Member-only story
Rehab Sucks
If You Are Not In It
My son has been in treatment for twenty-one days. Twenty. One. That means he is no longer having withdrawal. He’s been to twenty-one Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. His head is clearer. His thoughts are more focused without the presence of drugs and alcohol.
Rehab might be great for him, but it sucks for me. It also sucked for me when he was not in rehab because back then, he was an asshole. But it sucks for me now because I am on the outside and I don’t know what is going on. I’m blind and deaf, metaphorically speaking.
He was…is…mostly an alcoholic who smokes pot. He’s not a needle user, despite that photo you see above. He dropped out of college to be a bartender, pot smoker, cool guy. He is anxious and depressed and who knows what else. I don’t know what else because he’s only allowed one ten-minute phone call per week. Sometimes less.
The restriction on phone calls is a good thing.
I dropped him off late, late on a Sunday night. He agreed to go to rehab because he had no other choices, really. He had given his notice at work, notice at his apartment, we moved his things out last minute — that’s his trend. He ditches things with no real exit plan, no looking back. That’s why all of his personal belongings fit into my Mazda 3. Literally everything he owns in this world, all of it…
