Today is Valentine’s Day. For many people, the holiday triggers thoughts of hearts, candy, and romance. For all we talk about love, romance, and sex, though, maybe we should explore what those topics mean, because it sure isn’t all hearts, flowers, and swooning emotion.
If people are attending drug and alcohol rehab or in recovery, maybe romance might not be such a good thing, or at least a topic they might want to consider approaching cautiously.
Why? Well, if people are attending rehab, they have a lot of work to do. They’re likely exploring what their drug or alcohol abuse has done to their life and trying to figure out why their substance use disorder started in the first place. They are working to develop tools to prevent such substance use disorder from occurring again.
Those recovery tasks are difficult. They require focus, work, and time. If people are looking to find romantic partners, they’ll be turning their attention away from their recovery at a time they need to pay attention the most.
If people do meet other people in rehab, they might experience a surge of emotions that might make them feel better, but they might be using their romances as replacements for their addictions. Once the surge of new love fades, they might feel as bad (or even worse) than they did before.
Furthermore, people in rehab and early recovery are emotionally vulnerable. They’re learning to navigate the world in new ways when they might have used drugs and alcohol as crutches in the past. Other people may take advantage of this vulnerability, a phenomenon sometimes known as 13th stepping (after the 12 steps of Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous).
Dating and relationships can be difficult enough. Adding the difficulties of recovery makes both even harder. Taking some time to consider what will truly help us might save us trouble now and in the future.
