How structure, CBT, and three months in an addiction treatment centre helped me rebuild a life worth staying sober for.
On October 21, 2016, I found myself on a bus leaving Renfrew Detox Centre andheading toward Claresholm for a three-month addiction treatment program.
I had one goal in mind.
I wanted somebody to fix my brain.
That might sound simplistic, but that’s honestly how I felt at the time. I knew I couldn’t continue living the way I had been living. I couldn’t keep drinking until I passed out every night. I couldn’t keep waking up with regret, shame, and an empty bank account because I couldn’t resist the wolves in my head that constantly pushed me toward alcohol and drugs.
Enough was enough.
I wanted the life that I knew I was capable of living.
If you haven’t read about my experience in detox, I encourage you to check out my previous post because that’s where this chapter of going to an addiction treatment centre and my recovery journey truly began.
Arriving at Claresholm
The bus ride from Calgary to Claresholm wasn’t very long, but it felt like I was travelling into the unknown. My wife and children had brought me my luggage that morning, and now I was heading toward a place I knew almost nothing about.
While I was in detox, we didn’t have access to our phones, computers, or the internet. I couldn’t look up pictures of the facility. I couldn’t research what life would be like there.
I was heading into Claresholm completely blind.
And I was terrified.
The bus dropped me off at a hotel across the street from the treatment centre. What I didn’t know was that the entrance wasn’t where I expected it to be. I ended up wandering around the building looking for a door that would actually get me inside.
When I finally found one and stepped through it, I was completely caught off guard.
The first thing that hit me was the familiar smell of a public swimming pool.
Claresholm wasn’t just a treatment centre. It also served as a recreation facility for the community. There was an Olympic-sized swimming pool, waterslides, and people from town moving throughout the building.
This wasn’t what I expected at all.
I remember standing there feeling completely overwhelmed.
I didn’t know where to go.
I didn’t know who to talk to.
I didn’t know what was waiting for me.
So I did what most anxious people do.
I started walking.
Eventually, I found my way to a small common area near what would later become one of the most familiar places in the building. During my stay, I started referring to the nurses’ station as “the Fishbowl” because it was completely surrounded by glass. It always reminded me of a giant aquarium sitting in the middle of the treatment centre.
At the time, though, it was just another room full of strangers.
There were couches nearby, a pool table, and groups of people hanging around talking.
Everyone looked relaxed.
I was the exact opposite.
I wasn’t interested in meeting anyone.
I wasn’t interested in making friends.
I just wanted somebody to tell me where I was supposed to be.
Thankfully, a nurse came out and introduced herself. She got the intake process started and immediately helped calm some of my anxiety.
Learning Structure Again
After completing the paperwork, having my belongings checked, and getting settled into my room, she handed me a binder.
At first glance, it wasn’t much.
A few dividers.
Some introductory worksheets.
And a schedule.
That schedule would end up becoming one of the most important things I encountered during my addiction treatment stay.That schedule would end up becoming one of the most important things I encountered during my entire stay.
When I looked at it for the first time, it reminded me of a high school timetable.
Breakfast.
Classes.
Group therapy.
Exercise.
Lunch.
More classes.
More therapy.
Dinner.
Evening activities.
Free time.
Every hour had a purpose.
Coming from the chaos of addiction, that felt strange.
For years, my schedule had been simple.
Go to work.
Come home.
Drink until I passed out.
Repeat.
That was my routine.
Now somebody was handing me a piece of paper that mapped out my entire day from morning until night.
At the time, I didn’t fully understand why it mattered.
Looking back, I understand it perfectly.
Addiction had destroyed my structure long before it destroyed anything else.
The centre was teaching me how to build it back.
That first evening, I found myself wanting a cup of tea.
The problem was that making tea required leaving my room.
As ridiculous as it sounds now, that felt like a challenge.
I slowly made my way into the communal kitchen area and discovered nearly everyone gathered around playing Pictionary.
There were probably twenty people laughing, joking, and having a great time.
I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.
Then somebody called my name.
Then another person called my name.
A few people invited me to join the game.
To this day, I still don’t know how they knew who I was.
I politely declined, grabbed my tea, and retreated back to my room.
But something about that moment stuck with me.
These people didn’t know me.
They didn’t owe me anything.
Yet they still made an effort to include me.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but that simple invitation was my first glimpse into the kind of environment I had just entered.
Over the next few days, I slowly started settling in. The anxiety was still there, but it wasn’t as overwhelming as it had been when I first walked through the doors.
Then Monday arrived, and the real work began.
My first exposure to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy was through group sessions and worksheets. To be honest, I wasn’t buying it.
I completed the exercises.
I listened to the discussions.
I participated.
But deep down, I was skeptical.
How was talking about thoughts and feelings supposed to stop me from drinking?
How was filling out worksheets supposed to silence the wolves in my head?
It felt like theory.
Interesting theory.
But theory nonetheless.
Like many people entering addiction treatment, I thought recovery would be about willpower alone.
It was teaching me how to live differently.
More Than Just Therapy
While therapy was the foundation of the program, it wasn’t the only thing filling our days.
Outside of therapy sessions, there were all kinds of activities built into the schedule.
There were gym periods.
Leisure classes.
Meditation sessions.
Yoga.
At first, I had no interest in most of it.
