There is something very few people know about me. It’s something I’ve never spoken about publicly. But readers have told me how much they appreciate that, with every article, I give a little piece of myself. So today, I’m trusting you with something especially vulnerable and sharing a deeply personal part of my story, in the hope that it might help someone else reading this feel less alone.
Twelve years ago, I went to rehab.
I don’t like to talk about it. I’m not ashamed of it, but it belongs to a chapter of my life I closed long ago and do not enjoy revisiting. I was going through my first divorce, one of the darkest and most destabilizing periods I have ever known. The crippling anxiety and severe depression it triggered often left me pinned to my bed while my mind raced through every horrific thought imaginable. On top of that, I also developed merciless insomnia—the kind that, no matter how exhausted I was, would not let me sleep. For years.
Tortured and spectacularly unable to cope, I was prescribed medication for the anxiety and more medication to make me sleep. At first, it helped, until one day it didn’t anymore and the solution had become a problem of its own. By the time I understood how bad things had gotten, I was barely functioning and no longer knew how to get myself out of this fresh new hell. All I knew was that I had to do something, anything, because death felt like the only other option left.
So, I checked myself into an addiction and trauma rehabilitation center.
Now, mind you, it was admittedly a very nice addiction and trauma rehabilitation center. Nestled in the lush hills of Chiang Mai, Thailand, the place had palm trees, sprawling tropical grounds and luxurious cabins. Everything smelled like jasmine and the food tasted like heaven. Not exactly what one might imagine for an institution built around human collapse. I suppose if I had to hit rock bottom, I might as well do it somewhere gorgeous. It was literally rockstar rehab. There were actual rockstars there.
But beyond the beautiful setting and unexpected celebrities among us, we all followed the same rigid daily schedule of intensive therapy: group sessions, individual sessions, assignments, exercises, meetings, and the constant excavation of every terrible experience or decision that had brought us there. There was no lying by the pool with a coconut and casually finding ourselves. The gates were locked, and we could not come and go as we pleased. We weren’t tourists, we were patients. I was there for 28 days. Others stayed much longer.
One subject that came up constantly in treatment was relapse. Everyone was terrified of it. Some of the people there had already been through rehab several times. They spoke of their slip-ups with so much shame, as though all the months or years they had spent clean or sober beforehand had been completely erased. To them, each relapse was proof that they were forever doomed and incapable of ever really healing.
Our therapists worked very hard to dismantle that way of thinking. A relapse, they drilled into us, is not a failure, it’s a reminder. It reminds you that recovery is a process and shows you where you still have work to do. It gives you information about what you might have failed to notice, and what you’ll need to do differently next time. Obviously, the idea wasn’t to romanticize relapse or use it as an excuse to keep doing whatever was destroying you. But it was paramount—and in the context of addiction, even a matter of life or death—to learn to stop treating every fall as a sign that getting back up was pointless.
What they were really teaching us was about change, and our relationship to pain. Almost anything we try to change will come with its own form of relapse. We quit smoking for days, weeks or months, and then have a cigarette. We commit to eating healthier and then have a “cheat” day. We vow to stay off social media during the day, only to scroll well into the night. We walk away from someone who makes us feel like shit, only to then fall for their next mixed signal and reopen the door. We let go, then grab hold again, and kick ourselves for apparently having learned nothing at all.
But there is so much left to learn in the fall, if we can just give ourselves the grace to pay attention. We can gain such precious insight into where the old pattern still has its hooks in us, what triggered it, and why. We may, for example, discover that willpower alone is no longer enough, and that we need to change the conditions around us. Maybe this time, keep the cookies out of the house, start sleeping with your phone in the next room, or finally block the fucker.
Twelve years ago, most of my energy was directed toward just trying to survive, albeit by numbing myself, escaping myself, or, at my worst, hurting myself. Thanks to rehab, I began redirecting that same energy toward becoming the strongest, healthiest and most capable version of myself. And since moving to Armenia, that desire has only intensified. Loving this country and wanting to contribute something meaningful to it has raised the stakes of my own life. I want to become more because I want to be able to give more.
That may sound exhilarating, but in practice, becoming your best self can be tediously mundane. It means getting out of bed when you would rather stay in it. It means hitting the gym, putting the fork down, picking the book up, turning the phone off, going to sleep earlier, and staying the course long after the initial burst of motivation has worn off.
It also means failing to do all of those things with some regularity.
I can’t tell you how many times I quit smoking before it finally stuck, or how many disciplined routines I started and then wandered away from. I have completed as many fasts as I have also broken dramatically early because a handful of nuts suddenly began to look like the meaning of life. I have detached from people, felt peaceful and powerful, and then somehow let them back in over the smallest breadcrumb, only to be reminded of exactly why I pushed them out in the first place.
The danger isn’t in the relapse itself, it’s in what you decide it means. It’s when you convince yourself that one cigarette means you may as well smoke the rest of the pack. It’s when you turn one indulgent meal or “cheat” day into a weekend, month or fiscal quarter. Or when you break no contact and then figure you might as well keep talking to your toxic ex until you’re right back inside the emotional chaos you worked so hard to free yourself from.
We are far too attached to the fantasy of flawless transformation. We imagine that once we’ve healed, grown, or finally “learned our lesson,” we should never again feel the pull of an old habit, a past wound or an ex person. Then, when we do, we panic and assume everything is ruined, throwing us right back to square one.
You do not need to throw the baby, the bathwater and the entire bathtub out just because you had one bad day. But neither is it an excuse for you to keep doing your dumb thing of choice. Feel it, study it, analyze the data it came to give you, and then get right back on track.
The most honest measure of progress isn’t whether or how many times you fall, but how quickly you can get yourself back up. Maybe the first time, you stayed in a toxic relationship for five years. The next time, it was one year, then three months, and now all it takes is one stupid weekend before you know it’s time to pack up your shit and get the fuck outta Dodge. Maybe you used to abandon your health for months after missing a few workouts, and now you get back to the gym on Monday. Maybe you once spent years needing someone else’s validation, and now, as soon as you catch yourself doing it again, you redirect your attention right back home to you, where it belongs. Each time, all you need to do is just try to notice a little sooner, learn a little bit faster, and return more gently to the person you are still becoming.
This is the lesson I carried out of rehab, and I am forever grateful for it. Some of the most important lessons we ever learn arrive wrapped in experiences we would never choose for ourselves.
I also made some of the best friends of my life there. But not everyone made it. Some people died. Others went on to become phenomenally successful, building lives and achieving things that, at the time, none of us could have ever imagined. The pendulum can swing to extraordinary extremes among people who have known that kind of darkness. These are people who rarely do anything half-assed. They are people who have fallen into the deepest abyss and learned, in the hardest possible way, what it takes to climb back out.
If someone can find the strength to free themselves from the crushing grip of the most addictive substances on earth, then surely the rest of us can recover from missing the gym, breaking a fast, sending a text or losing the plot for a minute. The stakes are different, of course, but the lesson is the same.
Once you commit to a path of progress, you will want to protect it fiercely. Just remember that it will inevitably be interrupted along the way. Expect it, learn from it, and then get right back on the road.
If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, please do not face it alone. Help is available, recovery is possible, and seeking treatment can save a life. Reach out to a medical professional, addiction specialist or reputable treatment center in your area. If there is an immediate risk of overdose, self-harm or death, contact emergency services right away.
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Listen to Sheila’s personal reading of “Progress, Interrupted”.
Sheila Paylan is an international human rights lawyer and former legal advisor to the United Nations. Now based in Yerevan, she regularly consults for a variety of international organizations, NGOs, think tanks, and governments.
