Safety in numbers. In this case, the number of days you won't have access to alcohol and that you'll be working on sobriety.
Rehab wasn't a choice for me. I had nowhere else to go. This made it easier for me to accept it. And for that, I am grateful. Same with my five-day detox. I was nonfunctional when I checked myself into detox, and it was a relief for me to be there. I ate and slept as I had not for at least a couple of years of my three-year relapse, and with the help of detox meds, I stopped feeling as though I were dying.
Many of us could write a book on the different "types" in rehab. There are those who are court-mandated who seem to think that their mandate is to disrupt everyone else's experience. (One guy placed a turd in another patient's sneaker as a joke. There were also a coupla gangsta types who got off on looking and acting menacing.) A couple of them threatened me when I confronted them. I didn't care. There were also people who were determined to remain silent and who rarely participated, often keeping to themselves. You can't know what they're thinking, but their behaviors are expressive. Anything from getting it all over with so that they could continue to drink again once their stay was over, to being overwhelmed by the whole experience, seemingly believing that everything would be okay if they just made it through. My roommate was the former.
But participation alone does not guarantee success. Denial doesn't fade once we step over the rehab threshold. The counselors were aware of this, and pushed us to see our own well-crafted defenses against getting sober, no matter how active we were in our treatment. There are some who seemed to celebrate their time in rehab by drinking after they were discharged. I had no conscious desire to get sober in rehab, but I made good use of my time there. I had nothing better to do than to cooperate with my recovery, and it helped make the time pass. I signed on for individual counseling while I was there -- my connection to the outside world and to a relatively sane person -- in addition to the many mandatory group meetings. I too was one of those people who didn't want to leave when my time was up -- I was safe there -- and I suffered through daily and intense cravings for months following my discharge. I used my not wanting to repeat my rehab experience, and what happened before and after, as motivation.
After twenty eight days, I was discharged to a crisis center where I stayed for three weeks until I could find suitable housing. The most important day, and all the days following, was the first day when I was on my own. I wanted to drink very badly, but I got myself into AA, IOP and individual counseling right away. Had I had income at the time, I'm certain that I would have picked up the drink again.
Three years later, last summer, I saw my rehab roommate at the beach. He looked like hell, and his facial expressions and body language signaled that he didn't want me to approach. As soon as he saw me, he headed off in the opposite direction. I'd seen and heard of other people who were in the same rehab as I, and none of them were doing well. Others I just never heard anything about, so I couldn't know how they were doing.
The title of your thread, "I have sworn for years I would never do this," suggests that you knew for years that you had a problem with alcohol. I was the same, but in a different way. During the early part of my relapse, I'd see guys on the sidewalk, either drunk or hungover, panhandling for money, smokes, whatever...I'd immediately think to myself, "That's gonna be me." And I believed it, but did nothing to stop drinking. Perhaps my way of preparing for what I believed was inevitable. I got no comfort in eventually knowing I was right.
You've made the right choice. And, if you're anything like me, you'll get from rehab what you put into it. If nothing else, my family got relief from knowing that they wouldn't get "that phone call" while I was in treatment.