Rehab tales: True confessions from the frontline of addiction

They say the average New Year's resolution lasts just five days – so if you're sticking to yours, well done. But for some, breaking a bad habit is a matter of life and death. In this special feature, seven long-term addicts tell their remarkable rehab tales.
Introduction by William Leith, interviews by Sarah Harris

Published: 06 January 2008

Rehab tales: True confessions from the frontline of addiction Porn addict Jason McLain created his own "recovery plan"

One day, I stopped snorting coke. I did not go to rehab. I just stopped. Then I started again. Then I tried to stop. Again, I did not go to rehab. Again, I started again. Eventually, something made me stop and not start again. I don't know what it was. Some people tell me it must have been the fact that I had a lot of therapy. Then again, some people say that nobody stops unless they really, really want to stop.

I started trying to stop in 1996, and I actually stopped six years later. At the start of this time, the whole concept of rehab was an unusual, quirky thing. By the end, it was almost normal. And now it is something we talk about all the time. A great deal of the strangeness and stigma has fallen away. These days, the concept of rehab – of a place you can visit to become the person you used to be, before things went wrong – does not sound weird at all. Rehab has taken on a positive tone. We all either want it, or want to know about it.

I have just heard that there's a new show about to air in America in which famous people are seen taking drugs or possibly re-enacting scenes when they took drugs, and then afterwards going to rehab. It's called Celebrity Rehab. You can see clips on the internet of people you might remember from movies or TV appearing to snort or inhale stuff. Later, I'm sure, they will tell us what led them into such behaviour, and some will stop it, and some won't. I thought: about time, too. Then I thought: but this already exists, ' doesn't it? It may not be on TV yet, but it's everywhere else. Rehab is becoming a global soap opera. And what we keep seeing is the same story – with two different endings.

The story is deeply familiar, but we want to hear it over and over. The story is: somebody gets lucky. He gets rich and famous. Then he becomes the victim of his appetites. Gradually at first, and then faster and faster, his appetites begin to hurt him. Then they start to kill him. But there's hope. He goes into rehab. He is told life does not have to be about appetite. And either he understands this message and comes out cured, or he does not. Some do, some don't.

Why is this story so compelling? Because it's our story. We got lucky. We got rich. And now we've become the victim of our appetites. We are addicted to economic growth. We need to produce and consume more and more things, all the time, because if we don't, the economy will grind to a halt. We need more and more, just to stand still. And all the time we are doing this, we are destroying the world.

As a society, we are on a runaway train. And that's how I felt when I had my problems with cocaine. When you snort coke, you become the perfect consumer. Having more makes you want more; wanting more makes you want yet more. That's why coke is such a good product. As you continue to snort, the coke you've had becomes your enemy, reminding you that the coke that's to come will never be enough. And all the time you are doing this, you are destroying yourself.

As a society, we are behaving just like a drug addict. That's why we're so interested in the soap opera that is celebrity rehab. Will Amy Winehouse save herself, just in time? Or will she crash and burn? This is our story, dramatised, right in front of us, by a single human being. This morning, on the radio, I heard somebody say that if she doesn't stop, she'll kill herself. I heard angry voices. She should snap out of it, they said. She should grow up. And I heard sympathetic voices, too. It's not her fault, they said. She has a disease. She can't help herself. We should be sympathetic.

Will anything rehabilitate Amy? We've seen the despair of her parents, her husband's parents, her employers, her fans. She is our worst-case scenario. We can't imagine what will stop her. Maybe a seizure. But she's had a seizure, hasn't she? Maybe the authorities should step in. As we watch this juggernaut of self-destructive appetite race downhill, we see ourselves – the self-destructive trajectory of the human race.

What happens when you go to a rehab centre, such as the Priory, or Clouds, or the Causeway? We love to speculate. And the thing we wonder is this: is it more like a holiday, or more like prison? The question has resonance. How are we, as a race, as a global village, going to cure ourselves? Must we be punished? Or is the process a peaceful one? Because we're going to have to do something, aren't we?

