New Years.... The Recovery Industry Wet Dream

The New Year is the true catalyst of the self help and recovery industry. Today, inpatient rehab facilities are braced for an influx of patients. I dare you, call around to facilities and try to get a bed today. You'll find a waiting list. My little vacation to a rehab hospital was shortly after the first of the year. This alone could take me off in a thousand fucked up directions about rehab and will through the course of my blog. For now, I'll stick to the basic administration process for today's purposes.

A January morning, I wake up in the midst of a break down that a pharmacy of Klonpin couldn't calm. Suddenly, I decided today is a good day to go to rehab. Fortunately, there is a good facility close to my house. I do a quick Google to get their number, call, and by the luck of the rehab Jesus, they have a bed. Again, there are more fucked up dynamics to this process but I only have your attention for a short period here.

I'm given a time to be there for check in, and the basics of what to pack. Looking in the mirror, I am death on a cracker. No matter what gutter I have fallen into or crawled out of during my lifetime, I have always been clean, groomed, and well dressed. Not sure if it has to do with my being a fag or my mothers Joan Crawford up bringing about appearances, but either way, cannot leave the house looking that horrid. A few more Klonopin and I am shaving, showering, and pop into a nice pair of pressed trousers complimented with a Ralph Lauren oxford shirt. Shoes and belt are matching leather of course. What to pack for a two week stay at a rehab facility will be an entirely different blog entry.

Arriving at the hospital, my father drops me, my partner, and my pile of luggage off at the admissions entrance. The place is just like any other small scale hospital. A check in desk, a few chairs for you to wait in if the reception folks are tied up, and closed doors which lead back to the main waiting area. Since I did make a reservation, they had my endless pile of forms prepared. We were then escorted through the closed doors to the larger waiting room. There are five other people in this room awaiting admission, two of which are obvious soon to be patients, the others are either friends or family members getting them checked in. A young lady, I'm guessing in her 20's, whose face is hidden under a rats nest of hair, is sleeping or passed out on the floor covered in a blanket. She's laying at the feet of a woman I suspect is her mother. The other is a young man who is in pretty bad shape. He's sporting the uncleanly rapper look as he is curled up in a chair next to his parents. Suddenly, seeing these two individuals who are soon to be my peers, a feeling of calm comes over me. It's that calm which is the basis of my blog. I'm fucked up, at a total low moment, however I am put in a room with two persons who are way more fucked up than I am. This is how fucked up folks operate and find self worth. We're not happy the others are more fucked up than us, we are just happy we are as fucked up as them. I'm also a little taken back on why these parents or friends allowed these two individuals to go out in public looking as they did. Anyone who let me go out looking like that would be on my death list.

Now the most interesting part of basic criteria for being admitted to a rehab facility – you have to be fucked up at the time of admission. This is not saying fucked up in the head, but instead, strung out, drunk, stoned, or whatever term you care to use. They have to find substances in your blood considered addictive in nature. On the opposite end of the this coin, if you are too fucked up they cannot admit you. The latter makes sense to me since they truly are not a emergency medical facility. However, the fact you need to be currently jacked up on something for admission totally lost me. Last thing to enter my thought process when I am sitting around getting totally wasted is “Wow, I'm fucked up. I need to kill my buzz and check into a rehab”. Most people I know cry for help when they are coming down and crash. By the time I got there my alcohol level was normal. I was admitted because of the high levels of Benzo's they found in my blood. Still, if I simply drank and went to check in sober, would I have had to go down to the bar, get wasted, then come back so my blood alcohol met the criteria for treatment? I had a bottle of cologne in my luggage I suppose I could have grabbed and chugged it down to get my blood alcohol level up. My understanding is hair spray is a better choice but we will leave that to Kitty Dukakis. See again, someone more fucked up than me! No matter what, you can always find someone more fucked up than yourself. It's like being fat, there's always someone fatter than you.