Dancing with the Devil - A Courier Driver's Journey Through Recovery

Three Years and Counting

Three years sober. The number sits heavy on my chest – a medal and a warning all at once. Something whispers inside me: “Stay humble. You’ve just learned to ride the bike, and danger lurks at every corner, every crossroad. Don’t take those turns too fast.”

The Fall After Rehab

When I left rehab, I thought I knew everything. I was there for a year in a closed program, working on myself – or so I thought. The truth? I didn’t complete my final assignment. Looking back now, I see my entitlement: “I’ve been busting my ass for a whole year, and they don’t see that? They could cut me some slack.” Classic addict thinking: life is mistreating me, people don’t understand me, THEY don’t know what they’re doing.

The weekend they finally let me stay at my own apartment changed everything. That grudge against the therapists festered until I messaged them on Sunday: “I’m not coming back.” They invited me to one last group session, tried to convince me I was making the wrong choice, taking the muddy road. But I knew better – or thought I did. “I’m strong enough. I don’t need you. You hurt my feelings.” In reality, I was running away, abandoning my safe house, my makeshift family.

The Courier Life

Then came the courier job. Standing in front of that worldwide shipping facility, I felt important. But I wasn’t equipped for the real world – not after coming from rehab where honesty was everything. In the real world, there were two types of coworkers: the “healthy” ones with boundaries and truth, and the toxic, manipulative ones I grew up with. And then there was me.

Me – the people pleaser. The one who needed everyone’s validation. I’d lift 80kg pallets solo just to prove my worth, flash fake smiles while making deliveries, crack jokes while my soul crumbled. Kind people would touch my shoulder: “This is too much, man. You’ll ruin yourself.” But those words only caused mild earthquakes inside me – I was already too far gone.

Dancing with Demons

Deep inside, where no one could see, a child version of me was crying in a dark grey corner, with no colors present. A lost, abandoned part of myself that knew the truth but couldn’t speak it. I was too busy proving myself, too caught up in my own destruction to hear his cries. God manifested in the people who tried to reach that child – the ones who genuinely cared – but I pushed them all away.

That’s when the devil started riding shotgun. He’d sit there with his open beer and cigarette, jaw jumping from cocaine, laughing as he hung out the window with his machete. “Forward, soldier!” he’d scream. “This is freedom!” He’d mock that crying child: “That kid is weak,” he’d snarl, “fuck him, look at him, fucking retard.” But I was chained to my seat, watching him dance in the alcohol cloud that surrounded me.

The Spiral

Deep down, I knew I needed help. That year in rehab hadn’t been wasted - I’d learned enough about myself to recognize I was spiraling. The occasional therapy sessions weren’t enough, though. I wasn’t ready. Hadn’t hit rock bottom. The universe, or whatever you want to call it, had other plans.

The Traffic Stop

It started with a routine traffic stop - I was on my phone while driving. Simple enough. But I knew what was coming: expired license, two hours of sleep, and enough substances in my system to fail every test in the book. When the officer pulled me over, a strange relief washed over me. “The agony is over,” I thought.

The cop was surprisingly friendly. Even tried to help me with the expired license situation - it was peak COVID, after all, and getting medical appointments was near impossible. But then came the breathalyzer. Then the drug tests. I can still see the officer’s face as he returned with the results: “You’re positive for… everything.”

The Breaking Point

Here’s the irony: they didn’t fire me. I was too “good” a worker. They moved me to coaching new drivers instead. A month of that charade before I finally told my chief - a woman I’d come to see as a second mother - that I needed help. Her support, letting me leave in a way that I could still receive social benefits, was a lifeline I didn’t deserve but desperately needed.

The Turning Point

But the real turning point? It wasn’t the police stop. It wasn’t even leaving my job. It was a phone call, early one morning, while I was nursing a hangover and contemplating suicide. My light was dying, and everyone knew it - including me. Everyone except this therapist who called out of the blue. Just to check on me. Just to show that someone still cared when I’d stopped caring about myself.

The First Steps

The weeks that followed were a blur of weekly phone therapy and reluctant discussions about returning to rehab. Desperate for alternatives, I found myself googling “how to quit drinking” and stumbled across Allen Carr’s “Quit Drinking Without Willpower.” Yeah, I know - sounds like a “How to Climb Everest by Watching YouTube” tutorial. But something in it spoke to me. The book challenged everything I’d been told about how hard quitting would be. Do I believe quitting is easy? No. Addiction is far more complex than that. But it gave me that first foothold, that first step toward change.

Today

Today, watching steam rise from my morning coffee, I sometimes catch a glimpse of him - the devil - in the rearview mirror. He’s still there, but smaller now, more distant. When I wrote down “three years sober” at the beginning of this story, that familiar fear crept in. Stay humble, it whispered. You’ve just learned to ride the bike. And maybe that’s the real truth of recovery - it’s not about banishing your demons entirely, but about learning to ride steady even when they’re circling. Each day, I choose coffee over chaos, therapy over self-destruction, and most importantly, truth over the comforting lies the devil used to whisper from the passenger seat. The road ahead is long, and there are still corners where danger lurks. But at least now, I’m the one doing the driving.