If you look at the brochures, or the websites, of rehab facilities, they contain a balance. Some look like holiday brochures. The Causeway "cuts people off from the world". There's a picture of people on a beach, doing stretching exercises against a perfect sunset. "Paradise found," it says. "Your own private island in idyllic surroundings... Breathtaking views." In several of these brochures, you see Shaker-ish interiors, slightly austere in a way that has become fashionable. But perhaps it's not so much that rehab facilities are following fashion. Maybe it's more that fashion is being influenced by the notion of rehab.

And what happens inside these places? These days, we have shelves of books telling us about the rehabilitation ' process. There are as many stories as there are candidates for rehabilitation. The addict's tale is shaping up to be the genre of our times.

As a society, we feel in bad shape. And that's how rehab books often start – with the recovering addict describing the shape they are in. In his book Addicted, the former England and Arsenal footballer Tony Adams writes: "Amid the filthy state that was now my house, the first clothes that came to hand were a pair of jeans that I had soiled a couple of days before. I wasn't too worried about the stains."

"I look at my body. My skin is sallow and white. My torso is covered with cuts and bruises. I'm thin and my muscles sag. I look worn, old, beaten, dead. I didn't always look like this." That's the American writer James Frey, at the start of his book A Million Little Pieces. Some of the book has now been discredited. Frey embellished the truth. But, says Frey, that's addiction for you. Which reminds me of something Tom Chaplin, the singer with Keane, said: "I was lying to the band, lying to my girlfriend, lying to everyone."

Frey famously refused the "12 steps", saying he didn't accept the idea of a "higher power". Rehab is, among other things, a debate about religion. "I don't believe in any form of higher power," he wrote. "I refuse to turn my life and my will over to anything or anyone, much less something I don't believe in."

Elizabeth Wurtzel also questioned the value of 12-step rehab in her memoir More, Now, Again. "That's the trouble with AA," she wrote. "It's like prison: it may rehabilitate some people, but others just learn to be better criminals."

There is, of course, a backlash against rehab. Some people think it's an easy answer. Some say it is just a way of extending bad behaviour – it lets you off the hook for a while.

We keep hearing the term "revolving door". There are celebrities who go into rehab, and come out, and go back in again, soon afterwards, because the rehab did not cure them – Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Robin Williams. How about him? He seemed to be cured, didn't he? But he relapsed after 20 years' sobriety. And what about our own Robbie Williams? He cured his alcohol and cocaine problems. Then he found himself addicted to prescription drugs. Sometimes you wonder if appetite can be cured at all, once it has got a grip.

Patti Davis, Ronald Reagan's daughter, herself a former addict, has said: "It makes me angry when I see how the opportunity of being in rehab can be abused as nothing more than a slick PR move." Sometimes, one feels inclined to agree with her. After his drunken anti-Semitic outburst, what did Mel Gibson do? He asked for our forgiveness. "I have begun an ongoing program of recovery," he said, "and what I am now realising is that I cannot do it alone. I am in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display."

And what about Lindsay Lohan? "I have made a proactive decision to take care of my personal health." This after she was found, passed out in a hotel hallway.

Do we agree with Lionel Richie, after he said, "I think it's a cliché to say: 'I'm going into rehab. I bumped my foot today – rehab. I hit my head on something – rehab'"? You can see his point. Is rehab sometimes an easy option – something that makes you feel good, without addressing the real problem?

Maybe we should listen to Noel Gallagher, who said, "If you take drugs you end up in rehab, unless you're a fucking rock like me, and then you just give them up." For a long time, that was my policy. It took six years. Would rehab have made any difference? It's something I'll always wonder. *

The drug addict

Carolyn Cowan, 47

People often perceive rehab as a defeat, but actually it's a victory. I was addicted to cocaine, crack, marijuana, sleeping pills, speed, purple hearts and alcohol – but I've been clean now for 16 years.

I had my first joint when I was 11 and by the time I was 20 I had a very serious cocaine and painkiller habit.

Like most addicts I quickly discovered that I liked not feeling how I really felt. I worked in pop videos and advertising and fashion, and life was pretty wild. At the beginning it was funny, but it very quickly lost its charm.

Cocaine became something I couldn't live without. I was taking it every day; I was sick every morning from alcohol poisoning; I had taken the enamel off my teeth and had a hole in my nose.

I remember waking up one morning, looking in the mirror and thinking, "I hate every moment of my life." That's when I realised it was either me or the addiction.

