Maria,
Congrats to your husband's ninth anniversary.
Your question on the continuing value of a formal rehab program is interesting.
My experience after a quintuple bypass is that the steps in rehab are, in this order:
1.physical, provided by the medical professionals.
2. Safety and security, meaning achieving the necessities of life, like a place to live, etc.
3. Social, meaning sharing feelings, and life, with others
4. Self-worth, meaning feeling good about yourself which I believe includes taking responsibility for yourself
5. Self esteem, meaning being proud of yourself.
Continuing formal rehab:
The positive: It is working by providing the monitoring that makes him comfortable. Apparently you can afford the $73/month.
The negative: One of the goals of formal rehab is assist patients to learn how to monitor themselves, which fits number 4 of my above steps. He may well be satisfied stopping at step 3.
An extreme example I used in my book "One Heart-Two Lives: Managing Your Rehabilitation Program WELL" to illustrate the power of relationships of dependence is the Stockholm Syndrone." Several bank robbers, in Stockholm Sweden, held some captives for an extended time period during which they provided food and other necessities. After the captives were released, a significant number of captives felt a loss based on their dependence on their captors.
The FBI uses this example to indicate that even in the extreme example of being held prisoner, some feel a loss when separated form their dependence on others. With this in mind, imagine the potential sadness at leaving rehab? I felt a loss when leaving Intensive Care where they kept me alive, but I knew to ever really be free I needed to assume responsibility for myself: hence the title of my book where WELL is steps 4 and 5 in my model.
Everybody, and medical professional, is different: I hope my experience is helpful.
Brent Zepke