Hi...
....I just finished sleeping for the past day and a half, waking up occasionally to notice that I was still tired and that my back was killing me. I took another pain pill and went back to sleep over and over again. I woke up at 5 AM Sunday morning and here I am, after watching stupid crap on television.
One of the dumber things that I watched was some show about Corey Feldman and his problems with drugs. Someone made a comment that after you get into trouble with the law, there is only one “cure” for addiction and that is treatment in the traditional meaning of the word.
That’s bullshit. I’ve known lots of people, myself included, that drank to a level that some would call alcoholism when the only problem was immaturity and selfishness. People grow up or they just get sick of drinking. Maybe they fall in love, maybe they are sick of hangovers and losing jobs. Whatever it is, they just quit. THAT “treatment” is far more successful than anything that AA has to offer. That’s not to say that AA doesn’t work well for some people, it most certainly does. And, for some, it’s all that will work. But, no matter what anyone says, there most assuredly ARE people who can quit by other means.
The one truth in the show I was watching is that “once you are in trouble with the law, you WILL be going to treatment”. I worked at a drug and alcohol rehab in the early 90’s and it was pretty cool. My patients were mostly guys my age that partied too much. They weren’t there because they wanted to be, they were there for one of 3 reasons, the wife, the boss or the judge. These guys had absolutely no desire to quit drinking, or drugging for that matter, they just didn’t want to lose a wife, job or their freedom. As with most fines to be paid as a result of a court decision, the cash made by these facilities just goes to create jobs and line the pockets of whomever is involved in the “punishment” dished out to the “bad guy”.
I decided that it was a pretty despicable business to be in so I quit. But, before I did, I was taught to answer the HELP-LINE because, as the night nurse, I was responsible for answering it. The course in how to answer the phone was so manipulative, that I couldn’t do it. For example, we had to ask certain questions that would elicit facts that we needed to know, but had nothing to do with the question. We would ask, “Has his drinking affected his job?” If they tell you that their husband had lost his job, you referred them to the City Detox.
If they said, “No, he still has a job.” We would ask, “Well, is it a good job with benefits, one that insures your family?”
If the response was, “No, he hasn’t been there long enough to have insurance.”, we would refer them to the City Detox.
If the answer was, “Oh yes, he has a GREAT job, we couldn’t afford to lose that insurance!” , we set up an appointment as soon as possible with the CSR.
That’s just one of many such questions and modes of manipulation that would let us know whether or not we CARED about these people.
And then, to come out and SAY that it does no good unless you want it to work and then take people in who say they DON’T want to quit drinking is just hypocritical. And, oddly enough, the length of stay required in your “individual” case is exactly equal to the amount of time allowed by your insurance. That never varies. We could bargain with them according to the method of pay. If they had great insurance, it would cost 14 grand for a month. If they had to pay for it themselves, we could go down to 56 hundred. Same treatment, different fees.
What constitutes a problem is pretty relative. I once became a “patient” in order to keep my job, all the time knowing that while I had, indeed, drank to excess at one time, this incident was years later and I most assuredly was not drinking to excess at that time.
I was working nights and one morning, I came home to find a party going on in my house from the night before. I had a few beers and went to bed. I had to work again that night. In the evening when I got ready to go to work, my sister said that my breathe smelled like beer. Beer has a way of staying with you. I knew that I would be relieving the Director of Nursing who could smell beer a mile away. I tried to call in, at one point saying that, “I have no business coming in tonight.” She insisted so I ate something and went in.
Naturally, she smelled the beer on my breathe about a half an hour after I arrived. I never expected her to stay for that long. The mint in my mouth had melted. I should have had an Ever-Lasting Gobstopper.
Anyway, off to rehab for me, 6 weeks of it and I got to choose my own facility. Our company had them all over the country and I chose California. 6 weeks of sunny California with FULL PAY. All because I drank beer instead of vodka. What a waste.
I was given books to read and although each story in them was supposed to be written by a different person who was telling their own story, they were all obviously written by the same person. I had found a lie. These people who stressed honesty were lying to me. I made friends with my roommate, a total druggie who lived in the town we were in and made frequent trips out the window for hours at a time during the night. She was never once caught. I myself stopped at the liquor store to pick up a pint of rum as we walked to an AA meeting at a local church. The partying was non-stop and non-found out.
The meetings or “classes” were a joke. I spent the first two weeks telling the truth, all the while being accused of being in “denial.”
I spent the next two weeks shutting up during class, just observing what was going on. During this time, I figured it out. All you had to do was “talk the talk”. They didn’t care about anything else, just that you said the right things.
So, that’s what I did for the last 2 weeks. I had to pass this program to keep my job so I did. I said all the right things and even did what you do when you want to curry favor with the “counselors” (who were, in fact, just drunks themselves who had learned to play the system). If you joined in accusing the newbies of being in “denial”, you were golden.
So, after a while of being in a place like that, you learn that all you have to do is to act like the counselors do and you can get the hell out of dodge with a passing mark.
When I got sick of drinking, I quit. When my mother got sick of drinking, she quit. I know countless people that I used to party with who are now responsible members of society and NONE of them have ever been in treatment. I do believe that groups like AA are of great value to some, but there are many, many more people who can quit all by themselves, and never have another problem. It’s called growing up.
