Young Timer Rant

 Old timer: 40 years of sobriety or more

Although I just clocked 31 years, up until last week, I had never really been to a treatment center. Suddenly, I found myself visiting two of them within four days.  A friend of mine just opened one and wanted me to see it. I spent several days blissfully experiencing a wonderful way to explore  sobriety and spirituality. The female support at the exclusively new age women’s treatment center was a  Wow. I wanted to check in and play too with all the girls  from morning til night.

A few days later,   a gal asked me to speak at a meeting being brought into another new treatment center. Without a specific address from her, only instructed to make a left at the first gas station, I figured I would eventually find it, higher power and early departure guided, backed up by instant contact if I got lost on the cell phone. After wandering around what seemed like an industrial area, a policeman pointed to a building as the location I sought and I dutifully parked in front a  gray dark cement institutional style building. I was 30 minutes early, sat in the car, and waited for other cars to arrive for the meeting. I am slow to put the pieces together sometimes, but I finally realized if it were a treatment center the lights should be on and there should already be cars in the lot. I kept looking across the street at an incredibly beautiful architecturally stunning  compound which I assumed was a Hilton Hotel. In no way would I  consider that it was the treatment center. So I sat there finally calling the gal who asked me to speak and wound up following her to the treatment center, which indeed was what I thought was a Hilton.

I am a business woman, and usually pretty bright, but this is the first time I actually visibly saw how much money there is in the treatment center business. For someone to spend millions building this wonderful country club, there had to be beaucoup bucks  to be made.  I know, everyone has to make a living and it is America and if suffering folk can  be in a wonderful place instead of a dump, well, why not.

Here is the part that disturbs me. The money making business of treatment has convinced the general population that going to a treatment center is a necessity for sobriety.  They have marketed and campaigned and advertised enough to have made treatment a real part on the path to recovery. They have convinced people that in order to recover from alcoholism, and all the other ism’s they keep inventing to make them unique,  the only way is to take out your check book and check in. The girls could hardly believe I had never been to a treatment center.

This is a such successful marketing story, the new generation of alcoholics, barely born when I got sober, only hopes they can get “it” in fewer visits to treatment centers than their slightly older counterparts. This perception really surprised me, as it seemed they did not know they did not have to go to treatment. The two sober young females I spoke to had also  been to treatment. One had been 9 times and the other a little short of 20. What’s up with that?

Didn’t anyone hear what I heard when I crawled in? “Even those with grave emotional problems can recover if they have the capacity to be honest”. My dictionary is pretty old, but it reads: grave, adj. likely to produce great harm or danger, little given to laughter.

I know grave. But that’s another story.

When I first got to AA, I was in my twenties and nuttier that 6 fruitcakes baked by Alice B. Toklas. Somehow I believed that the good people of AA believed that  even someone like me could get better. I held onto the meetings, to the people and whatever higher power the people in the meetings had, by a tiny little thread of hope. Sometimes I would call Pete the Plumber at 2:00 am and ask, “Do you really think this will work for me? Do you really think I am an alcoholic?” He would talk to me through the night until in time I learned how to sleep. Getting sober was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. Please God, it was the last time.

My first sponsor said she did not know if we had a generation gap or if I had brain damage. Although only in my twenties at the time, the destruction to my body did not leave for over a year, and the destruction to my mind and soul for many more years.  I just had to hang on and stay in the middle of the pack. Anyone can do the same. You don’t need medical benefits, insurance, rich relatives or homes to hock for a 30 day check in Hilton miracle. I know with absolute certainty that God will meet you anywhere.

Snow@sobercelebrations.com