My First Week in Treatment

After quite a pleasant weekend it was time for my first full week of work in addiction rehab treatment. By now, I was quite into being in the clinic and was up for a bit of time focusing on me.

The daily routine was something like this:

Get up and go and receive any medication we had been prescribed at 9am

Daily reflections (also called meditation but not of the chanting variety) at 9.30am

Treatment – Process Group

Process group where we could talk about anything and everything for the rest of the morning. This was usually quite a lively session with a lot of emotion. Pain, anger and laughter depending on the subject being discussed. It was our group to talk about the things that mattered to us. Of course a lot of it related to where we were in our lives. The pain our drinking and using had caused and the issues we had to face as a result of this.

Step Work

After lunch, we would often present our life stories or step work. I was sorry that I had missed June’s so did not get a full picture of her life to date. This bothered me and I wanted to ask her if I could read it. I didn’t. I now see I didn’t need to know her full life history and my wanting to read it said more about me and my need to know everything and have some control over proceedings!

At around 4.30 we would finish for the day and go back to our rooms. The clinic I was in had self catering units which I was happy with though now I can see that the isolating and watching tv on my own was not as constructive and as much fun as I might have had if I had been in accommodation in which we at least cooked and ate together.

Meetings

In the evening we went to an Alcoholics Anonymous or Cocaine Anonymous local meeting. This would be followed by a cup of coffee (alone or with the others), perhaps a little work on my current assignment and then bed. For a good uninterrupted restful sleep. Something I had not experienced for a long time!

I was quite comfortably settled in this routine with the four of us – June, Mike, John and me – when on the Wednesday Georgio arrived and on the Thursday, Rick. I was quite put out at these ‘imposters’ in our group, changing the dynamics of it. However, it turned out they added a lot to my time in treatment – and beyond. With one of them becoming a lifelong friend and significant influence in my life – and the other…. an interesting character!

Treatment – Different People from Different Backgrounds

He had either had a most dramatic and horrific life – or a lot of it was made up and exaggerated and to this day I am not sure how much was the former and how much the latter. His wife had died young of a brain haemorrhage, he had witnessed people jumping off trains when he was a signal man, he had detected a terrorist plot when he was looking at some computers in an internet café in London and was now under police protection. And if all this was true, he certainly made up some misleading information about himself when he was in treatment (he introduced himself as a single counsellor. For example. When he was married and in treatment!). You meet some interesting people in an addiction rehab treatment centre!

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