean into it. Create a coping toolkit tailored to your own brand of dysfunction.

Here’s what no one tells you about recovery: if you’re doing it right, it’s lonely as hell. You’re in a new place, surrounded by strangers. You don’t know how to make friends without substances. Everyone’s loud and weird and exhausting. You don’t even know what kind of people you like anymore. That’s normal.

Loneliness is dangerous, so find ways to be social without burning out. Text. Call someone. Get a pet. Scroll Tumblr like it’s 2012. You don’t need to be a social butterfly, but don’t go full ghost either. Do what feels right for you.

Let’s talk trauma. If you’ve overdosed or watched someone overdose—guess what? You’re traumatized. Congrats. Survivor’s guilt is real, and it will rot you from the inside if you don’t talk about it. Process it. Say it out loud. Let it suck.

Which brings me to: radical acceptance. As someone who’s fought literally everything since birth, this one felt like a dad joke at first. But it’s not lying down and taking it. It’s the recovery world’s version of “everything happens for a reason”—just with teeth. It’s the thing that keeps you from completely unraveling when life kicks you in the ribs after you’ve already done the hard part of getting clean.

Because life doesn’t stop for your recovery. People still die. Shit still burns. Bills still pile up. Jobs disappear. Kids struggle. You lose people. And somewhere in the middle of all that, you realize that none of it—not one disaster—would be made better by using again.

That’s where the clarity is. That’s when it clicks.

Recovery didn’t hand me answers. It gave me silence—long enough for the truth to echo back. That’s the haunted house part: it’s empty until you start hearing yourself again.