Seized

As David pulled up to the front door, I lay across the back seat of our suburban with my puke bucket on the floor, continually filling it. Nausea and vomiting were relentless, and the hammer-holding demon looming over me constantly pounded my head. David went inside to see how to get checked in. It seemed like days later before he returned with a nurse and a wheelchair. As they took me down hall after hall, through password-protected doors to the detox ward, I wanted to disappear. If you’re imagining a mansion up on a hill with a pool and outdoor yoga classes, you can stop. That’s a Hollywood rehab clinic. A $70,000 per patient clinic. Heading toward the doors of this detox ward evoked in me a feeling of dread, shame, fear, regret, and sadness all rolled up into a weighted ball in the pit of my stomach. The pain and nausea, combined with my shame and desperation, took me to a place so low I could have melted and become one with the floor—though I hated for that to be my final resting place. My “hospital” expectations were not even close. I sat in a wheelchair holding my trusty bucket as we followed a nurse back to that area. My worst nightmare became a reality as I scanned my new environment—a common area with a small television and a few old sofas that looked like they’d been rescued off the street, as did some of the patients. The “hospital” room reminded me of the worst dorm room on a college campus. The other patients—men and women—were dressed like homeless people coming to a shelter for a warm meal. I doubt I looked much different. The nurse explained the procedure, and I could see my mom and David looking around the room in shock and fear at the thought of leaving me. After hearing a bit of conversation from a few male residents, they decided to take me home. I was desperate. “Just leave me,” I begged. “I need help, and I’m out of options.” I’d never seen my mom look so helpless. Insisting on paying the bill, she reluctantly wrote the $4000 check for my treatment. The thought of leaving her baby girl in such a place was more than she could bear. I’ve never asked because my heart couldn’t take it, but I’m sure her eyes poured tears as she drove home. David has since shared that leaving me there was one of only three times in his life he has sobbed, completely heartbroken. No one expects or prepares for this type of heartbreak. When he left, he picked up the kids from his mom and took them to the beach. He needed some distance from the situation, and the kids needed something to keep their minds occupied. They didn’t know everything, but it was enough to know something was seriously wrong. Mom was very sick. As a wife and mom, the words burden and failure didn’t begin to describe how I felt. I had damaged myself physically and mentally, but I had hurt my family emotionally and created wounds that would be much more difficult to heal. Soul scars that would last a lifetime. I didn’t intentionally set out to abuse drugs. Like so many, I was prescribed an opioid for pain and had to take it long enough that my body became dependent. The result is the same – addiction and withdrawal. I believe the shame and depression that resulted from the addiction created an open door for Satan to gain a stronghold in my brain. But let me be clear here…my addiction was a scientific result of how our bodies are created to handle pain and an opioid medication I took for too long. Satan did not cause my addiction. He lies in wait to take advantage of us when our defenses are down. Satan doesn’t care how he gets in, but once he does, he uses our vulnerability to take down as many as he can. Once left in the hands of the nurses, the process started. They went through every pocket, page, bottle, and seam of every item with me and left me with the bare minimum. No cosmetics, liquids, hairbrush, toothbrush, razor, or earrings … did they think I might stab myself with the back of an earring? A prison of sorts in its own way. My environment was surreal. As I lay on the cardboard bed with the questionable blanket, throwing up, I could not believe I’d told David to leave me. The promise of fluids and nursing care was empty. For twenty-four hours, I was left to throw up unattended. Is it too late to change my mind? Other patients left and returned at the sound of the school bell for meals, group therapy, and smoking breaks. I ate nothing and talked to no one—I stayed in my room with my bucket. Finally, a nurse came to get me for my appointment with the fresh-out-of-school psychiatrist to begin my Suboxone treatment. He laid out a three-day plan to fix me. Three days. Now that would be something. Dr. Newbie Psychiatrist wrote orders to start me on Suboxone and an injection of Phenergan for nausea. A scruffy-haired, boy-of-a-man nurse on duty led me to the lovely—and oh-so-sterile—plaid sofa to give me my injection. As he prepared it, the school bell rang. He sat back and looked at me. “Is everything okay?” I asked. “Yep,” he replied. “Aren’t you gonna to go out and smoke?” I hesitated at the question. “No.” “Isn’t that what you people do?” Wow, you people. Are you kidding me? “I’ve never once put a cigarette to my mouth, and I have no intention of starting now.” I was the only patient who did not go outside to smoke. Sadly, most of the staff went with them. Boy-nurse gave me the injection and went on his merry way. I remained in disbelief at the stereotypical category into which I was dumped. I began to see a pattern with almost everyone there. When they returned from the smoking section shrouded in a cloud of smoke, one of the male patients, probably thirty years old, dressed in droopy faded jeans and a misbuttoned plaid shirt, plopped down on the sofa next to me. “So, what’s your drug of choice?” Drug of choice? I might as well have been staring at an alien. I was definitely in another world.