Rehab Diary: Life During Wartime

We are up to 23 clients in the rehab facility now. The staff is struggling to keep up. This is the most clients they have ever had at one time. Two of the clients are only in for seven days – they had the choice of seven days in jail or seven days in rehab in a cushy rehab place. Go figure, they picked the luxury spot instead of jail. Those of us who are here for “longer” detest the seven-dayers.

We’re @ outpatient programming right now. We go to outpatient four times a week for two and one-half hours per sessions (10AM to lunch break @ 12:30). On Thursdays such as today, the first hour is structured as an AA meeting (though it is the worst AA meeting I have ever attended).

The morning AA meeting was awesome! Lots of great sharing. One of the “old-timers” approached me afterward and told me he had been through some of the same experiences as me (such as driving our vehicles into ditches on the “way home” at something like 60 or 70 miles per hour and being fucking lucky we didn’t smash into a power pole before righting our vehicles back onto the roadway…good times).

I’m eternally grateful that I never hit anything…or anyone…while driving drunk. It’s a miracle, one of many. I could not live with myself if I had hurt or killed someone in an “accident” – to be honest, I would rather have died myself than hit someone else. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suicidal, I just couldn’t bear the guilt of damaging someone else’s life that way.

Yesterday I received pictures and a lovely letter from my significant other. I also talked on the phone last night with them for awhile. Things are going well in their life (all things considered) and I am very happy about that. The pictures sent were from their visit during “family visit” day last weekend and they came out great. I am so blessed to have this person in my life, especially after all I have done. I still feel a lot of guilt and shame for hurting them so badly with my drinking and the behavior I exhibited while drinking.

I miss them so much. But as they have said (more than once), I’m where I need to be right now. And as they said as I was packing my bags for rehab, and I noted how far they had come in making some needed changes in their life, “It’s your turn now.”

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