Drug Rehab Options Blog

Hi everybody! I've thought about you all often and it's good to know that this awesome forum is still going and offering help/advice/support to those that need it.

When I first came on here in 2004, it was my xabf and a year of turmoil there. But, through Al Anon and all of you, that relationship ended a long time ago.

It's my son who will be 30yrs old this year...that has the drinking addiction. He got two DUI's back-to-back in 2007 and needed a lawyer. The laws have gotten alot stricter here in CO, as they should be.

I retained a lawyer for him and my as (alcoholic son) just did in house arrest for the month of Dec. for the one DUI and now he's in jail today for a bit for the 2nd one.

The whole time he was on house arrest, he was still drinking. I'd go visit him and see him on the holidays and he was still using. So, house arrest didn't do much for him because he was still "running' while on it.

In jail, he'll have to be sober and also his PO will be taking random breathilizers and putting a device on his vehicle to blow into before driving.

He has HUNDREDS of community service, fines and classes. He has no job, he's gotten fired from each one. He's homeless because everywhere he lived, he didn't pay rent.

On house arrest, he stayed with his Dad and during that time stold his Dad's credit cards and booked flights for his gf's and other things...ran up thousands of $ on his dad's cards. It just seems like his addiction is getting worse and worse, he lies constantly. He's very sensitive to talk to...if one thing is said that he doesn't like...he jumps on you verbally.

He's just filled with pain...his uncle/best friend, died of a cocaine accidental overdose on Christmas 2005 and my son knew his uncle did some drugs, but not to the extent that he was. My AS was the last person with his uncle the night before he died and so my AS has been feeling guilty ever since. He constantly runs and needs people's acceptance.

My fear is for when he gets out of jail....where will he go? What will he do? Will he finally see after years and years of drinking that it's JUST NOT WORTH IT?

I'm scared for him because of the fact that he continues to keep the cycle going.

I ask for your prayers for him...this is gonna take alot to get him to FINALLY hit that bottom and want back up.

Thank you and I hope all of your holidays were blessed!:praying

December 27


God could restore us to sanity

?The process of coming to believe restores us to sanity. The strength to move into action comes from this belief.?

Basic Text, p. 25

????=????

Now that we?ve finally admitted our insanity and seen examples of it in all its manifestations, we might be tempted to believe that we are doomed to repeat this behavior for the rest of our lives. Just as we thought that our active addiction was hopeless and we?d never get clean, we might now believe that our particular brand of insanity is hopeless.

Not so! We know that we owe our freedom from active addiction to the grace of a loving God. If our Higher Power can perform such a miracle as relieving our obsession to use drugs, surely this Power can also relieve our insanity in all its forms.

If we doubt this, all we have to do is think about the sanity that has already been restored to our lives. Maybe we?ve gotten carried away with our credit cards; but sanity returns when we admit defeat and cut them all up. Perhaps we?ve been feeling lonely and want to go visit our old using buddies. Going to visit our sponsor instead is a sane act.

The insanity of our addiction recedes into the past as we begin experiencing moments of sanity in our recovery. Our belief in a Power greater than ourselves grows as we begin to understand that even our brand of insanity is nothing in the face of this Power.

????=????

Just for today: I thank the God of my understanding for each sane act in my life, for I know they are indications of my restoration to sanity.

I have not used this forum before though I have been around SR for a while now.

I am very confused and hurt at present and not sure what to do or how to separate all the emotions.

Some Background, sorry about the length.

I have been in recovery for over 3 ½ years and am a member of NA, I work the program to the best of my ability and have recently been making amends. As I do this I notice that I am going through a transformation not unlike a butterfly coming out of its cocoon. Its wonderful a new life is opening up for me, but as I am going through this I am also letting many old things go, some of them don?t want to go, there are mostly the auto or bio-chemical habits and before I can think I am living them and in a few cases acting on them but so far not in any way I cannot put right quickly.

Externally I am also experience many things. I am about to loose my drivers licence for six months because of too many speeding tickets. I was out of work for 3 months, something that has never happened to me before. I ran out of money quickly as I had been using all my spare money to pay of the huge debts I brought into recovery with me, so I went and saw a financial counsellor and he sorted out a stay of my mortgage until January and the two credit cards I have left plus a few other bills. I also started a new job three weeks ago only to discover late last week that the amount the agency had said I was to be paid is $15,000 less than my employer is actually offering and the job agency has now closed down! You got the idea the list goes on, but its highly likely I will loose the house and will have to find another job.

The other thing is that in July this year I confronted my daughter about her behaviour (she is a disease not unlike mine in many ways) and she vanished from my life as did my ex who has been a friend until now, recently I have been talking to my ex again and she says I terroised my daughter. I was panicky at the time and wvery worried and have explained all that in detail, but I think the terrorised thing is stuff coming up from when I was using.
My sponsor says to give her space and I have, but it hurts not to talk to her, not to have contact, not even on my birthday and this Christmas I will spend with friends but without family.

