I went to rehab once. Okay, so I went to rehab 3 times, but I’m only going to talk about one of them tonight.
I was reminded about this time in my life because I saw a posting tonight on instagram by a friend that I had at the time. Evidently her musical hobby has taken her from obscure electronic to some kind of kampy kuntry gig with big red wigs. Not sure I understand that but that’s not the point of tonight’s story.
Tonight’s story is about interventions. Yeah – the kind you see on tv where all of your ‘loved’ ones corner you in a room and say really bad things about you to your face until all you can do is beg them to jump in their car and drive you to the nearest 12-step meeting so you don’t have to continue to listen to exaggerated exasperated accounts of how you completely fucked up their life because you had a few drinks.
Sheesh. The drama of it all.
I’m not trying to minimize how fucked up I was or not take responsibility for the shit I caused to go down. I was a nut case at the time. I had been in a car accident and the doctors had put me on ADD meds along with an anti-depressant and anti-anxiety script. I hadn’t really been calmed down much from the valium they had given me, so they upped the dose. Twice. And then switched me to Xanax. And upped the dose, twice. And then switched me to Klonopin. Each change made me more anxious, energetic and nervous and because I was drinking more scotch that all of Scotland and Ireland combined, I got a little crazy. I was popping Klonopin like they were M&Ms and drinking liquor like it was water and the combination of that and the other meds I was on was seriously fucking with my reality. Sure, I needed to go to rehab and as fucked up as I was, I consciously knew that. And all anyone had to really do was mention it and I would have gone.
Well, that’s not how it went down. My friends evidently thought that rehab was going to be a hard sell so they planned an intervention that evidently took months to plan. The didn’t get a professional interventionist, but rather decided to go with my best friend’s husband as the moderator for the day.
And this is how it went down.
“I can’t believe that I trusted you with my children!” –the Kuntry Girl
“Blah Blah Nonsense Bullshit Everything is about me Blah” — my roommate Joe
I can’t even remember what people said but I do remember wondering how I ever got so many truly mean people to be my friends.
They said some stuff that still fucks with me 10 years later and you know how many of them came to visit me in rehab or talked to me when I got out or talk to me today? You guessed it – ZERO FUCKING NONE of the bastards. The weren’t there to help me, they were there to get me out of their lives because I was making them feel uncomfortable.
FUCK you.
If anyone ever asks you to be in and intervention to help out a loved one, go behind their back and talk to the person who would be the receiver and ask them to go to rehab. They probably will and you won’t lose their friendship.
As is stands, I lost what I thought was a hell of a lot of good friendships that day. But I guess all that was an illusion.