Worst Rehab Ever

Thanks for sharing. Congratulations for your relative!

My comment was more directed at the ineffectiveness of treatment programs in general for pretty much the reason you stated. No program or inspirational words or anything will get a person to take their lives back from addiction until they really want to. I mean REALLY want to. But we all have our own thing when it comes to all that, including myself. It will be a while until I hit 18 years, but I'm on the way. :)

No, maybe you will want a drink. I'm done drinking and couldn't want anything less. AA is loaded (no pun intended) with people spouting what other people will or won't do, what other people must and must not do, when in reality, different things work (or don't work) for different people. If I had a dollar for every person who told me I was "doomed", well, I'd have a tall stack of dollars. And each and every one of those people were just plain wrong. And more than one of them has gone back out themselves, those Big Booking quoting, 12 Step working, God loving recovery zealots who claim to have The Solution. Drunk again because they never actually QUIT. They never stopped loving it.

If everyone took care of their own side of the street, ONLY, there'd be more success stories. As for tools, I learned some things hanging around in those rooms, like how to properly assign blame. *I* am to blame for most things that happen to me. This light is something I'll always cherish and be grateful to AA for helping me see. But many of the tools AA provides are not helpful, and in some cases, are harmful, in my opinion. Spending 365 days on my knees asking for God's help and thanking him for it is no kind of sobriety I want (I heard this in a illegally court-ordered AA meeting just yesterday). Talking about, and thinking about, and praying about alcohol every single day of your life seems to me the worst way to get past an addiction to alcohol. All I'd do is have alcohol on my mind, all the time. In my case, I divorced that poison and have no place for it in my life. I don't crave it, I don't dream about it, I don't want it, and I wouldn't drink it again if you handed me a MILLION dollars in cash to do it.

To QUIT a thing is to be DONE with a thing. It CAN be done. I just wish AA empowered the individual. Instead, it tells the individual that he (or she) is broken, ill, and even insane. And nothing he can come up with will work. Only God will work. Give my life and my will over to God? Seriously? I think I'll go ahead and take control of my own life and put down the booze, thanks. ME. I will do it. And I will take most of the credit for doing so. And feel incredibly satisfied for doing so. As a result, I am ridiculously happy in sobriety and look forward to the rest of my life alcohol-free. Does "One Day at a Time" allow such a thing? Nope.

Sorry for the outpouring of feelings, but these days, the feelings just flow, and without booze to put them down, I enjoy them passionately and to their fullest. So thank you for allowing me to do that here. :)

I've never been a resident of in-patient rehab, but the only real benefit I can see to such a thing is that it, provided its security is adequate, provides a drug/drink-free environment, giving the patient/client/poor sap some time to detox and get a taste of life alert and alive and not crushed by whatever demon they are into. Some folks have no earthly idea what it's like to wake up not in pain like most people do every day. I have nearly two years sober and still, the beginning of every day for me is a joy, and I think, "Wow. I chose to wake up in agonizing pain and misery every day, then 'survive' the rest of the day, rather than LIVE it alert and alive and happy."

30 days isn't enough. And 3-6 months may create that false environment you wrote about. If only there were enough people who cared (and money) for people leaving rehab to sort of have a counselor at hand or something. Someone to stick with them for a while. Someone to say from the passenger seat, "Hey. Where ya going? What on earth are we doing in this bar? Are you insane?" Or, "Why are we sitting outside your dealer's house? What's HE going to do for you? You've been off that **** for what, 2 months? Whatever problem you are having, you know very well that picking up some dope is only going to make things WORSE. Your body is already rid of that stuff. Why re-introduce it? You'll just be creating the NEED for it. Today, you do not NEED it. And with some adjustment to your perception, of everything, you'll know that you do not WANT it, either. And then you can move on with your life, free to enjoy it free of moments like this one, parked outside some dirtbag's house with horse spit hanging from your bottom lip."

Getting an addict/alcoholic to think these things for themselves when they are on autopilot is nigh impossible. There must be a way other than a multicar accident and the lawsuit sprung from it, the humiliation of jail, and hundreds and hundreds of AA meetings loaded with absolutely miserable opinionated jerks you'd never want to hang out with in a million years (my story) to get people to start HATING that which they crave. When I find it...I will share it. And I will climb the mountains of cash and spelunk in the caves of treasure that come with that. To easily quit a thing and live a happy life while you still love a thing...that's no kind of sobriety I'd want. Why do things the hard way? That's old behavior.

