As I mentioned in my previous article, I was using “fake it until you make it” in the beginning of my recovery.  The next day at the halfway house (after almost going out and drinking with Jay), I told Susan the halfway house manager that I’d almost drank the night before.  The response I received from Susan was not what I had expected at all.  She was pleased and responded with something like “You are telling on your disease”.  Jay realized that Susan was pleased and immediately confessed the same thing to her.  This incident in itself really ended my friendship with Jay.  I guess Jay felt like I had betrayed him in some way by telling Susan about our little plan.  Jay was pretty bad off because he was addicted to both coke and heroin.  He told me that he did so much coke during the day that he needed the heroin to go to bed at night.

My daily life continued at the halfway house and I really had not shown any anger up until this point.  One of the very common actions for an alcoholic or addict is to get very angry at the beginning of recovery.  This anger is caused by resentments (things that happened to us in the past coming to the surface).  In my case, I did not suffer from any psychical or mental abuse caused by family members.  However; these types of events are very common with a lot of addicts.  Unfortunately, I found that the counselors were forced to lump everyone into one group.  This group or stereotype consisted of a broken home where other family members were drinking and/or using drugs, enabling or even abusing us.  We were all also considered to be untrustworthy with all regards to drug and alcohol use.   Addicts and alcoholics are known to lie about almost anything related to their drug use.  (I used to think that I was not hurting anyone else, so it did not matter if I lied about how much pot I smoked).  We were regularly drug tested because the counselors and doctors had a hard time telling if you were lying or not.

Even though I did not have very many family related issues, (primarily because my parents did not even know that I was smoking pot until about 2 weeks prior) I did have a lot of resentments toward other people.  Some of these things consisted of events that had taken place in my childhood between me and other friends.  More or less, I held grudges toward other people and I was not able to let go of them like a “normal person” would be able to do. 

I noticed early on that the halfway house was a money based business.  This made me mad in a lot of ways because people would “graduate from treatment” once the insurance company stopped paying.  When I entered treatment I did not have any health insurance so my parents were paying cash for my treatment.  I think they ended up paying in the range of about $30,000 (discounted for cash) for me to be there for a total of 30 days.  With the amount of money being spent I was not happy that we were expected to be doing “chores” during our rehabilitation.  Today of course, I realize that the chores were based on trying to get “most” alcoholics and addicts used to taking care of themselves.  Unfortunately, this is where the “grouping of addicts” at a treatment center comes into play again. Honestly, I did not need to be doing these chores.  I was a working and functioning alcoholic and addict when I arrived at treatment.  These chores consisted of sweeping the floor in the lounge area, making up our beds, etc.

I was assigned two psychiatrists at Ridgeview and both of these psychiatrists were addictionologists (they specialized in treating alcohol and drug addiction).  The Doctor that performed “my intervention” at Ridgeview was more or less my main psychiatrist.  I believe his name was Dr. Margolis and I also remember that I didn’t like him.
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