The first thing I did was recognise I needed to change. I went cold turkey – no drink, drugs or cigarettes – and started going to Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The physical side-effects were that I couldn't sleep for three months and kept getting boils, as all the toxins made their way out of my system.

The detox was horrible. I may have been sober, but I had lost everything. I had no work, no relationship, no money and no house. I was living in a one-room flat in Clapham – and that's when my recovery really began.

Five years later I went to a treatment centre in Arizona called the Meadows to help deal with my emotions. Through group therapy and workshops I was able to strip away old habits and self-esteem issues. I was given tools that I have used constantly, such as taking a moment, breathing, looking at things from a distance.

Yoga has been the most wonderful therapy. As an addict, my natural tendency is to want to be somewhere else, to look outside of myself for fulfilment, but practising yoga takes you inside to meet your soul – without being dependent on anything but yourself.

Carolyn Cowan's DVD, 'Kundalini Yoga: The Addictive Personality' (£17.95) is available from www.devotion.co.uk

The porn addict

Jason McLain, 34

My fascination with explicit material started at school, where it carried a certain mystique, though my addiction lay dormant until the internet came along.

In the beginning I was drawn in by the endless stream of images, movies, forums and chatrooms. Its allure was amplified by the fact it was free, anonymous and easily accessible.

My use of pornography soon became solitary and secretive. I was hiding it from my partner and would take any opportunity on my own to stare trance-like into the computer screen.

It is a lonely, deadening experience when you get to a point where no real relationship can compare to the exhilaration of watching internet porn – and because I have a background in psychology I knew that it had to stop.

I created my own "recovery plan". The first step was opening up to my partner and starting the process of self-exploration to discover what was driving me to spend my time in this way. I began to realise that I was unhappy in my career and my relationship, and was using porn to divert myself from reality.

Some recovery plans advocate cutting yourself off from all sexual feelings – but bottling up sexual urges can only make matters worse. It was important for me to create replacement activities and establish routines and structures, such as adhering to set bedtimes and making lots of plans in advance so solitary, free-form weekends wouldn't spiral into porn sessions.

I haven't been tempted for almost six years now, but I'm not moralising. One thing that really helped me was the revelation that sex and sexuality weren't the enemy. Recovery is about understanding the deeper non-sexual issues such as low self-esteem, depression, boredom and fear of intimacy that create the compulsion in the first place.

For more advice, visit www.porngameover.com

The food addict

Fenella Lemonsky, 40

Ten years ago my world revolved around compulsive binge-eating. I'm still repairing the damage after years of abusing my body.

I have always had a difficult relationship with food. As a child my family moved around a fair bit because of my father's work and I found it difficult to fit in at school. Food became a friend; when I was upset or stressed, it seemed the easiest thing to turn to.

During my adolescence my eating patterns became chaotic; I didn't even know what a normal meal or snack was. Whereas most people would be able to relax and enjoy a nice dinner out with friends, or a tub of popcorn in the cinema, I could never appreciate it because I was obsessed with the idea that there wasn't enough. All I would be thinking was, when can I go home and eat what I really want to eat?

Some people are addicted to fatty foods, but for me it was everything. Whatever I had in front of me was never enough. It was a very alienating experience.

I tried to seek help many times during my teenage years, but the right help wasn't available. Doctors and psychiatrists thought I was lazy or greedy and I was dismissed as a slob.

At the age of 28 I was admitted to the Halliwick Unit in St Ann's Hospital, London, to get help for my personality, behavioural and emotional problems. It involved group therapy and individual sessions with a psychotherapist five days a week, which was painful. At one point things got so hard that I took a massive overdose of antidepressants with vodka. But being able to talk to my consultant psychiatrist saved my life. From that point, things changed for the better.

The team at the Halliwick were so fantastic and it was a breath of fresh air to talk to somebody about what had been going on, and see how my life had been revolving around a cycle of food and destructive behaviour. It was about a year into rehab that I felt things began to shift dramatically and I woke up thinking, "Life can get better."

I stayed there for three years – but when you come out of treatment you're not automatically cured. People have this image of people such as Pete Doherty going into rehab and think you can do treatment in nice accommodation for a couple of weeks and that's it – but addiction takes over every-thing; you have to revamp your entire life to recover.

