A Young Life on the Rocks... Rehab Hell and Back

Dear Jack And Lois,

I will start by thanking you for your rational thinking. Then I have to ask, when will all that you have proven be taken seriously? I have passed on a great deal of your literature to so called friends and family, and have received many shocked and disgusted replies. Most of those were from my own family!!! You see, AA helped them to relieve themselves of the responsibility of ME. Now they could say oh she has a disease! We are not responsible for the shitty life she had growing up, she was born with all these alcoholic tendencies!!! Being that I was adopted, my mother went so far as to hire a private investigator to find my biological parents to find out if THEY were alcoholics, so that she could say, see its genetic that you are a loser, not my problem at all. God forbid my tendency to drink for acceptance had anything to do with my 18 year old brother gettiing me drunk and stoned all the time when he babysat for me. That is unthinkable.

The 12 steps and this bullshit disease concept have ripped my life apart. I cannot believe all that was so called promised to me and that pain is all that I received. I am beyond angry right now. I gave up my daughter to my parents 13 years ago because my SPONSOR said that I had no business raising a child which was sure to develop all my alcoholism traits!!! Break the cycle now, she said, give her a better life!!! I BELIEVED IT ALL!!!! I really thought these people had all the answers that they had their shit together.

And never mind this sicko guy that I actually MOVED IN with. He had 2 YEARS sober, and to me, well he was a God who must know everything and blah blah blah.... Needless to say we shared a bed for 2 months and he threw me out for another NEWCOMER!!! So with nowhere else to go, I went to rehab, since my parents had my daughter and said I was too sick to move back in. I had not drank yet, instead I picked up the lovely habit of starving myself, or puking if I ate even a cracker. I went to the Veritas Villa, where I learned about crack, heroin, glue sniffing and lesbianism. I was 20 years old!!! I had one too many drinks, what the fuck was I doing there?

Well pretty soon I was told I had a wall of denial that would require I admit eveything that I ever did wrong, commit to 28 days of treatment, apply for welfare and go to a halfway house in Schenectady New York. So armed with my welfare, off I went to the house run by recovering alcoholics, no degrees no nothing. The funny part about this place was that welfare gave me $900.00 a month to live there, but I saw none of that. Because I was "incapable of being completely honest with myself", they threw me out in the street and I could not be eligible for social services again for a year because I had been EJECTED from the program. So now I am homeless again, except this time, 200 miles from home.

My family of course said no I could not come there, because Alanon said I had obviously not hit bottom yet. So I hung out at biker bars and made some cool friends. I was ignorant to the case of crank, and ended up arrested!!!! Very nice, right but that's not the worst thing. A male alcoholism counselor from the day treatment program saw my name in the paper and bailed me out of jail, and I was released in his custody. Finally I have a friend right?? WRONG!!! He took many pictures of me doing sex acts and made me basically into a prostitute. If I left he would tell the judge whom he was great friends with.

I turned 21 three months later. I got drunk and pulled over, and went back to jail. The judge mandated me to 90 days at Hillcrest Hospital, a 12 step facilility in Massachusetts. Back to the recovery drawing board. Now I could not get thrown out of this one or I will go to PRISON!!! From there I was sentenced to St. Josephs a 12 month facility run by recovering nuns and priests!!!! What a disaster!! They cut off all my hair and made me eat my vomit. All in the name of breaking my will. I was shown the door from that place in two months time. My parents let me come home only because I got on a bus and showed up at their door. This is what recovery mandated by the courts has done for me.

Its a great thing that you are doing for people, what can I do to help?

--Anonymous