Morro Bay Recovery: A First-Person Reflection

I never thought I’d end up here, staring at the briny stretch of Morro Bay as the sun leaks gold across the water, each wave catching fire before dissolving into the rocks.  I didn’t think I’d make it through another night, let alone get to witness mornings like these.  The air is crisp, sharp, almost too clean for lungs like mine.  It's like it knows the sins I've inhaled, the poisons I've willingly embraced.  But here I am, standing in a place that feels alive in a way I’ve never been.

Addiction is a thief that doesn't just steal your soul—it rewires it, erases parts of you, and leaves behind a constant, gnawing hunger.  For years, my world was chaos: a cycle of want, take, crash, repeat.  The nights were long, darker than this ocean at midnight, and the days were worse because they demanded explanations I couldn’t give.  I was always apologizing for things I didn’t remember, always running from shadows I didn’t have the courage to face.

Coming to Morro Bay was not an accident. A friend of mine recommended them to me. It is just one of those twists of fate that feels like punishment until it becomes salvation.  I didn’t expect recovery here to hit me the way it did.  I thought it would be clinical, sterile—just a place to dry out and keep the world at bay.  But recovery isn’t that.  It’s messy, raw, and terrifying, like staring down a storm you know you have to walk straight into because there’s no other way through.

The people here didn’t sugarcoat it.  They looked me in the eye and called out my bullshit, sometimes before I even spoke it. There was this one guy who told me that addiction wasn’t my real problem.  “It’s just the band-aid,” he said.  “Rip it off, and you’ll see the infection underneath.”  I wanted to punch him when he said it, but I think he might be right.  The drugs, the drinking, the chaos are symptoms.  The disease was this yawning emptiness I’d been trying to fill with anything that numbed the edges. That's what I figured out. It's an emptiness and at times an escape.

It's a lot of work!  Recovery doesn’t come easy.  It’s mornings spent shaking in a cold sweat, afternoons where you want to bolt from the group sessions because the mirrors people hold up to you are too damn clear, and nights where sleep feels like a punishment.  It’s writing letters you’ll never send to people you’ve hurt, hoping the act of apology might stitch together a little of the mess inside.  It’s walking along the bay, the salt air burning your nose, and wondering if you’ll ever feel worthy of this kind of beauty.

There were moments I wanted to quit but this time I am not because of the people at Morro Bay Recovery. They helped me with the times when the pain of facing myself felt worse than the worst hangover, the worst withdrawal.  I wanted to run, to numb out, to do anything but sit with the wreckage I’d made of my life.  But Thank God Morro Bay wouldn’t let me go.  Something about the unrelenting tides, the quiet strength of the rocks, the way the fog rolls in and blankets the world in forgiveness—it kept me here, tethered to the work I didn’t know I could survive.

I’m on my way to fixing myself. It is hard. It is a process. You have to put in the work. Am I cured? I can only answer by stating that I'm cured when I'm going through the process of doing the hard work here at Morro Bay Recovery. I’m broken just trying to walk upright, one step at a time, on legs that feel shaky but I have a new confidence.  Morro Bay has become part of me, a place where I've learned that brokenness doesn’t have to be permanent, only a temporary state. Think of the ocean, the tide goes out, but it always comes back in, bringing with it what's been lost.  Maybe that’s all recovery is—learning to trust that what feels empty now will one day be filled again.

So, I stand here, watching the waves, and Ibreathe.  For the first time in a long time, I don’t hate the air in my lungs.  For the first time, I think, I’ll be okay and that's my Thank You For Morro Bay Recovery being here to help!