On his third day at Renascent, Rino stood in front of the mirror shaving when a difficult realization hit him. “I didn’t recognize my own reflection anymore,” he says. “I didn’t have a soul. I had lost all my interests. I had lost myself.”

For years, Rino was a self-described functioning alcoholic. He built a career, kept up appearances, and convinced himself things were under control — until they weren’t.

A shift worker, he’d often found himself with long stretches of free time. Drinking slowly became a way to fill the hours and, gradually, one drink turned into many. When his boss finally commented Rino wasn’t looking well, “I knew the gig was up,” he recalls. “I confided in him that I may have a problem.”

At first, Rino saw treatment as something temporary: three weeks to appease his employer before returning to old habits. But that morning in the mirror, “I suddenly understood that ‘the guy upstairs’ didn’t plan for me to live this way,” Rino says. He threw himself into recovery, dove into the Big Book, attended every 12-Step session he could, and became the first to arrive and the last to leave.

“After about a week, I realized you’re only going to get out of this as much as you put into it,” he explains. “So I put everything into it.”

The structure and honesty encouraged by Renascent counsellors helped him begin rebuilding his sense of self. “Before treatment, I was probably one of the most dishonest people you’d know,” he admits. “I would tell people what they wanted to hear. The counsellors taught us to be honest, first and foremost, with ourselves.”

Hearing other alumni share their recovery stories also gave him hope. “It was uplifting,” he says. “You realized life goes on. You can get back to having the life you deserve.”

That hope continued after treatment. Rino connected with a strong recovery community, found a sponsor who became a lifelong support, and slowly began building a life he never imagined for himself.

Still, one thought lingered: who would want to build a life with an alcoholic?

“My self esteem had taken a hit from past ­relationships,” he shares. When his sister arranged a blind date for him with a woman named Anne, he reluctantly went.

“My sister knew Anne was also in recovery,” he says with a laugh. “I didn’t. But it worked – and despite neither of us wanting the minivan, the suburbs, the kids … we went on to have just that. Honestly, I couldn’t be happier or more proud of our children. We’re open to them about everything, and they’re unbelievable human beings.”