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Day two of my journey in rehabilitation and (hopefully at least) recovery began much like Day One….but worse. A knock on the door, waking me from a fitful sleep, telling me that we would depart for “the meeting” in 20 minutes.
Disoriented, sweaty, and still uncertain of exactly where the hell I was, I stumbled out of bed and threw on the same clothes I had worn the day before. It just did not seem to matter to me what I wore at the time, I had worn the same booze-soaked clothes for days on end before, so why change now?
I was still on a medication regime of Librium and whatever other pills they gave me to take. My body was starting to really break down by day two – the tremors, the dizziness, the beginning of my central nervous system realizing it was no longer getting what it was addicted to – in short, the actual delirium tremens were trying to break through despite the pharmaceutical assistance I was getting.
I’d been through physical withdrawal and detox before, but normally I was medicated to a greater degree. Every time I was in the hospital, they would dope me up with Librium but also had healthy doses of narcotics and sedatives. Maybe not the best choice for an addict to be given, but hospitals are focused on preventing physical or mental breakdowns due to withdrawal. And they successfully got me through that – more than once.
But here, in this rehab facility, they were focused on first preventing my body and/or mind from shattering but they were just as focused on getting me on a path of recovery. So, no dialudin, morphine, oxycodone or the like this time. Damn the luck.
In the morning A.A. meeting, I still was not feeling up to sharing, but I was starting to feel a connection to some of the people there and what they were sharing. Plus there was lots of coffee at the meeting, which was quickly becoming my substitute addiction in lieu of vodka.
After the morning meeting we returned to Detox Mansion, where I promptly collapsed back into bed. Around lunchtime came another knock on the door, but this knock was from the person in charge of the facility. He asked if he could come in and talk with me for a bit. I obligingly said yes, and he came in and sat in one of the chairs provided in my room.
He talked with me about his background, his life, and his experiences. He told me he had never personally suffered from any addictions but that he had worked with addicts for over 25 years. As it turned out, it was his wife who had conducted my intake interview the night I arrived and who had (correctly) surmised that, as she delicately put it, “we might have a detox situation on our hands.”
She could not have been more correct. And so ends my memory of that miserable day two, feeling as though I were plunging into the depths of detox and delirium once more, but this time remembering…remembering and feeling every single minute of it.
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