The Heartbreaking Struggle to Stay Sober Under Lockdown
Experts say widespread self-isolation and an unaffected supply of drugs and alcohol put many in recovery at risk of using again
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Bob, from Long Island, is 34 and has spent more than a decade in a tug of war with addiction and mental illness. Periods of detox and treatment, he said, alternate with downward spirals into alcohol, cocaine, opiate, codeine, and hallucinogenic drug use and, more than once, attempted suicide.
Bob, who asked to use his first name only for privacy, got out of rehab on March 13. Transitioning out of inpatient care is tough enough, he said. Being released into a world reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic raises the stakes. “I’m more afraid of a relapse right now than I am of coronavirus,” Bob told me.
Recovery is not only a journey from substance use; it’s a slow withdrawal from all the conditions of addiction, like isolation, chaos, and fear. Now, a global health crisis, an economic collapse, and mandated self-isolation have forced people in recovery into vulnerable circumstances that heighten the challenge of sobriety. Usual coping strategies — cooking for friends, seeing a therapist, focusing on work, attending peer support meetings, going to the gym, visiting museums, being outdoors — have become limited at best, if not completely inaccessible.
“It’s just a given: People are feeling very vulnerable right now,” said Tom Hill, who has been in recovery for 27 years and serves as a senior adviser for addiction and recovery at the National Council for Behavioral Health, a mental health and addiction nonprofit. “For anyone prone to using substances, it could be a recipe for relapse.”
Jimmy Hamm, sober since January 2007, now owns and operates a sober-living home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The 10-person household, under quarantine for the past month, has already experienced relapses since the pandemic began. “They’re jumping out of their skin,” Hamm said. “They don’t have outlets anymore; they don’t have freedom. Isolation and boredom are the devils of this disease.” Or as a friend of mine, who recently used their substance of choice for the first time in years, put it: “Right now feels like a freefall. What else are you…
