Hello again!

Well, I am certain that I'll blow my anonymity by discussing my odyssey - snap, I can't even say that much without betraying my identity, so instead, I think I'll start my exposition of the fates of my fellow addicts and alcoholics post-rehab.

Kathy (not her real name) is a nurse who was a patient during part of my tenure at Rehab (OK, I'm capitalizing it to mean MY SPECIFIC REHAB.) Kathy has two children, one who is relatively young, and she is an alcoholic. She left her two children at home with her mother in order to spend a month in rehab after a DUI. (All this in hopes of maintaining licensure.) I believe that her counselor in Rehab convinced her to contact her nursing advocacy group as a self-report, although a DUI would have been flagged when she reapplied for licensure.

Let's stop for just a moment to discuss this: how many DUI charges are made in the United States on a yearly basis? Yep, a lot. So, my question is: what professions outside of healthcare (and, ok, airline pilots) have to spend 20,000 dollars for 4 weeks of ineffective "treatment" that is defined primarily in spiritual terms? And, worst of all, is totally ineffective??? Who wrote that playbook? (ASAM? Yep, you're right!)

So, Kathy found herself in what the staff fondly described as "the ICU of addiction treatment." Did it help? A month away from her children, and more than $20,000 later, what happened to Kathy after she walked through the door of Rehab?

Spoiler alert! She relapsed, naturally, as did almost everyone (there is one exception) that I met while in Rehab. What does that say about Rehab??

Please  be rational and use your brain, rather than placing your trust in the collective wisdom. The collective wisdom has been molded by expediency. Read on.

When doctors get out of rehab, it's surprisingly difficult to get back to work in their original field of practice. This was even more true in the past, resulting in a lot of doctors with problems of addiction or alcoholism turning their talents to development of a field in which they could excel -  a field that they could dominate, as no one else really wanted to be associated with addicts and alcoholics. The American Society of Addiction Medicine was born of this marriage of convenience. Sadly, this self-proclaimed medical specialty is a victim of the "stinking thinking" that (apparently) characterizes the "disease of addiction."

BTW, is it even really a disease? For another column!

Back to Kathy. We'll just say that Kathy left her baby in the car when she got back from the store. And Kathy also hooked up with a guy she picked up on Okcupid, the day after leaving rehab (incidentally, it was the first day she went out with him.) The next day she hooked up with another guy she met on Match.com. So maybe rehab didn't work so well for Kathy, do you think?

Well, I'm talking to my BF. He is giving me a laundry list of what his neighbor is throwing off the balcony. A beach chair with Coors Light. A door. A television.