Y&C, good to hear from you. I was wondering how you were doing. Responding to your comments on rehab - they don’t teach you how to pay your bills and hold down a job. Instead, they help you detox and get clean safely, with doctors and therapists around to help you through. Once you’re clean, they teach you strategies for pursuing a happy drug-free life, as well as strategies to stay clean and avoid relapse. And individual therapy to help you work through issues you’ve been numbing yourself to with drugs/alcohol.
I had a rehab experience that really moved me last Saturday. Twice a week I meet with patients and families moving through the admissions process at a local rehab facility, offering support, empathy, and sharing what I’ve learned as the parent of a heroin-addicted son. A week ago Saturday, I met with a 19-year-old young man entering treatment for heroin addiction. He was with his mother, in early withdrawal, feeling crappy, not sure he wanted to be there. I talked with him for quite awhile apart from his mom, and he told me what he’d been going through, his efforts to quit, his fear at the thought of trying to live drug-free. Then, this past Saturday, I saw him again. The rehab facility had a big event – a “tune-up,” they call it - to which they invited everyone who had been a patient there over the past year. A big tent, food, speakers. At the end of the program, they invited people to come up to the microphone to share their gratitude. This kid went up there and spoke very passionately about how grateful he was for the facility, the staff, and to be clean and sober. He was grateful for the support of the friends he had made in rehab, and a group of young people sitting at a picnic table (his group) cheered. And he said that he’d never had the courage to stand up and speak in front of a group before, but that the folks in rehab had helped him realize his strength and self-worth. As he stepped down from the microphone and started walking out of the tent, I stood up from where I was sitting as he was about to walk right by me. I was going to shake his hand, reintroduce myself, and congratulate him on his success. He grabbed me and gave me one of the biggest, longest hugs I’ve ever received, and when he pulled away, there were tears in his eyes as he expressed how grateful he was to be in recovery. I don’t know what will happen to this young man when he leaves rehab, but for now, he is ecstatic to be clean and learning a new, healthy way to be happy and fulfilled.
That’s what rehab is about.