‘Addiction is a primary, chronic relapse and progressive disease. In simple terms, it means you inherit it genetically, there is no cure and it gets worse the longer it goes untreated,’ finished the session facilitator.

As he went quiet the ringing silence about the main lecture hall painted a picture of the effect these words had as they sank in among the new, ‘first time’, patients who had recently joined the group. Kim leaned forward and put her head down, staring at the shiny oatmeal floor between her legs.

Three weeks down, nine to go. She drew in a deep breath. Her three month stay was an anomaly to the other patients, another reason for them to get unnecessarily excitable.

Three months???

Kim hated the flabbergasted way each new face reacted upon first hearing the length of her stay. She couldn’t blame them though. Everyone else did 28 days, only she had chosen to do the extended program. For them three months seemed a virtual lifetime.

Kim didn’t fight the sentence. She knew it would be a futile bout, a useless gladiatorial dual, which garnered only the thrill of an exhibition rather than the means to an end.

‘Leave me alone,’ she vehemently cried into her mind, hoping that the aggression would push the voice of the self-defeating beast deeper into its fragile cage.

Kim accepted her sentence for the umpteenth time since being admitted to the rehab centre more than three weeks ago. A part of her willfully submitted, reassuring her that she needed the extended stay. Another part of her felt she had no choice but to resign to the treatment because she was too helpless to do anything but accept it.

‘Guys, let’s close with the serenity prayer,’ lightly commanded the ageing facilitator.

Scraping feet proceeded his words as every person stood up and formed a circle. Kim felt herself rising automatically, so trapped in her thoughts; she had been unaware of how the session had even ended. Skeletal-like fingers clasped onto one of her hands, tight, pudgy ones grabbed onto the other.

‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference,’ rang out the poignant prayer with every voice in unison.

The hands disconnected and patients began streaming out in different directions. A familiar buzz of voices broke out to accompany their dispersion. Kim usually resented the loud voices, brash tones and uncouth conversations. But today she welcomed the sedation effect they had on her own ‘voices’.

‘Damn, I still can’t believe you’re going to be here for three months,’ said one of the other patients.

With a short, stumpy and almost oblique shape, the friendly face and cheerful voice steering the frame had become a nearly constant shadow of Kim’s. She smiled back politely, trying to choke back the emotion as she was again reminded of how long it would be before she was allowed back into regular civilisation.

She felt for the new patient who had taken to hounding her in order to have a conversation partner whenever everyone else broke off into their relative cliques.

‘My addiction got to a point of almost no return. I need the full stay. I feel like this is my last chance,’ Kim explained vaguely, resentment dredging up again.

Shanice nodded timidly, still slightly reserved as all newcomers initially were.

‘Be right back,’ said Kim as her regularly fluctuating thoughts took a familiar nosedive.

Without waiting for a reply she parted away toward the female toilets. Once inside one of the bright, disinfectant scented stalls, Kim dropped the seat and sat down with her face in her hands. The tears streamed out slowly and silently at first. Before long these tempered weeps grew louder and more out of control until Kim’s entire upper body heaved of its own accord and the wracking echo’s of her sobs filled the empty lavatories.

‘Stop it… stop it!’ choked Kim, desperately trying to alleviate her woes.

She didn’t even know why she was crying, just that the pain behind the tears was scathing and absolute. Every wretched avenue of human existence and its painful complexities bombarded her thoughts.

Her consciousness backed into a corner of her mind, around which she sensed the presence of insanity lurking. So much felt wrong, deeply confounding and so inequitable. The program taught her to let go of resentment, yet for every successful release, her mind never stopped providing numerous reasons to resent.

‘The disease concept’ taught her that her acts of deceit were not her fault, that she had been caught in the grip of a genetically passed on disease, over which she had no say in accepting or rejecting. Still on the outside she had been constantly told that she had choices in life and that her immoral heart had always chosen the wrong ones.

In the weekly ‘share sessions’ Kim had found so much ‘identity’ through every other addict’s experiences, such absolute similarities that told her she was a ‘regular’ statistic of drug addiction, not an exception. Still, among her filial circle she felt like the only addict in the world that had ever lied, stolen, cheated or committed unspeakable acts that could not be explained, only regretted once it was too late to undo them.

‘What am I?’ she wept on bitterly. ‘A horrible person or just a very ill one?’

Kim could not answer her own query, feeling like neither of each and instead a gruesome amalgamation of both.

Three siblings, only one a drug addict. Kim felt like life had gambled with her life, lost the bet on her and spared the other two.

With a startling revelation, Kim’s sobs came to a halt. For a moment she blinked uncertainly through the blurry curtain of her tears.

Perfectionism, rage holism, work holism, religious fanatism…, and so many even more subtle manifestations in her siblings. Kim suddenly realised that nobody had really been spared, just blessed with addictions that were socially acceptable.

So many conflicting thoughts tugged at her. Familiar kinds of raging emotion, that on the outside would have given Kim the necessary excuses to use, flowed through her. The rehab facilitator had nicknamed the third week of treatment ‘relapse week’. For the first time Kim understood why…