Cross Addiction How it Happened

Simon Says: I go directly from the ICU to Fairview Riverside's Lodging Plus Chemical Dependency Treatment Program. I've been through this program twice before so I know what its all about. It used to be called St. Mary’s treatment program. Not sure why they changed their name but I do know it's called Lodging Plus because technically it's not an inpatient treatment center, It's Chemical Dependency Treatment with lodging. That's got something to do with the insurance, someone is making more money or paying less money. Anyway you get billed for both the treatment program and then separately for the lodging. It doesn't matter, in reality it's inpatient treatment. A short program, 21 days. The one nice thing about the place is they provide a smoking area outside and if you ain't in group therapy you can go out and smoke all you want. It's not a locked down program either, you can go anywhere in the hospital you want and outside as long as you stay on campus. That's cool in the summer but this time around it was winter; I spent last Christmas in this treatment program. I was a total ball of nerves when I went in there, like a continuous anxiety attack. I felt like I had a million things to worry about and I had just recently stopped getting phone calls from Vicki. I just kept thinking that if Vicki would call me everything would be cool. She never did and it was a year before I saw her again. I don't know why I fell for her so hard but I'm sure it had something to do with the condition of my brain at the time. I was in a major depression and having this anxiety disorder on top of it. Thinking back now I don't know how I made it through. I was on the edge of having a major nervous breakdown. I needed a drink or a hit off a crack pipe but neither was going to happen for the next 21 days and I was melting down. I kept to myself as much as I could and gradually I began to feel better. I never felt good but at least I stopped feeling like I was going to explode or something. The thing about me is I never want anyone to know when I'm freaking out and that just makes me freak out more. You have to remember that I had just spent four months isolating myself in a dumpy hotel and now I was supposed to sit in therapy groups and talk about my feelings. I was a nervous wreck for the first 10 days or so. I was practically begging for some benzo's but that's rarely allowed in treatment. Eventually I got to know a few of the guys in my therapy groups and it seemed most of us had the same primary concern. That was where did we go from there. I couldn't go back to that hotel because I knew I would probably die there. I stayed at that particular hotel because it was the cheapest one I could find in St.Paul. I wasn't even sure I could go back there because of the condition I left the place in and I had already been hauled out of there in an ambulance and brought to Regions hospital once before. It seemed like most of us in treatment had managed to wreck our lives to the point where we had nowhere left to go. There was a certain sense of camaraderie amongst those of us looking for a place to go when we were released from treatment. The only place left for some of us to go was into a sober house where the only two requirement for living there are sobriety and rent. There are other rules too but they seem minor when it's cold out and you need a place to live. The rents are normally lower because you are just renting a room in a house along with other alcoholics and addicts. At first it seemed like there was a shortage of sober houses with vacancies but then at one point they started popping up everywhere. I really didn't want to live in a place where I'd be under constant scrutiny and if anyone suspected you might be using drugs or drinking; you would have to submit a urinalysis. Produce a positive UA and you would have to move out immediately. With the only other options being a homeless shelter or a halfway house I was happy to find anyplace at all. Well three of us found a newly remodeled sober house in St.Paul not far from Como Park and were accepted as the new residents. We had it all set up so that on the day of our release from treatment we could move right into the sober house. With the housing problem solved we could start focusing more of our attention on our addiction problems. At least it was a big sense of relief for me. One of my new buddies in treatment opted for a halfway house because he couldn't afford to pay rent, that was Mark who ended up playing a big role in the rest of my story. I guess I'm telling this story more for myself rather than anyone else. Trying to recount what this last binge cost me and how I ended up here where I am now. I know that the way I'm posting this story on my blog puts each posting is in reverse order of the big story so I'm trying to make each post like a story in itself. The last week or so of treatment went by fairly fast, it's the same routine every day with a little change in the schedule on the weekends. Next thing I know I'm being released from treatment and headed for the sober house. I remained in contact with my daughter throughout treatment and she gave me a ride to my new residence in St.Paul. At the same time I was getting out of treatment my daughter was preparing to move to California for a new job. She moved there about a week after I moved into the sober house. I was the first one in the house and the other two guys moved in the next day or so. I was sober now and had a decent place to live and I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next. One of the minor requirements of living in the house is you had to get a job. Since I was on disability and could afford the rent without a job they wanted me to get a volunteer job somewhere so I started looking for one. I never realized that getting a volunteer job is almost like trying to get a regular job. I finally found one but I got kicked out before I started it. I wasn't the first to get kicked out, I was the second. I can't remember the name of the guy that got kicked out first but he got booted out for using something, I think it was crack or meth. It was the third guy in the house that turned him in for staying out all night a couple times without telling anyone he had something preplanned. That led to his getting the boot. The snitches name I won't forget because he got me kicked out too. The guys name was Dick. He still owes me $50 too. This is where Mark came into the picture. You know we all had every intention to stay clean and sober it just didn't go that way. Mark moved into a halfway house not too far from the sober house where I was. We had all became friends in treatment so it was only natural that we started hanging out with each other since we all lived in close proximity of each other. Mark was a former methamphetamine dealer and he went to treatment and into the halfway house to save his marriage. His wife demanded he do these things or she was leaving him and taking his kids with her. Anyway that was his story. He and I got to be pretty good friends, he was coming over to the house most days and hanging out. Mark had a truck so we were going to AA and NA meetings together and just doing regular sober stuff together. I met his wife and kids and everything seemed to be going cool. Then I guess I started hinting around that I'd like to try out some meth some day because I just can't drink alcohol. I was serious too, I was afraid of alcohol but I'd never tried smoking methamphetamine before and I did want to try it but I was saying it in a passive way. Well then the inevitable happened, one day we got some and smoked it. Then we did it again and again and pretty soon we were smoking it every day. I ended up buying a scale so we could divide the shit up. Mark started selling the shit again so we could smoke for free or at least less money anyway. I liked it, I could get high and actually be more productive as apposed to alcohol that always ended up making me sick as hell. I was looking for a new place to live because I knew Dick was suspicious because me and Mark were hanging out a lot and never inviting him to come along. I was actually in the process of negotiating the rent on a room in one of Mark's friends houses when the day came that Dick caught me sitting in my room weighing out some meth. He didn't knock or anything, just came charging into my room to see what I was doing like he already knew. He assured me he wouldn't say anything to the house managers but later that day I got a call on my cell phone informing me that I was to move my shit out of the house the next day and that I couldn't stay there that night. I kinda just took it in stride because I already had another place to live where I wouldn't have to worry about using. I stayed there that night and the next day I went to the sober house with my new roommates van and moved all my shit out, which again wasn't that much. My new roommates name was Rick and this is when the shit really hit the fan. Of course that's a whole nother story which I'll start telling in my next post.