What? I'm supposed to give freely that which was given to me? LOL! I wouldn't give that to anyone, freely or otherwise.

I'm sure there was some level of medical detox before she was admitted into the group areas, they just didn't show it. You are right, "cold turkey" can be dangerous.

A friend recently came to me asking HOW. I suggested she detox and quickly looked up facilities in her area that could safely and professionally see her through detox followed by a rehab program after. Picked a place I had never heard of nor visited and gave her the name, hoping she'd a) GO at all, and b) the place wasn't 100% bogus. She went, toughed it out, enjoyed it (she says), and reports about 45 days sober today! She returns for outpatient groups there and is resisting their far-too-pushy insistence that she go to AA and get a sponsor.

GOOD FOR HER! She's my friend and I want her sober. AND happy. Like me!

The rehab pictured in this film is the standard AA/12-step based that was almost universal in the 1990s. AA has been called into question as having no basis in science, AND a very low success rate. AA essentially uses guilt, questionable pyschology and religion to cure addiction. In the end, the biggest problem for hardcore AA/12 step followers is that while they may be sober, they have to attend these meeetings for the rest of their lives that essentially make them miserable people. Again, this is a reason for the high relapse rate in AA/12-step "patients". The characterization of AA as a cult is not far off. Some other posters have said this film is like a advertisement for AA. I think it also shows why AA fails so often. If you return from rehab in the mental state that the Meg Ryan character did, I'd bet relapse is a better than 50/50 proposition.

Thankfully, there are newer, more science based programs available today. Radical detox is no longer the used in these programs, in fact, detox is made as comfortable as possible. Guilting and shaming the patient are no longer used in these programs. All indications are that the more comfortable the patient is during the rehab process, the lower the rate of relapse. Putting the patient on a low dose of Xanax during treatment can actually be quite helpful. In an AA based rehab, this would be sacrilege.

Nonetheless, AA/12-step based programs still persist, but as time passes the die hard AA devotees are becoming fewer and fewer.

Thank you for sharing! It's been six years of freedom for me since I saw this movie and posted what I did, and I've learned (and unlearned) many, many things since then. The big one is that I've learned that no treatment center, no clinic, no room full of alkies who all wished they were drunk, no literature, none of it can help you quit doing a thing if you do not WANT to quit doing the thing.

I have counseled a dozen people over the years, showed them exactly how I did it, encouraging them all the way (GASP!) to pull their heads out of their asses and get free, and with every step forward, they are to congratulate themselves and no one else. One of those dozen made it a year before flaming out. The rest couldn't WAIT to get high or drunk the moment I was finished talking.

I realize now that treatment in its various forms is only worth a damn if the patients/clients/lost souls who seek it out are bound and determined to get free, no matter WHAT. Only they can decide enough is enough. No 80 year old book full of hot garbage will help that person stop drinking. He or she will walk right into a liquor store, buy a bottle, and down the sucker if he/she wants to. They don't do so because they HAVE to. They only feel they have to, it's pure want. The brain wants what it wants, and for many, especially those that are very used to it, they want to be wasted. But there IS a switch, it CAN be flipped! And when they are ready to put it all behind them and start living, REALLY living (not existing from meeting to meeting on their knees thanking a bearded sky wizard for another miserable day of sobriety), I suggest people develop *beep* filters before hitting those rooms so that they might hear the occasional helpful or profound thing while not being poisoned to death with the hypocrisy and *beep* that flies around in there all day long, every day.

That book, those silly steps and traditions and all of it, Christian recruitment propaganda. Not a religious program? Then why am I holding hands with total (and sometimes really gross) strangers and reciting the Lord's Prayer after every meeting? Hmm?

You are right about the attitudes. I can't tell you how many times I was told, to my face, that I was doomed. Meanwhile, it is safe to say that a large percentage of those awful people who disapproved of the way I chose to get free have been drunk since then. It's typical and no surprise. I also wouldn't be surprised if some of those same people kept on accepting their chips, not counting their "slips" as drinking and therefore not having to "start over". I have personally seen intoxicated people stand up and accept their whatever year chip. Twice!

Ok, that's enough. I'm making myself ill over here. :D I won't say I didn't learn anything or meet some nice people in the thousand or so meetings I attended, but I will say that after I got my head on straight and was able to see everything for what it was, I happily attended (until I stopped being forced) because those fine folks were perfect examples all of what not to do/say, what not to think, and how not to feel if I wanted to get sober and BE HAPPY. Today, I am extremely happy to report that I am both of those things. :)