Recovery patients discover hitting bottom is necessary

Deepest misery proves first step back to normalcy

In addiction phraseology, it’s often called “rock bottom.” It’s a state of mind known as the nadir of suffering, an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness. Sometimes it’s a jumpoff point at which misery is traded for normalcy and meaning, where one life ends and another begins.

Ryan Hess’s rock bottom came during a drizzly December in Ohio. He was high yet again on heroin, and he had been that way for more hours than he could remember. The 33-year-old lay on a filthy sweatshirt beneath a piece – just a small piece – of tent, stolen from a stranger’s garden shed. His socks and shoes were wet, his breath and body reeked.

“I was hungry and very lonely,” he says. “I broke down weeping like a baby. I needed help, and 48 hours later I finally accepted it.”

Hess entered rehab and completed four-plus months of inpatient and outpatient treatment, committing himself to sobriety after some 15 years of what he calls “horrible” substance abuse that had included two overdoses.

Eight years into sobriety, he continues to vigorously work the 12-step recovery program with his sponsor, detaching from “anything that creates unmanageability in my life” and regularly meeting with a group of sober men he has dubbed his Fab Five, “who call me on my bull,” he says.

“If someone would have told me that night that I would get my family back, have a job I love, own a home and be a dependable member of society, I would have told that person they were insane,” he says. “But look – I’m doing it. It’s hard work and it takes dedication and sacrifice, but today life is amazing.”

Hess is one of about 22 million Americans in recovery from drugs and alcohol, according to a 2017 study from the Recovery Research Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School.

Just as all substance use disorders are unique to the individual, so are the methods by which people achieve their sobriety – and then hold on to it.

Some attain it via formal supports and professional interventions, including medications that help manage cravings. Others beat addiction by paving their own road, reaching their goals without structured care, sometimes fortified by an intensified passion based on parenting, spirituality, creativity or activism that lends structure and solidity to their lives.

Whatever the route, ex- tended abstinence – meaning at least several years – is predictive of sustained recovery.

“Reaching the three- to five-year mark seems to be a major milestone,” says Robert Ashford, recovery scientist at Philadelphia’s University of the Sciences Substance Use Disorders Institute and a person in recovery for six years. “That benchmark can signal a reduced risk of returning to substance use because the person with addiction has had the time to develop effective coping skills, social connections and a renewed sense of self, among other healthy attributes. It doesn’t mean your recovery is finished, but it is a reason to breathe a little easier and be proud of yourself.”

Ashford says access to education, gainful employment and safe housing are important, but that finding an increased sense of purpose and meaning in life can be key. “For some, this means giving back to others in recovery, such as being a mentor. For others, it may mean just doing the next right thing time and time again.”

It has been nearly six years for Lissa Franklin, 30.

A native Iowan, Franklin migrated to Florida for treatment in 2011 after several cocaine- and alcohol-infused semesters at a university earned her five hospitalizations for alcohol poisoning, a 1.2 grade-point average and a request to leave the school. She had been drinking almost daily, she says, since age 14, but “I didn’t seek help because I thought I needed to be under a bridge with a bottle in a bag.”

After getting sober in February 2012, Franklin returned to college, graduating with honors from the University of Miami with a degree in psychology.

She works in addiction treatment and packs her spare time with volunteer commitments in the recovery community.