Yoga especially.
It probably took me two or three weeks before I finally decided to give it a try.
To my surprise, I absolutely loved it.
I couldn’t believe I had spent so much of my life dismissing something that brought me so much peace. Society often paints yoga as something that men shouldn’t be interested in, but I quickly discovered that stereotype was nonsense.
I looked forward to those classes.
Meditation was different.
Meditation wasn’t new to me.
I had been introduced to it years earlier during treatment when I was sixteen years old, and even though addiction had pushed it out of my life, I always found value in it.
Whenever meditation classes were offered, I was there.
Some were mandatory.
Some were voluntary.
I attended both.
The gym also became an important part of my routine. There were times when the gym was simply opened for residents to use however they wanted. Other times, there were scheduled recreation periods where a facilitator supervised while everyone exercised, played sports, or simply got moving.
Then there were the leisure classes.
Those classes taught something that many people don’t think about when it comes to recovery.
What are you supposed to do with your time when addiction is gone?
For years, addiction had been my hobby.
My routine.
My escape.
The leisure classes encouraged us to find healthier replacements. Walking, hiking, exercising, reading, joining a club, learning new skills, and discovering interests that didn’t involve self-destruction.
Those lessons were more important than I realized at the time.
One of my favourite routines became walking into town to visit the library.
The books were nice, but that wasn’t really why I went.
The library gave me access to Facebook Messenger, which meant I could talk with my wife and stay connected to my family while I was in treatment.
Those conversations meant everything to me.
They reminded me what I was fighting for.
One of the biggest lessons I learned at Claresholm had nothing to do with CBT.
It was realizing that addiction doesn’t care who you are.
Before treatment, I had a picture in my head of what addiction looked like.
Then I arrived at the centre.
There were people there who fit every stereotype you could imagine.
But there were also assistant vice principals.
Electrical engineers.
Iron workers.
Nurses.
Professionals from every walk of life.
People with successful careers.
People who had lost everything.
And despite all our differences, we all had one thing in common.
Destructive behaviour had brought us to the exact same place.
As valuable as those lessons about other people were, the biggest changes were happening inside my own head.
When CBT Finally Clicked
Eventually, the CBT started to click.
Not overnight.
Not after one session.
Not even after one week.
But gradually.
The repetition started working.
The worksheets started making sense.
The exercises started revealing patterns I had never noticed before.
For the first time in my life, I understood that I wasn’t responsible for every thought that entered my head.
But I was responsible for what I did with those thoughts.
That realization changed everything.
My thoughts weren’t facts.
My emotions weren’t facts.
My cravings weren’t commands.
I could challenge them.
Question them.
Work through them.
The wolves were still there.
But they weren’t running the show anymore.
After six weeks, the treatment team met to determine who would move on to Phase Two.
Thankfully, I was invited to continue.
Returning Home
Phase Two brought a completely different challenge.
Going home.
For the first time since entering treatment, I would be allowed to spend weekends with my family.
Part of me was excited.
Part of me was terrified.
I missed my wife.
I missed my kids.
I missed my own bed.
But I also knew that home contained reminders of my old life.
Before my first weekend home, I talked honestly with my wife about places where I had hidden alcohol and other things over the years.
She did an incredible job clearing out everything she could find.
Even then, I still discovered things she had missed.
Not because she wasn’t thorough.
Because I had spent years becoming very good at hiding things.
Thankfully, by that point, I had more than six weeks of sobriety behind me and a growing collection of tools to help me deal with those moments.
By Phase Two, I had also developed a much greater appreciation for the structure that had frustrated me when I first arrived.
One morning, I overslept and arrived a few minutes late for a group session.
The door was already closed.
I didn’t even bother knocking.
A few weeks earlier, I probably would have been annoyed.
Instead, I understood exactly why the rule existed.
The structure worked because everyone respected it.
If a session started at eight o’clock, it started at eight o’clock.
The accountability mattered.
The discipline mattered.
And for someone like me, who had spent years living in chaos, those lessons were just as important as anything I learned in therapy.
Before long, my time at Claresholm was coming to an end.
Somewhere along the way, I found a journal at a local thrift store.
Before leaving, I asked residents and staff to write messages inside it.
Some left phone numbers.
Some left email addresses.
Others simply wrote words of encouragement.
Almost ten years later, I still have it.
I still read it.
And then there was the binder.
The same binder that had been almost empty on my first day.
By the time I left, it was bursting at the seams.
Filled with worksheets.
Exercises.
Letters.
Notes.
Strategies.
Tools.
It contained the lessons I learned during three months of addiction treatment and recovery.
Today, it still sits in my armoire.
Every morning when I get dressed, I see it.
It serves as a reminder of where I was.
What I learned.
And what it took to get here.
On January 21, 2017, my wife and two children came to pick me up.
Three months earlier, I had stepped off a bus terrified of what was waiting for me inside those doors.
Now I was walking back out of them.
I wasn’t fixed.
I wasn’t cured.
But I wasn’t the same person who had walked in.
I had tools.
I had structure.
I had hope.
Most importantly, I finally understood that the wolves in my head didn’t get the final say.
The next chapter of my recovery wouldn’t happen inside the safety of the treatment centre.
It would happen back in the real world.
And that would bring an entirely new set of challenges.
