BWalt

Hiya all,

Just wanted to post up here on my review of family week at my AW's treatment center. I'll not reveal the name or location, except via PM and should anyone post up the name after a PM, I'll delete the thread or have a moderator do so. Remember, this is my experience, not yours or anyone else's and in no way shape or form do I want to disparage any place that has the intention of treating the victims (alcoholic & family) of this disease. Also, if this post has a different tone than my prior posts (for you stalkers *grin*) it is because my eyes have been reopened and I've immersed myself in the recovery that my family (children included) have desperately needed for quite some time.

So........ about 4 weeks ago, my AW was in the end stages of alcoholism and had been so for the last few months. Really dumb behavior for anyone who isn't an true alcoholic, no details needed here, it was the end for both of us. So, I had an interlock installed, the next day she went on a bender at her parents' house an hour away. Her parents and I had many discussions on a path forward and we were at a loss. I called an old friend in the business, he'd moved to a new treatment center and of course offered his place or two alternatives but after hearing the story, he was adamant that she get help no matter where it was if I wanted her to live. Me being the co-dependent "hero", of course, I'd give anything to save my wife and the mother of my boys, why else would I have gone through hell for the past 2 years?

So, she agrees to go to the one he helped run since he helped her see the light 12 years ago and since then she'd not worked the steps or really done anything to maintain her sobriety. Mom drives her to our house to pack and of course tells me she hadn't been drinking. Remember, we're talking about an AW here and what do they do? Anyway, after an hour of packing (mostly fighting) we're off & down the road. After 45 seconds, it was clear she was pretty drunk, after 2 minutes we were screaming at each other, 5 minutes down the road, we're on the phone with her mom trying to push this back a day and I'm buying into this, after all, do I want to drive half a day with this person? Who would? Mom hollers at me "don't you dare stop, keep driving!", I think because she didn't want to deal with her anymore than I did. So on we go (never actually stopped, bluetooth is great!) and I actually started laughing at the dumb things she was saying which made her scream more. At any moment I thought she was going to yank the steering wheel and cause a wreck in the 4-lane traffic we're on, but I keep laughing anyway. Pretty soon, she starts laughing and after 45 minutes or so, we're getting along fine. For the next 5-6 hours, it was like a huge relief had come over both of us and we listened to all kinds of music (mostly Beatles, her fav) and we had a wonderful day of driving. Even took the top down long enough to force the rain gods to unleash their fury on us where there was nowhere to stop for about 5 miles. Got a little soaked but we survived, but didn't make it all the way because of the rain & it got too dark. Got a hotel & dinner, good breakfast in the AM and got her dropped off by 10AM the next day. Intake folks were great, the intake guy I was referred to by my buddy met us at the women's center (separate from the guys) which is a nice little house with room for 20 or so. We said our goodbyes and with sadness in my heart, I left my wife knowing I would only get 10 minutes a week on the phone with her for the next 45 days.

Long lonely drive home, thank goodness for my very supportive family, but to walk in our house was so hard, especially after her mom left me with our boys. I do a good job of sucking it up for our boys, they've never seen me cry and likely never will. I'm sure they think that I could saw my arm off with a chainsaw and not even wince - but after they were in bed I cried more than I have in years and it wasn't because of the empty wine bottles she'd drank & hidden before we left. The next few weeks were tough, trying to maintain the house, keep after the boys & their schoolwork, etc... Work was ok, but very stressful knowing that I had to get the boys to school, go to work & them coming home to an empty house, albeit a empty house without the drama.

She had to go through a 10 day blackout period before she could talk with me, although her counselor called me with her there and we briefly spoke during this period. She didn't go through the normal detox as she'd gotten most of the alcohol out of her system by the time we arrived. Her BP was high for a few days, then dropped to very low, not too low to be dangerous. After 10 days in, we had our first call without supervision and boy did it go south. What I've learned is that the guilt & anguish the A's put on themselves is pushed back out on others, especially towards the end stages and since she'd not worked any steps yet, she wasn't armed with any tools to deal with her emotions, so when she heard my voice, she immediately heard the disapproval I've shown her so many times in the past. Didn't matter what I said, it would have been interpreted as negative and the fighting would ensue. We had about 4 minutes of conversation, 1 minute of silence, and I said I was done & hung up. She called her mom next who I spoke with later, she agreed that she wasn't "right" in the head yet and this would take time. Later in the week, I spoke with her & her counselor & we made a little headway on what happened.

After this, I spent some time on my recovery; a men's alanon meeting and a celebrate recovery meeting - both good, but sometime still felt like it was missing.

The next week's call went much better, but I didn't get to my meetings. I was taking most of the week off, so I needed to get some work done before I left for Family Week.

