What does recovery look like?
It looks like me.
I came to addiction a little later in life than some of my peers. I had a childhood trauma that resurfaced, and I turned to intravenous drug use. During my active addiction, I found that my carer actually advanced and went better while I was using. Until I crashed.
I was an emergency physician and was promoted to chairman of my department. Then, things completely unraveled for me, and I ended up a patient in an emergency department myself, in septic shock and in the intensive care unit.
I had a questionable chance of survival let alone ever returning to medicine. I went to treatment and had the advantage of being treated by a doctor who was in recovery himself. I saw hope. He had been where I was, and his life was turned around. It wasn’t easy. But, it gave me hope for my own recovery and changed my life.