I hated rehab. That might not be the company line, but it’s the truth: I hated rehab. Every second of every minute of every hour. There wasn’t a moment there that I didn’t wish I was anywhere else: anywhere besides that drug treatment center, mired in that interminable grind. Yup, I hated rehab…and I wouldn’t have changed a thing about it for all the tea in China.

The truth is that addiction recovery has to be a difficult experience, because you can only ever beat addiction with hard work. Drug treatment that isn’t unpleasant, quite frankly, just isn’t working; it isn’t helping you dig down into the guts of your disease, and confront whatever it is that made you start using in the first place. Addiction treatment is hard because it has to be. That’s it; that’s all that matters. I hated rehab. And drug recovery saved my life. You tell me what could ever be more important.