It's taken a long time for me to develop a healthy relationship with food, until now I've got to a point where I see it as something healthy that I can enjoy socially and talk about just like everyone else.

I'm working hard with a personal trainer to learn about fitness and nutrition and mentally I'm stronger than I've ever been. Also the work I do with others with eating disorders has given me a lot of strength, courage and sense of achievement. I may not be thin, but I have turned my life around.

Fenella Lemonsky is a group worker for Beat (www.b-eat.co.uk)

The alcoholic

Richard Shrubb, 33

Alcoholism was a lifestyle choice for me. I aped the Hunter S Thompson style of debauchery – drink, drugs and sex – and caused a lot of mayhem. I didn't want to give up as I thought rehab would ruin my fun – until alcohol stopped being fun and started ruining my life.

I was 16 when I discovered alcohol, and as soon as I could find an excuse to get pissed, I did – so you could say I have never drunk "normally".

During my late-teens and twenties the bingeing would start from about 5pm on pints of cider and beer and wouldn't finish until it was time to go to bed. There wasn't a time when I wasn't either drunk or hung over. The drink would elevate me, but with the hangover I would get drowsy, bad tempered and depressed. I was completely unpredictable.

I made an awful lot of enemies. I couldn't get along with people because my formative years were blighted by drink and I was emotionally stunted in many ways – a really nasty piece of work.

I tried conventional rehab many times but it didn't work for me — I didn't want to stop. Eventually, on my 30th birthday in March 2005, I really hit rock-bottom and realised I wasn't enjoying being drunk any more, but I couldn't sober up.

It wasn't until I heard about a drug called Antabuse that I realised I'd found the logical solution to my alcoholism. It contains a chemical that makes you violently ill when it reacts with alcohol – the same drug that killed George Best. This was the turning point for me.

Conventional rehab didn't click with me, but I could understand violent stomach cramps and pain. The effects are so extreme that I nearly passed out when I smelt a beer pump and I would wake up in the morning drenched in this foul-smelling sweat, as my body got rid of all the booze.

I would hike 20 miles every weekend along the coastal path near where I lived, blasting out my addiction. I started kite-buggying and met a whole new circle of friends – and I've never looked back.

I can't even have a spoonful of rum and raisin ice-cream now without being violently sick, and I've been dry for two years.

Heroin, alcohol, nicotine addicts – we're all the same. There is always a solution in the chemical, whether it's a hot needle up our arm or a hot coffee. Now I've learnt to be self-sufficient. I've got a successful career as a media consultant, a new circle of friends, a wonderful girlfriend – all these things that I could never have had when I was drunk.

The B-road addict

Annie Brown, 41

I have had a severe phobia of driving on main roads ever since I had an accident on a dual-carriageway a couple of years ago – the psychological damage has been far worse than the physical problems I've suffered from since.

I am a strong, confident person and used to be a psychiatric nurse, so I felt as though I was immune to this kind of psychological condition – but obviously I'm not.

I have to do a lot of driving for work – I'm managing director of a commercial property estate agency in Wakefield – and every time I get back on to the road I feel as though the car is taking off up into the air and going up and down in waves. My eyes jump from side to side, as though they are trying to watch everything around me and I get an overwhelming feeling of fear, like tipping over the edge of a roller coaster. You can't rationalise or control it, which is the most terrifying thing about it.

My lowest point was about eight months after the accident in 2002 and I was driving on the A64 up to York and I had to pull over in parking bays every two minutes. My body would freeze solid and my hands would be clenching the steering wheel. It was so terrifying that when I got back to the office I just sat in a corner and wept.

The breakthrough came when I started going to see a neurolinguistic programming practitioner in Wakefield, four or five times a week. We would do lots of basic visualisation exercises and affirmations to create new neural pathways – and the results were amazing. I drove down the motorway to Leeds and I was almost euphoric, as if I had had my shackles removed and I was free again.

Everything was fine, so I stopped going to see her – and then had a really stressful Christmas, fraught with family problems and I found myself in exactly the same situation again.

It was almost as though my subconscious wasn't responding in the same way because I'd been down that road before, and I have really struggled to improve my situation.

