Welcome Home: What Sweet Dreams Reminded Me About Recovery

Welcome Home: What Sweet Dreams Reminded Me About Recovery

By Aaron D. Perry

I recently watched the movie Sweet Dreams, and it hit me harder than I expected. Not because it was dramatic or perfectly written, but because it felt accurate. It felt like residential treatment. It felt like sober living. It felt like that strange, sacred space where people aren’t at their worst anymore, but they’re still close enough to it that everything feels raw, honest, and real.

There is a particular kind of bond that forms in those environments. Not when people are still spiraling, but when they have just started to come back up. When they are exhausted, scared, detoxed enough to feel things again, and quietly wondering if they are capable of becoming someone new. In those spaces, recovery is not an individual project. It is communal. You eat together. You sit in circles together. You share rooms, stories, jokes, breakdowns, and moments of hope. Leadership exists, yes, but so does something just as powerful. Ordinary people simply showing up for the next person.

I have been to treatment eleven times. IOP, inpatient, residential. One of the earliest signs that I might someday work in this field showed up at Rogers Behavioral Health in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. We had some incredible techs there. Real human beings who knew how to talk to people when they were vulnerable. During scheduled downtime, we sometimes wanted to go to the gym or the game room, but we needed staff to accompany us. It always took some convincing. And somehow, I became the guy everyone nominated to go make the case.

Even back then, something in me wanted to advocate. To negotiate. To build little bridges between structure and humanity. At the time, I just thought I was being helpful. Now, looking back, it feels like a forecast of everything that came later.

I arrived at Rogers in rough shape. Throwing up in the intake office in the middle of the night. Barely conscious for days. On day four, a girl named Katie came into the unit. She looked like life had beaten her up a little. Cute, but worn. She was thinking about leaving. I told her, just do not go home. Give it a few days. We became friends in rehab.

Later, she dragged me to art therapy. She sat on my right. Another girl named Victoria sat on my left. When it was Victoria’s turn to share, she calmly said she struggled with suicidal and homicidal thoughts… while holding sharpened colored pencils in her hands. I remember looking at Katie and saying, yeah, thanks. We laughed. Nervously. But we stayed.

That moment was not therapeutic because of the art. It was therapeutic because of the people. Three strangers sitting in a room, none of us okay, but all of us there.

Years later, I found myself at the Milwaukee House of Corrections during COVID. Sixty eight beds in one massive room. Thirty four bunk beds. Everyone sleeping in the same space. If twelve people snored, everyone heard it. Every night. No privacy. No escape. Just time.

That is where I first started organizing informal recovery meetings. All we had was a blue book and each other. I used to ask the guys, how many people here do you think are here because of guns, girls, drugs, or alcohol? And of course, it was almost everyone. The ones who were tired of the drugs and alcohol part would gather, and we would talk. No credentials. No program. Just a small community in one of the hardest environments imaginable.

I was only allowed to speak to my kids once while I was in jail. It was planned. Timed. Controlled. I remember hearing their voices on the other end. Not so much pain, more confusion. Where is dad? Why is he there? I did not fully understand the weight of that moment until later, when I saw what that confusion eventually turned into.

Getting my kids back through family court, staying sober through that entire process, and being present in their lives again is the greatest accomplishment of my life.

After all of that, I had the privilege of helping build a sober house from absolutely nothing. No furniture. No light bulbs. No garbage cans. Nothing. We created a recovery environment from scratch and then started welcoming people into it. Some of those people had been homeless the night before. One guy slept behind a Jimmy John’s so he would not miss his intake appointment. He was our first resident. When he walked in, I said, welcome home.

That line still means everything to me.

He eventually relapsed. Most do. But for a period of time, he had safety, structure, dignity, and people who cared whether he lived or died. And sometimes, that interruption… that pause in the spiral… is life saving in ways we will never fully be able to measure.

That is what Sweet Dreams captures so well. Not the fantasy of recovery, but the humanity of it. The awkward humor. The group meals. The roommates. The shared activities. The leadership roles mixed with ordinary people just trying to help the next person. It is not about perfect success stories. It is about people rebuilding identity in real time, together.

Most people in Recovery Unbroken have never lived in those environments, and that is actually a gift. It means they chose recovery before crisis forced it on them. They did not need a locked door or a treatment bed to stay. They chose community while still having their home, their family, their job, their freedom.

RU is essentially a sober house for people who never needed one.

And that is remarkable.

What connects Sweet Dreams, my treatment experiences, my jail recovery groups, my sober house work, and RU is the same underlying truth. Recovery is not just about stopping substances. It is about restoring belonging. It is about identity. It is about learning how to be human with other humans again.

In treatment and sober living, community is survival based. It forms quickly and intensely because people are fighting for their lives. In RU, community is growth based. It is voluntary. It is preventative. It is people choosing to protect what they have already built instead of waiting until it collapses.

Both are real recovery. They just operate at different points on the same spectrum.

And that is why I feel such deep gratitude for RU. Not because it saved my life… but because it helps me live it better.

The thing that actually heals us is not willpower. Not discipline. Not even sobriety itself.

It is relationship.

We do not heal in isolation.

We heal in community.

And every time we say welcome home, to someone else or to ourselves, we are choosing to stay human together.