Any sugestions would be welcomed, even the kick up the bum type.

Kevin

I know there is a step that says something like you should make amends for all the wrongs you have done to other people in your life.

How far do you have to take this, for example if i maxed out credit cards 10 years ago and never paid them back does this mean i have to contact them? Also if i had a job 10 years ago and did not try as hard as i could should i get hold of the manager i worked for and apologise for the hardship i put him through through my lack of effort etc.

This is a real bug for me and has always put me off doing the steps, maybe i don't understand this.

If the step is for my won benefit as well to get rid of all the bad vibes i have from wrongs i have done in the past then i can contact a lot of people and more than likely open a few can of worms which will not make my life and better apart from potentially spiritually, how far do i have to go?

Please don't post only i can answer this because if it was up to me i would contact everyone that i had ever harmed or looked at ther wrong way and make amends or to the level of amends they would accept, im really confused...

I think I am in a winter funk. I told my husband today that if there was a way I could use without losing my clean date I would. The high here today as 11. The transmission went out on our van and today we had to put 3200 dollars on our credit cards. Our cards are already way up there and we are having a really hard time digging out of credit card debt. Last night 164 ppl were laid off at my husbands work, a blessing, he still has his and with 2800 ppl there they have to let another 700 go.

I just am down. I am gonna try to drag myself out to a meeting tonight, but have to take my 5 yr old. UGH! (MY husband works PM shift)

I am flying home in a week.... with my family to CA, I am just sick of winter already and I said I was gonna embrace it this year. I am just tired....down and sad.....

Sheila

Can you believe AS is not in jail, they realized him the next morning. The officer called me to say " what a lovely, honest, well kept young man he is" She also believes he is telling the truth. He does have a court date set so I will have to testify that I saw him steal the vehicle. As for the credit cards, ID and sentimental bracelet, he claims he left my purse in some bar and when he went back to get it it was empty. Police have identified the two girls on Video using my card. When I spoke to the officer yesterday she said they were putting survelliance on the one girl trying to catch her for identitity fraud. So this girl has my birth certificate , social Insurance number , and drivers licence. How nice!!!!! AS calls me today and says" ya I just got in from a big party bash last nite drank all nite" Next thing out of his mouth is he has no food, he had enough to drink with and probably buy crack, the he says
how nice the cop was and he can probably beat the stolen vehicle charge. I'm so sorry to vent again, just very upset that these addicts are running around with my ID what a violation, and AS doesnt seem to have a care in the world plus they have my cell phone with all my personal numbers and my home address. I hung up the phone on AS and put him on call block. This cop was very young obviously not been on the force too long and does not know how manipulative addict can be. Maybe its a good thing I am still angry.

Before noon on a recent Thursday morning, Ruby Hebert was already having a rough day.

On the way into the south Wal-Mart, her mind set on buying antifreeze and her purse full of cash for Christmas shopping for the upcoming holidays, the 75-year-old had a brush with a large town car in the parking lot.

"I was walking, and he was making a turn. ... He didn't make a wide enough turn and he hit my leg," Ruby said.

And it hurt, she said, but not enough to knock her down, and definitely not enough to get all upset about, she told the man, who'd jumped out of his car and showered her with concern.

By the time the brief run-in in the parking lot was over, Ruby was the one calming him down, giving him a hug and reminding him that really, we all make mistakes.

"He looked at me and said 'Can I give you a hug?' and I said 'Sure.'"And then they hugged, two strangers in the middle of a Wal-Mart parking lot.

It wasn't the first time Ruby would hand out hugs that day. Ahead of her, things would get drastically worse before the kindness of a stranger would be the cause for thanksgiving.

She waved the man off and walked into the store to be greeted by the Wal-Mart greeter, Esther M. Keller, a friend of hers; the two had met while Ruby was shopping at the old Wal-Mart near Kirkwood Mall. They're both chatty, they admit; Ruby just likes getting to know people, and Esther, being a registered nurse, is always ready to talk.

After her chat, Ruby found her antifreeze and threw it into the cart with her purse, a neatly organized, compartment-heavy, black purse with a strap that's a little aged. Her entire life was neatly tucked inside:state identification, federal ID cards, credit cards and $2,500 cash for Christmas shopping. She'd run out of checks, Ruby said, so she withdrew cash to help with the holidays.

Ruby bought her antifreeze, pushed the cart up to cart corral next to her car, carefully put the antifreeze in and drove off to her next destination. When she parked the car, she reached over and patted the seat next to her, reaching for her purse, because that's where she always keeps it, right there where her hand can easily find it.

