The second coming of the world’s most famous mayor is at hand. In preparation, here’s a user’s guide what to look for when Rob FordRob Ford emerges from rehab for drug and alcohol addiction and, at month’s end, reclaims the chains of office.

Job 1: Does the mayor seem aware he’s dealing with a disease/affliction/condition that will likely see him dead or institutionalized if not addressed? Does he appear to understand that everything — his health, family life, career aspirations — depends on his staying clean and sober, and that this is a long-term proposition? If he seems to be saying, “Everything’s fine now, folks, let’s just put that unpleasantness behind us,” keep your cameras handy.

Home Fires: The biggest victims of active addicts and alcoholics are those closest to us. Their sense of normal has been corrupted. They’ve learned not to feel or trust. From what’s been reported about the mayor’s drunken ravings, he knows his wife and children don’t think much of him. The most difficult task in recovery is restoring health at home. Mere apologies and promises are not enough. Recovery, like love, is a verb. It will take action. It will take time. The mayor should, if he wants to call himself a family man, be spending evenings and weekends at home. If he’s out at sports events more nights than not, posing for selfies with his fans, it will be a harbinger of trouble.

People, Places, Things: Does Ford grasp that he will have to change the people he hangs out with, the places he frequents, the things he does? Recovery usually requires a wholesale reordering of one’s life. There can be no more Sandro Lisi, no more visits to his sister’s rec room if she’s using. Does he recognize that his family of origin — his brother Doug, his mother — did him no favours with their denial of his problems? Does he realize the Etobicoke neighbourhood he grew up in and never really left is practically a theme park to his appalling behaviour? Can he face life keeping a distance from unhealthy kin or possibly moving to a new part of town?

H.A.L.T: For most addicts, substances were the way of altering how they felt, moderating emotional highs and lows. Experts in recovery say we’re most susceptible to craving a chemical mood change when we are Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. That’s when we are hit with a case of the to-hell-with-its and reach for a drink or drug.

In rehab, the mayor will have been taught the importance of nutrition and the unhealthy way he used food. He can no longer afford the temper spikes and furies that are his signature. He’ll need to find others he can talk to, confide in about any inner turmoil that tempts him to medicate. He’ll need to keep new company and healthy hours. Sightings of the mayor stuffing his face, blowing a gasket, or prowling after midnight will not bode well for recovery.

Relationships: The addict has two means of relating to the world. Blame and rationalization. Nothing is ever our fault. It is always the spouse, the job, bad luck, the weather. We never developed the ability to recognize our own role in things or take responsibility for our actions.

Does the mayor seem willing to own up to his actions, the pain he’s inflicted on those who love him, the damage he’s done the city? Has he stopped blaming others or circumstances for his own conduct? Is he willing to work at building new relationships and muster the honesty they require? Finding a way to relate comfortably — free of chemicals — with the world and the people in it is what the trip of recovery is about once the drink or drug is gone.

The Almighty Me: If the addict/alcoholic has a mantra, it is basically this: Give me! Poor me! Why me! You can’t make me! Listen carefully for the tone of everything the mayor says. When the motivating emotions of selfishness, self-pity, defiance are discernible, he is on the road to trouble.

Pink Clouds: Almost everyone emerging from rehab feels great. For the first time in years, we are chemical-free, have eaten, exercised, slept. We’ve met people who seem to understand us, who have shared our ignominy and pain. We’ve learned lots about why we acted as we did. We want to get out there and spread the word of the new and improved us.

The thing about pink clouding, as the condition is known, is that it doesn’t last. Reality intrudes. As the axiom goes, rehab is for “discovery” – for finding out what was wrong with us, what we have to do about it and how. What follows is a long – often lifelong – program of “recovery.” As always, peer through the pink glow to what is being done, not said.

Fordisms: Addiction is a complex disease/affliction/condition. Coming to terms with it usually means gaining a more nuanced appreciation of life and people. As we see how democratic addiction is, there tends to be less inclination to judge and denounce. It will be a bad sign if the mayor promptly reverts to his combative bumper-sticker bromides, if he resumes dividing the world up into friends and enemies, if he continues to suggest life and its choices are clear and simple.

Come to Jesus: The kiss of death on Ford’s earlier stabs at sobriety was his easy absolutism. When he went on the TV circuit and totally, absolutely, 100-per-cent guaranteed by virtue of his “come-to-Jesus moment” that his lips would never again touch alcohol, nor would he use drugs, it was a certainty his using days were not over.

Most recovering addicts have a healthy fear of using again. They know that complacency — much less cocksure certainty — could be their downfall. Listen carefully for signs the mayor understands there are few guarantees of success in life, least of all along the path he now walks.

Habit’s Power: In his book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg explained how the brain – which like most organisms likes to save energy — prefers habit to conscious decision-making. That’s why so much of what we do each day — how we dry ourselves stepping out of the shower, the routes we travel — is done without thinking. Habits can be broken by consciously doing things differently to build new neural pathways.

This is what recovery involves — consciously doing things other than what we’ve habitually done when our bodies are screaming for immediate relief of pain, anxiety, boredom, self-loathing. But, as Duhigg explains, old habits are merely dormant, not extinguished. If we stop acting in the new way, our brain — preferring habit —will take us back to the old. That’s how and why so many addicts relapse.

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That’s how and why he mayor’s real work begins the day he steps out of rehab back into a stressful and challenging world.

Feature writer Jim Coyle is author of the Toronto Star ebook Hell and Back: Alcoholism, Addiction and Lessons They Taught Me, available at starstore.ca.