It's a rough ride.
I'm a veteran of five in-patient rehab/detoxes, three separate locations, all for booze.
Only one of those did I not get medicated, and on day two I popped and went straight to ER with seizures. And as if knowing I despise the twelve-steps, the pink elephants gave me vivid hallucinations of Big Book phrases rolling across the ceiling all night before. Fun stuff! Actually, I'd been fearing/using seizures as excuse for so long, and yet it honestly felt pretty good afterward, not even counting the IV Ativan. It was some kind of hard reboot of my brain. I saw the ambulance pick up a few people from rehabs who preferred to suffer stoically and med-free.
By far the longest recovery times went to the opiate folks (and sort of the benzo kids, since all you can do is taper that down). (Shortest was crack cocaine, since they never stayed past three days.)
That said, there was a big difference in population with the opiate users. You could divide them into committed short-term white-knuckle suboxone fast taper, and extended long-drawn barely-drop suboxone users (I'm sure there were other meds involved, but thankfully I actually never picked that habit up). The fast tapers obviously did the best, while there. I hope it lasted outside, but unfortunately, no data on that.
The problem, of course, is that I've detoxed myself thousands of times. I know the fucking routine coming off booze. If it's really bad, yeah, I could use some benzos to help. But in three or four days I'll start to eat a little and in two weeks be mostly normal. After that, you're exactly where you were, everything as fucked as it was. Twenty-eight days doesn't change anything, not even the moon phase.
I'm trying to come up with something encouraging though (I can't use myself, since abstinence is not now and never was a personal goal). I do have a friend or two who kicked and stayed clean, one who took no pain killers giving birth. It has happened thousands of times. There is no magic to it, it just must be done.
Well, we see in a few days how kicking meth goes. I'm not too worried, since sleeping all day except for meals seems downright pleasant, and being broke helps prevent relapse. But, you can say the same about cigarettes, and I'm twenty years in and counting.