What would a good rehab/detox look like? I had just walked into the rooms of AA and many people were telling me of a popular detox. Almost everyone in the local fellowship had been and many thought it was the only way to get sober.
I wasn't so sure, having been through something similar and finding that I could "cheat" the system quite easily. So they told me more.
Apparently, I would have my own room in an old building in a beautiful mountain setting. The treatment was very friendly involving little group therapy sessions in the morning and afternoon, and a lot of free time. The food was excellent. There were plenty of things to do. Horse trecking, golf, archery, bush walks to name a few.
It sounded like a holiday camp, which is exactly why I didn't go. The folks that told me all this, it turned out, were being somewhat flexible with the truth, in their enthusiasm for me to follow their path and it back fired.
I instintcively knew that some kind of soft option through which I could con my way, where supposedly someone else would fix me, would be the worst possible thing for me. I elected to be responsible for myself this time, to stay in the community and pay my own way, and to work the AA program.
This was a path that I understood would be painful and unpleasant at times, that I would be looking at myself honestly for the first time a really taking in the whole truth about me and the way I had been living. I knew this was never going to be a comfortable process, but in the end it was the only way to survive.
The rehab I described was a government one and closed quite a few years ago. It was nothing like a holiday camp and seems to have been quite effective. In fact, parts of their program were very painful I am told. So I am not knocking rehab, but suggesting that there is no comfortable painless way to recover, if you are an alcoholic of my type.
For me the pain of drinking had to be greater than the pain of recovery in order for me to be willing to go through with it.