Love in Rehab

When Healing and Rehab Collide

Rehab Romance!

Falling in love in rehab is common due to intense shared vulnerability causing massive dopamine shifts and emotional distractions which derails recovery focus creating obsessive thoughts that can completely hijack the purpose of being in rehab. Most facilities discourage fraternization but rarely educate clients regarding this common problem or make it clear the consequences for individuals and the recovery community. Many rehabs cover this issue in the house rules and regulations but a signed document does not mean it has been read or even absorbed.

Rehab Romance Trap

Active Addiction:

‘The search for love in all the wrong places,
With all the wrong people’

This statement mixed with a myriad of unpleasant and confusing past experiences follows all patients into rehab many of whom adopt varying degrees of anti-social behaviour such as appearing meek and mild, angry and controlling or present as passive/aggressive, any of which can surface the longer a patient is removed from all mood-altering substances. Patients are often stuck in ‘survival mode’ in those early days of residential treatment and scramble around seeking replacement distractions. Yes! Some clients fulfil this need by getting their head into the recovery process but this is definitely a minority group. The most common and natural approach to finding a new numbing agent comes in the form of snacking (over-eating), too much coffee, heavy cigarette smoking, vaping, exercise, anaesthetised by power struggles with staff or the programme, chronic complaining, grandiosity, ironic humour, sarcasm, bullying, recreating their dysfunctional family of origin by forming a clique and of course lustful relationships. It’s all about control at any cost!…