Reporting on the trip to son's halfway house
Friends,
From my previous posts most will remember I asked for prayers and good thoughts as my husband and I took my adult son (age 32) to the halfway/treatment center in Atlanta, Georgia. He has been clean for ten and a half months. So here's what we encountered...........
First of all the center is very stuctured and really is more than a halfway house in that they have curfew, they have pretty strong rules and regulations. Here are just a few........
1. You must put in three applications a day for employment.
2. You are on the buddy system unless you are applying for work. You don't
leave the facility without a buddy.
3. On Sundays you and your roommates have the evening meal together as a
family unit to facilitate friendship and learning about each other's day to
day to day activities/ problems etc.
4. They drug test twice a month.
5. Once you have a job you are expected to help pay your own way. Until
my son finds a job we'll assist him as long as he is working the program.
The hardest thing for me to do was accept the bare bones part and that I really didn't want to accept where he had to go. I had a very hard time with that. I kept repeating over and over that this just could not (meaning the bare bones facility) I began to think things through and I thought.........
It could be much worse. Sure, he is unemployed but he is sober and willing to look for work. Sure this place isn't on par with say a Holiday Inn BUT he is with other people who are working on their sobriety. (some have been given a chance to go there instead of jail)I know to stay in the program he must do the 90/90 meetings and he has a counselor who is working with him too. This morning he is going on a job interview and seems upbeat . I guess I am saying I have much to be thankful for and I am trying very hard to hang onto that. This is his first time out in the "real world" in ten months . As his couselor said......."Your son is not facing cravings now. He will be facing obsession." I really hope and pray he will stand strong. I do realize there is nothing I can do but mom's never stop their caring and concern. Please say a prayer for him as this really is the first day of a new life for him. Please pray that someone by word or deed will show him a kindness. That might be just the the encouragement he needs.........just for today............thank you one and all, hugs, dixied