I gotta tell ya, when I showed up Wednesday morning, she looked like a completely new person, 20 days in and her health was back, color in her skin - a new person or at least physically she was much better. Day 1, we had some breakfast, sat in on meeting after meeting with & without the "clients". My buddy was one of the speakers and I'm glad he was there & so we everyone in the room. He's spoken all over the world at AA conferences and has quite a following, he has many a speaker tape out there so if you've not listened to any, hit up aaspeakers.org or xa-speakers.org. I'm sure there are others but these are the ones I've used. Day 1 was to understand the hows & whys of the alcoholic mind. After lunch, I pulled out my phone to see if I'd gotten any messages from home and my AW pitched a fit. Basically it was a "you're not paying attention to me" type of thing, but I told her to deal with it. You're in here and you're responsible for yourself, I've got to cover everything else and I need to make sure our sons are ok. This of course didn't go over well, but oh well, she wasn't going to drink over it and she needs to learn to deal with things. As of this week, she's on step 2.

We were given some homework - basically a "when you do this, I feel this ____" type of exercise. Was a 3-page assignment. I got the first two pages done, but I'd not gotten the positive aspects of my AW completed and yes, this was hard to do. I wish they would have counseled us individually on this and I'll be making this suggestion. When I left, I turned on the work cell and immediately started getting calls & a days worth of emails. I grabbed a quick bite & got to work. Was midnight before I finished with this so I figured I'd write the positives in the morning. What happens when you put off what you should do today? You get in a bind. Well, as soon as I start working on it in the morning, she comes in & sits down next to me. She sees that I'm not done and then asks about the extra paperwork I have with me (I printed out my family questionnaire on her) which I used to help with my homework. She starts in on me and won't let up. I just walk away and avoid her until we do the "knee to knee - I feel this ___" thing which I know she was dreading. After her berating me, I couldn't think of a single positive thing to say. Beforehand & the day before, I had all kinds of good things to say, so she really shot herself in the foot with her attitude that morning. Needless to say, the knee-to-knee didn't go well, especially when the counselor asked me in front of the group about the positives page. After this meeting, she started in on me again and I'd had enough so I laid back into her and all the crap that'd gone on and that she's been lounging around here while I've been left to pick up the pieces. "I'm here dammit and that's not enough? If that's not enough for you to stop bitching at me, then don't plan on coming home" This ruckus got the counselors attention, so a few of them came over to break this up, fine with me at this point, I'm hot as hell at her and them. Luckily and pretty good counselor sits with us and gets us calmed down, then lays down some easy to follow ground rules and begins working through some easy questions to get us back on the same team with the same goal; recovery for us both. It worked. I got a bit of time to fill out my positives page before our private counseling session and lucky for us, her counselor had an emergency and had to leave, so we got the exec director of the counseling folks and she was awesome! We walked away after an hour of "for me to feel secure/get better, I need you to do this ____ type of stuff. We set some ground rules for her return, if she relapses, you do this and we went through the nuts & bolts of it all, I know exactly what my role is and she knows what she needs to do. Just awesome stuff, we all signed it and we headed out for her evening away. We also touched on the things I need to be doing which led into a discussion of what I was comfortable with, which led into a big discussion of communication between us. During active alcoholism, communication was nil, now it is to be frequent & positive on both sides and we're to use the "feeling" words, ie when you do/say this, I feel _____. Intimacy is an issue as well that we both need to work on - communication or lack thereof for both of us was the issue, so intimacy (not sex) should be much better as long as we don't let emotions rule our lives.

Day 3, we had the wrap-up sessions with some "sculpting" exercises, mostly with some of the "uncrackable" young kids who still think they're invincible. Really interesting stuff because you can see the anguish on some of their faces as they're asked questions about their childhoods. One kid absolutely wouldn't open up and he leaves in 3 weeks. I'll be praying for him, I hoped to catch him because I spent a bit of my childhood alone as my dad worked alot and mom had left, similar to his childhood where his dad left and his mom worked alot. I'm one of the "normies" or 85% of non-alcoholics, so even through I started drinking years before legal age, it never took ahold of me. Just doesn't run in our family. We also touched on family dynamics, personal & shared space as well as personality types; Hero, Scapegoat, Lost Child & Mascot. I was a Mascot growing up, but now am forced into the Hero role.

Anyway, to sum it all up, she's written more notes into this Big Book than she ever has before, (they're real 12-steppers here), out of the treatment centers I've seen & spoke with, these folks get it, 99% of the folks who work here are recovered alcoholics or addicts (which in an amusing way explains some of the coordination issues), but hey, it works.

With any business, there are folks who get it done & those who coast by and of the folks here, few are coasting. The only person who didn't seem to get it was a person who is near the very top (but obviously without any real authority because nearly every staff member rolled their eyes when this person talked). It was awful when this person took an hour from us on the last day. I'm still pissed that I'll never get that hour back. Also, they had a Saturday "interactive experience" that i signed up for, added an extra day on the room I'd booked and they ended up cancelling. I spent $150 extra for this extra night that I couldn't end up using. I couldn't even get my AW for another evening out to dinner and they didn't have an alternate activity planned. Anyway, that kinda pissed me off and they'll hear about it again before it's over.