....I just finished sleeping for the past day and a half, waking up occasionally to notice that I was still tired and that my back was killing me. I took another pain pill and went back to sleep over and over again. I woke up at 5 AM Sunday morning and here I am, after watching stupid crap on television.
One of the dumber things that I watched was some show about Corey Feldman and his problems with drugs. Someone made a comment that after you get into trouble with the law, there is only one “cure” for addiction and that is treatment in the traditional meaning of the word.
That’s bullshit. I’ve known lots of people, myself included, that drank to a level that some would call alcoholism when the only problem was immaturity and selfishness. People grow up or they just get sick of drinking. Maybe they fall in love, maybe they are sick of hangovers and losing jobs. Whatever it is, they just quit. THAT “treatment” is far more successful than anything that AA has to offer. That’s not to say that AA doesn’t work well for some people, it most certainly does. And, for some, it’s all that will work. But, no matter what anyone says, there most assuredly ARE people who can quit by other means.
The one truth in the show I was watching is that “once you are in trouble with the law, you WILL be going to treatment”. I worked at a drug and alcohol rehab in the early 90’s and it was pretty cool. My patients were mostly guys my age that partied too much. They weren’t there because they wanted to be, they were there for one of 3 reasons, the wife, the boss or the judge. These guys had absolutely no desire to quit drinking, or drugging for that matter, they just didn’t want to lose a wife, job or their freedom. As with most fines to be paid as a result of a court decision, the cash made by these facilities just goes to create jobs and line the pockets of whomever is involved in the “punishment” dished out to the “bad guy”.
I decided that it was a pretty despicable business to be in so I quit. But, before I did, I was taught to answer the HELP-LINE because, as the night nurse, I was responsible for answering it. The course in how to answer the phone was so manipulative, that I couldn’t do it. For example, we had to ask certain questions that would elicit facts that we needed to know, but had nothing to do with the question. We would ask, “Has his drinking affected his job?” If they tell you that their husband had lost his job, you referred them to the City Detox.
If they said, “No, he still has a job.” We would ask, “Well, is it a good job with benefits, one that insures your family?”
If the response was, “No, he hasn’t been there long enough to have insurance.”, we would refer them to the City Detox.
If the answer was, “Oh yes, he has a GREAT job, we couldn’t afford to lose that insurance!” , we set up an appointment as soon as possible with the CSR.
That’s just one of many such questions and modes of manipulation that would let us know whether or not we CARED about these people.
And then, to come out and SAY that it does no good unless you want it to work and then take people in who say they DON’T want to quit drinking is just hypocritical. And, oddly enough, the length of stay required in your “individual” case is exactly equal to the amount of time allowed by your insurance. That never varies. We could bargain with them according to the method of pay. If they had great insurance, it would cost 14 grand for a month. If they had to pay for it themselves, we could go down to 56 hundred. Same treatment, different fees.
What constitutes a problem is pretty relative. I once became a “patient” in order to keep my job, all the time knowing that while I had, indeed, drank to excess at one time, this incident was years later and I most assuredly was not drinking to excess at that time.
I was working nights and one morning, I came home to find a party going on in my house from the night before. I had a few beers and went to bed. I had to work again that night. In the evening when I got ready to go to work, my sister said that my breathe smelled like beer. Beer has a way of staying with you. I knew that I would be relieving the Director of Nursing who could smell beer a mile away. I tried to call in, at one point saying that, “I have no business coming in tonight.” She insisted so I ate something and went in.
Naturally, she smelled the beer on my breathe about a half an hour after I arrived. I never expected her to stay for that long. The mint in my mouth had melted. I should have had an Ever-Lasting Gobstopper.
Anyway, off to rehab for me, 6 weeks of it and I got to choose my own facility. Our company had them all over the country and I chose California. 6 weeks of sunny California with FULL PAY. All because I drank beer instead of vodka. What a waste.
I was given books to read and although each story in them was supposed to be written by a different person who was telling their own story, they were all obviously written by the same person. I had found a lie. These people who stressed honesty were lying to me. I made friends with my roommate, a total druggie who lived in the town we were in and made frequent trips out the window for hours at a time during the night. She was never once caught. I myself stopped at the liquor store to pick up a pint of rum as we walked to an AA meeting at a local church. The partying was non-stop and non-found out.
The meetings or “classes” were a joke. I spent the first two weeks telling the truth, all the while being accused of being in “denial.”
I spent the next two weeks shutting up during class, just observing what was going on. During this time, I figured it out. All you had to do was “talk the talk”. They didn’t care about anything else, just that you said the right things.
So, that’s what I did for the last 2 weeks. I had to pass this program to keep my job so I did. I said all the right things and even did what you do when you want to curry favor with the “counselors” (who were, in fact, just drunks themselves who had learned to play the system). If you joined in accusing the newbies of being in “denial”, you were golden.
So, after a while of being in a place like that, you learn that all you have to do is to act like the counselors do and you can get the hell out of dodge with a passing mark.
When I got sick of drinking, I quit. When my mother got sick of drinking, she quit. I know countless people that I used to party with who are now responsible members of society and NONE of them have ever been in treatment. I do believe that groups like AA are of great value to some, but there are many, many more people who can quit all by themselves, and never have another problem. It’s called growing up.
posted by Meg Kelso | 4:06 AM
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