Since then I have spent thousands of pounds on everything from CDs to hypnotherapy, psychiatrists and prescription drugs, but nothing has worked. Rehabilitation has eluded me so far, but I'm still desperate for help and to find some resolution.

'Monk', the TV series featuring the "phobic" detective, is on at 7pm on Sundays from 20 January on The Hallmark Channel

The love addict

Annie Bennett, 46

Few people understand love addiction. It's not the sugar-coated candy you see on TV; it's a silent compulsion that has serious consequences.

I have suffered from love addiction throughout my life and in 2001 I became intensely involved in a relationship with somebody who had encapsulated me in a bubble of lies and deceit.

I was living in a fantasy world and only saw what I wanted to see; I so lost myself that I became unavailable to everyone else around me.

The shock that broke my denial was during a dinner, when a friend of his confided in me that he had another girlfriend. I was his fiancée, so this information was shattering to me. A week later he died very suddenly from a twisted bowel; his life ebbed away in my arms and I was in a state of emotional trauma. It was just after he died that I began ringing his friends and discovered that everything he had told me about himself had been lies – everything apart from his name. It was devastating.

I needed to get my head around what had happened to me, so a year later I went to the Meadows clinic in Arizona as a visiting therapist. It was there that the penny finally dropped. Listening to other people's stories in group-therapy workshops helped me learn about the pattern I had developed, in which almost every relationship ended in me becoming "hooked" into a powerful man, who I would place on a pedestal. Stemming back to my dysfunctional relationship with my father, my associations had often been abusive and usually ended in me compromising myself.

I stayed at the Meadows for four months and it changed my life. It was such a relief to finally see the cause of my addiction.

I have since become extremely well tuned to the flags that trigger my compulsive behaviour, and have learnt how to understand them, step back, and see what's happening. The relationship I am in now is not about "don't leave me", it's about two people on a level playing field.

As with all addictions, mine was miserable, and I'm very pleased to be out the other side of it. '

Annie Bennett is the author of 'The Love Trap' (£13, Hammersmith Press, www.thelovetrap.com)

The gambling addict

Daniel Garner, 20

I got into gambling when I was about 14, just after my adoptive dad died. Of my parents, I was closest to him and when I lost him it felt as though nothing else mattered.

It started off with sneaking into pubs to play on fruit machines and escalated to bookmakers and gambling on roulette.

I enjoyed the thrill of making money that I didn't have – going in with £100 and coming out with £1,000 – which rarely happened.

I lost most of the time, probably around £200,000 over the years, so I started stealing money from my mum and sister to pay for it. I think I became addicted to the feeling of getting away with things and getting a buzz whether I won or lost.

I didn't have any mates, a girlfriend or any social life because I was down the betting shop all the time. I left home and was living in the YMCA and had to sell my car. I was so broke that I didn't eat anything other than what was provided in the hostel, so I was hungry most of the time – but even that didn't stop me.

My family disowned me because of the lying and stealing and thought I was doing it to spite them, but it was like an itch I had to scratch. I couldn't sleep at night until I'd lost all my money. It was a very lonely life.

One morning I woke up and thought, "I can't do it any more." I did some research and found out about the Gordon House Association, which is a residential treatment centre for gambling addicts, and it's the best thing that's happened to me. It's given me a whole new perspective on life. You stay here for nine months and your treatment is split into three phases: phase one looks at denial, self-help, events in your life and your gambling "triggers". In phase two, you do some more in-depth counselling; and phase three is about introducing you back to the outside world.

I've got another three months left here, but already I've learnt more about myself than I ever thought I would. Before I was bottling up my emotions and using gambling as an escape; I was replacing human relationships with gambling. Now I know that by opening myself up more I can succeed in kicking the addiction out. It's going to be there with me, but as long as I ask for help I should succeed.

I have a lot of support both inside and outside of Gordon House now. My family has given me another chance, so at the moment I feel very strong and almost ready to tackle the outside world.

I'm looking into college courses in engineering and modern-day apprenticeships, so the future looks bright. Some people see rehab as a major thing and something to be ashamed of, but I'm not scared to tell friends where I am. You will come here weak but you will leave 10 times stronger, stronger than people outside who haven't been through what you've been through.

For more information, visit www.gordonhouse.org.uk