Thank you to Matt for making this video for our Life Beyond Series. It’s a wonderful testimony about the power of addiction treatment, including how mental health and wellbeing can radically change for the better in addiction recovery. From the dread and fear of active addiction, to feeling freedom, Matt’s story shows what can be achieved. Everyone at Help Me Stop is so proud of you, Matt, for the consistent actions you’ve taken to change.
Matt completed our face-to-face Dayhab programme in our central London rehab. Please call +44(0)208 191 9191 or contact us here to enquire about addiction treatment for you, a loved one, or to refer a client or colleague to us.
My addiction recovery: ‘I don’t wake up with this cloud of doom I used to have’
Matt says, ‘I am good today, actually. I feel really, really quite positive. I kind of wake up now, feeling like, I don’t dread my day. Like I’m not sort of fearful about the future. I don’t wake up with this cloud of doom I used to have.’
Addiction treatment: ‘The therapists get it because they’ve been there.’
‘So, the three words for treatment here are: freeing, acceptance and exhilarating. The biggest thing that I liked more than anything else, actually, which I said yesterday in the graduation, was that because we’ve all been in this together, and that they get it, the therapists get it because they’ve been there, that makes a massive difference for me, rather than someone who is trained to be a therapist but hasn’t actually had any firsthand experience.’
Before addiction treatment, ‘I was barely existing’
‘I just felt like I was barely existing. I was annoying people. I was letting people down. I was letting myself down. My mental health massively suffered. I didn’t know what freedom looked like – in terms of like freedom in my head – I just didn’t know how that was ever going to look because I just thought, ‘well, I’m never going to get this, this is just going to be me. There was a lot of fear around all of that and like a final act of like, ‘is this really what I need to do?’ But actually what that relapse taught me was that my way doesn’t work, I’ve tried it for many, many years and I was so willing to get to a point where I needed to ask for help.’
Addiction treatment: a ‘safe’ place to share and recover
‘It didn’t feel like I was coming to a clinic. It kind of felt like I was coming to a house. Again, for me, I needed that feeling that this is somewhere safe, I can be amongst people that, yeah, I can share stuff. I don’t have to share it with the outside world. But I can share it here. I think that by coming here, that’s really kind of helped me work on myself, and work on recognising that I haven’t been a bad person, I haven’t done bad things. I’ve just made some poor choices through my addiction, so I’m kind of really glad that I’ve been able to have that time to work on me and find enjoyment in life again.’
Call +44(0)208 191 9191 in confidence or contact us here about addiction treatment in our face-to-face London Dayhabs or in our Online Rehab.
