I was admitted to drug rehab at Ridgeview in the suburbs of Atlanta, GA on January 4th, 1996.  First, I was placed into cottage “C” for detoxification and drug testing.  I told the staff that I had not drank any alcohol or used any drugs besides marijuana in the last 3 months.  They definitely did not believe me because most addicts are known to lie about their drug use to other people.  I figured what was there to lie about now, it was over and I had to quit.

I recall meeting a few different people in cottage “C”.  These individuals were people that I would strike up conversations with during outside smoke breaks.  Everyone, I mean everyone smoked cigarettes.  I noticed that my cigarette smoking greatly increased immediately upon stopping my drug use.  I think it primarily had to do with the strong obsession toward marijuana and trying to make-up for it.  One thing that I remember about one of these smoke breaks was talking to an individual who told me the doctors found out that he was bipolar.  I was beside myself when I heard this information.  I was a psychology major at a university, so I had a little bit of knowledge on the subject.  I thought to myself that it would be terrible if they found something like that wrong me.

After spending 24 hours in cottage “C”, I was moved into the Half-way house.  This is the place where you go after they feel you are not going to hurt yourself (or others) and that you have successfully been detoxified from all drugs.  Treatment centers really have to be careful especially for alcoholism.  Alcoholics can die from withdrawal if not treated properly. It was known in the early days of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) for sponsors to care liquor with them to keep the new comers from dying from withdrawal.

Once at the halfway house, I was settled into a room with another individual.  I can not remember who it was to this date.  However; he seemed pretty nice like most of the other people there.  It didn’t take long to realize that a lot of wealthy people including doctors and lawyers were also there with me trying to stop using various drugs.  I recall that they had 2 group meetings everyday in the halfway house.  One meeting was early in the morning around 8:00AM and the other one was in the afternoon around 4:00PM.  Each one of these meetings consisted of everyone telling how they felt that day.  But, before each person began to talk, he or she would state whether or not they were an alcoholic or an addict.  Some people even stated that they were both.  When it was my turn to speak for the first time, I stated that I was a Marijuana addict.

In between circle based meetings, we had classroom like schedules.  Each class lasted about 1 hour and were instructed by different teachers (drug counselors).  For the first week, I was pretty cheerful and answered questions while a lot of people made fun of how slow I talked.  To me, I did not seem to speak in slow motion, but everyone else clearly noticed and made fun of me from time to time.  This obviously was an effect of my long term use of marijuana.  But, it wasn’t just my speaking that was impaired.  Marijuana had actually slowed down my thought processes.  This was one reason why I had been unable to finish my 4 year college degree in psychology.  Honestly, my mind was not nearly as sharp as it was just 5 or 6 years earlier.  Marijuana had turned me into a slow thinking, slow talking person.  These problems along with a few others like the inability to read well because my eyes lost focus quickly would continue to cause me problems for the next 2 or 3 years.  Click to Continue ->>