Friends, addicts, caged

A cage is always looking for a bird.

Franz Kafka

I met a lot of people during my hospitalizations. Also, there were more than 20🤦‍♂️. I tried to do a calculation, and I came to the conclusion that I spent more or less 3 years of my life in drug recovery clinics. In total there were 9 clinics, over 37 years. Recovery clinics are, in general, places of solidarity. Most people are living in difficult situations. And there they find a bunch of poor devils who, if they didn't lose everything or almost everything, were certainly headed for disaster😢.

Lives in trance

A friend was a retired soldier. He was left-wing, something unusual among military personnel. He read a lot, spoke little. He never got into controversy with other addicts. Mainly about politics. But he was adamant: if someone said, look, I'm not right-wing or left-wing - then it's right-wing, he would respond. I'm not L... nor B.... So it's B. It was funny.

A lawyer who had lost everything. Several hospitalizations, in clinics and farms. The last thing the family had done for him was leave him at the clinic door. He went in, obviously: no money, no home, at least he was going to get a roof over his head. I knew everything about addiction, Twelve Steps, Recovery. And he stated: "everything you learn here, when you walk out that door, you will forget"😨. And you will return almost exactly to the mental condition you arrived in.

He was the son of the owner of a large supermarket chain. He went to visit the clinic to show how well he was. He was well received, everyone was happy to see him doing so well. He came back two days later, completely locked up, with dozens of spike marks on his arms😵. He went from there to a farm, where he would stay for a year.

At a time when people could leave the clinic and smoking was still allowed. Two men, close to 50 years old, one black with a serious heart problem and the other with serious liver problems, always a bit sarcastic, especially towards those who were taking their treatment seriously, went out every night and returned at 4:30 in the morning. morning, completely drunk. Close to discharge, both were crying profusely because they had thrown their treatment in the trash😭.

The guy tells me: "I'm a sui generis case - I don't like sweets". Stop it, man, drunks don't like sweets... Able! Well, let's take a poll. So-and-so, do you like sweets? I'm not very fond of... No, I don't eat sweets - but now I'm eating. I love sweets - It was the diabetic...😄

The Aquarium... the aquarium was an observation room for the most seriously ill. The guy arrived well, on the second day he started to look weird and on the third day he woke up in the aquarium, in Delirium Tremens. It's a horrible thing to see: living in an imaginary and terrifying world, with hallucinations, seeing snakes, spiders and lizards😱.

Addicts and alcoholics are different. Especially in the first hospitalizations. The addict says: "man, I smelled pounds of dust". The alcoholic: "imagine, I had just a beer".

The girl learned: parties for addicts are like this - the 4 S's - Appear, Greet, Smile and Disappear. She went to the party, did everything right but forgot 4 S. I met her at the clinic a few days later... The other went to the Emergency Room 3 times a day to take morphine for a headache. They admitted her to the QD sector. We were walking in the park near the Clinic... what happened to you? I honestly don't know what I'm doing here. My problem is a headache🙄.

Two girls who snorted a line of cocaine, transformed themselves, got on a dating app and went out with the first guy who came along🤐.

Tap dancing

The Eric Clapton, in his biography, spoke of an attitude of many addicts, especially during the first hospitalizations. It's tap dancing. The addict enters the clinic and realizes that, if he follows the rules, he can leave in less time. Then he does everything correctly, leaves early and relapses. A friend, on his third successive hospitalization, tells me: man, I think that tap dancing thing is true.

These are just a few stories of hospitalizations for drug addiction. I could count dozens more. I'll tell you another time. But here's the thing, man: hospitalization sucks.