Also included in the treatment cost is 15 months of follow-up care, for the first 6 months, they call the client twice a week and random UA testing, per them, they have partnerships with labs in nearly every zipcode. After 6 months, they call weekly. This is modeled after the program used by airline pilots and the AMA for doctors & nurses. The counselors that will be talking with your recovering alcoholic are all recovered addicts themselves, so they've been there and felt the pain.

This isn't a cheap place. Not sure if it's a sliding scale or how it all works, but from what I gather, it seems that different people pay different amounts, possibly due to insurance reasons, however in the end, we'll be paying about the same amount for 45 days than we paid for 30 days at a different treatment center in the past. Plus we're getting 1) aftercare program, 2) a much more intensive family week & recovery plan, 3) segregated mens & womens facilities (stay focused on the program)

I've also learned more about what I need to do for me; 1) Participate in alanon meetings (not just attend & whine), 2) Focus on me, what do I enjoy?, it doesn't have to be something that my AW also enjoys or even cares about. We need to live separate lives with separate interests and come together for those things that we do both enjoy. This will take some time for me to be comfortable with, as I'm sure most of the folks here understand.

I'm sure I missed a few things, so please post up with any questions you have and again, if you're looking for a treatment center, I highly recommend these folks. PM me if you're thinking this might be an option and I'll pass the info along (just the website) and let you do the rest.

Hammer

Thanks! That was great and a helpful perspective.

Since I guess this could be a Go-To thread regarding Rehab and *our* side of things, based on our experiences . . . .

I would Severely Caution AGAINST any operation that tries or promises a "quick fix" or less than 28 or 30 days.

Mrs. Hammer's was 21 days, and she came back a basket case, with the treatment center telling us to lie to her and tell her she was okay. Been a mess, since.

SurvivingAgain

Segregated facilities would be a number one if I was ever in a position again to look at rehab.
My AH went to a rehab facility that was considered one of the best private rehabs around our area. The financial cost was more than we could really afford but hey so what, health and well being is far more important. 28 days of rehab went by (not without its difficulties) but we managed. 2 weeks later AH was drinking again, so booked him in for another week (at additional cost). AH came out and began attending AA meetings every night (sometimes even two - late afternoon and evening sessions). Really thought he had finally sorted the drinking till I caught him at home during the day drunk.......he had found a 'soulmate' during rehab......she unfortunately had to leave the area to go back home. So we are back at square one.
I think it's really great that you were able to focus both on your individual and collective needs.......we are all the same but different!!!!!

SurvivingAgain

Having just read my post (after posting......doh), I feel I should add a bit more.
I certainly thought and hoped that my AH would find somebody he could connect with in therapy. After the years of minimal communication between us, for him to open up and express his feelings, even to relative strangers, would only help in his recovery.
I now think though that being vulnerable and the feelings of isolation that an alcoholic can have leave them in a dangerous place when deciding who they should engage with.
The fact that he engaged with somebody who was attractive to him made him disengage with the purpose of rehab.
Both are now not doing well!!!

BWalt

This place helps to find meetings and sponsors through their alumni network. They have some folks working there that have spoken at meetings & conferences all over the world, so they've met many folks who are successful in recovery in about every location there is.

Before family week, the "gals" had never seen any of the guys, so they referred to them as unicorns. Kinda weird, but it's all in the goal of keeping people focused on the work. When they complain about; food, roommate, etc... the answer is always something like "you poor thing, you don't have enough to do or you're not working your steps, lets see if we can help". There's no TV, pool table, dart board, tennis courts, etc... and as I mentioned, they get 10 minutes to call family/friends each week. They aren't given choices like we have.

They haven't guranteed recovery, but I was told that if your AW relapses, she (or you) call her sponsor & get her out of the house, cut her off financially and she gets back into treatment which to me was a huge WTF! They said, no, it's not your burden to pay for it and they left it at at.

Can't say I know whats going on there, maybe I'll find out in a few weeks. There are a couple places that give you another week or two if the alcoholic relapses. I don't think I'll be investing my $ in those places, it's safer in a shoebox under the bed or something.

AllThings

OMG, my AH got involved with a woman at the rehab facility too. He was there 21 days. (Just happened in August). He came home, carried on texting and calling her, saw her a few times, and then I found out. Initially, he thought he wanted to,separate to "sort out his feelings" but now says he's happier than ever. I never thought a rehab romance would happen, but it's over now and he says it's like it never happened. I am very hurt, but it sometimes just makes me laugh, REALLY? A woman in rehab? Puuuuullllleeeeeeezzzzzeeeee....