When I ask why he wants to leave, he doesn't sound very convincing. He has a place to live, he says. He has friends in the program. Plus, he misses the beauty of his home state.
But he doesn't have much else to say when I start talking to him about his history of recovery. He's never been able to put more than a few months of sobriety together. All the people he knows back home are drinkers, the people he hung out with before he came to us. And now that he has a couple of years sobriety he thinks the place he needs to be is back where it all started.
I tell him I don't agree with his decision because I don't think he's thought through it very well. This is the first time he's had two years of sobriety and all of a sudden he wants to make a change.
He reminds me of another client we had about 10 years ago. One day in a group session he announced that it was time for him to leave. When I asked him why, he said: "well, I've just been here long enough."
I was kind of surprised at his answer. So I asked how much money he'd saved. Did he have a car? Did he have insurance on the car? Did he have a support group where he was going? But it turns out his only rationale for leaving was that he had "been here long enough."
My experience has been that those who are ready to leave make a very gentle and smooth transition back into the community. They have a job. They have a support group. A car and insurance. An apartment or house. Plus a couple of months of savings put away in case they run into difficulty.
A lot of times those who suddenly leave, who have no concrete plan, are destined to repeat the history that brought them to us in the first place.
