Alcohol treatment in Florida is the best thing that ever happened to me.  The other treatment centers I\’d been to in the past were all fairly local to me in New Jersey and New York.  While I\’m sure those treatment centers were able to help other addicts reclaim their sobriety, they did not do it for me.  There is something about being in tropical weather in the darkest, dreariest months of the year that is almost instantaneously healing.  A native of Pennsylvania, my sun and sand was traditionally the Jersey shore. Today, I can say with certainity that none of the beaches in NJ or NY can compare to Florida’s beautiful beaches . . . especially for scuba diving!

After my alcohol treatment in Florida, I decided to stay in the area.  I wanted the third time to truly be “the charm” as they say, so I entered an intensive outpatient program not too far from where I stayed for my alcohol treatment.  After my intensive outpatient program was completed, I thought the only way to continue my journey successfully would be to model my future environment after my treatment environment and what better way to do that than by staying close by my place of (successful) treatment?

This was truly the best decision I\’ve ever made.

I met my husband a few years into my recovery, and he introduced me to scuba diving.  I was deathly afraid, but he swore by it.  He was in recovery too and explained to me that diving was a type of natural high.  So being the “addict” that I was, I gave it a try.  A few hundred dives later, and today, I feel like a completely different person.  I can\’t imagine ever living anywhere far from scuba territory again.  Aside from the natural high, diving is about overcoming personal fear.  It is so unnatural to breathe underwater, that we have to train ourselves to get past that fear and get comfortable with surroundings that are hardly innate. Once you\’ve overcome that physical feeling of not being in control, you can appreciate the beauty and serenity in the weightlessness of the ocean.  The landscape is so vast that there is always something to explore beneath the surface; what a metaphor for life!

Melanie W.