The seat was empty.

Panicked, she realized she'd left it in the shopping cart, outside in the parking lot. She drove as fast as she could -and as safely as possible, Ruby added -back to Wal-Mart, her mind reeling with the loss of her identification, her credit cards and the cash she was going to use to buy presents for her son and his two boys.

"Twenty-five hundred dollars is a lot of money, especially for a retiree,"she said.

She was frantic and sobbing when she got to Esther's station at the front of Wal-Mart. Pale and shaky, Esther noted. Esther was worried about her friend; Ruby has had heart trouble in the past, and Esther was concerned she was heading toward a heart attack again.

Call the police, Ruby said, in tears. I've lost my purse.

But a few minutes before, a woman in her mid-30s had handed Esther a purse, simply saying she'd found it and didn't know who it belonged to. The woman left, and Esther turned it over to her manager.

The manager brought the purse to Ruby, who immediately dug in to check the contents. The $2,500 was there.

"She was just so happy, and she just hugged me and hugged me,"Esther said. "Someone carrying that much money in a purse, I just chewed her out. I said 'Ruby, I could shake you.'"

Ruby hugged Esther, then hugged the manager who handed her the purse, and hugged Esther again.

"Tell me what else there is in the world if you can't hug people out of sheer kindness,"Ruby said.

Ruby moved to Bismarck from Steele after buying a house, but she's not from Steele. She's lived all over. She's originally from Michigan, where she worked in politics and helped campaign for John F. Kennedy, and helped put her husband, who was a state legislator, in the history books. But she'd last lived in Sacramento, Calif., working in real estate, before moving to North Dakota at the urging of a friend about eight years ago.

"It grows on you,"she said of North Dakota. "The people, the weather, just a multitude of things." She added honesty and friendliness to the list of qualities.

"Can you imagine that person, being so honest that they didn't look in my purse, they didn't do anything? She just picked it up and took it in. Anybody could've looked in there,"Ruby said, adding that she'd like to hear from the woman who returned it.

Her appreciation is indescribable, she said, and a story for the holidays, a reminder of the good stories that sometimes fall victim to the tough news making headlines every day.

"It's a good Christmas present for her,"Esther said.


It was in the North Dakota paper and i thought it was just a good feeling artical ... :ghug3

I am seeking advice about how to be the most supportive b/f I can be for my g/f who is a cocaine addict. I have been dating her for nearly 4 months now and I found out about 6 weeks ago that she was an addict. We sat down one night and had a discussion about how she had been to rehab in February but has been struggling with relapse ever since then. She has recently had 2 relapses in the past 3 weeks and every time she has, she has told me almost immediately after. She says that she feels horrible about being deceitful and lying and that she doesnÂ’t ever want to do it again.
She does feel like she is unable to trust herself alone and I have been trying my hardest to be a “safety net” for her but it is getting frustrating. She asked me to help her cut up her credit cards and to start managing her finances so that she does not have any temptation to relapse but the first time I forgot my wallet at home, she was right back to her old habits of calling her dealer.
We both work together, but I am also in graduate school so it is hard to be around all the time to be there to support her during her weakest moments. She has asked me repeatedly for help because she does not think she is strong enough to beat it on her own. I have told her that I am going to be by her side through whatever it takes, but I am starting to get scared because I LOVE HER and it hurts deep inside everytime I see her suffering.
Does anyone have any advice or suggestions? I am a counselor at a psychiatric hospital and I work on a detox unit from time to time, as well as being a recovered addict from Ritalin, but I have never been on this side of the table beforeÂ…The supportive significant other.

Things seemed to have been rolling along pretty good I thought. Daughter clean for the last 41/2 months.
The other day I told her because of her debt with not only me but the world that I knew how much she wanted a cell phone but please to square herself away with the bank first so she could get her checking account back. She owes then about $800.00 still. I said this because if something happens to me you are dead in the water with no credit, no money, no checking account.

I guess I was talking and she just says yes I know. I asked that she just wait a few more checks. She acted like she knew it was important.
Yesterday she went to work to go get her check. She works nights at a hospital 3-11 pm. I mentioned it was a long trip why didn't she wait till she went to work tonight but no she wanted to go. She came back a few hours later and I said to her her BF called, with that she walked in the closet and said yes I know I called him on my new phone! My heart sank, I said I hope your kidding we just discussed this the other day. Attitude came on big time with her. You discussed it I wanted a phone it was only $200.00 there is money left for the bills and looked at me like I was stupid. ( I me4an she had this planned obviously)
I stated crying and got upset but what about my car your using, the oil, the handles you have broken all off, your checking account let alone everything else you owe. I am strapped because I (we) are paying off all my credit cards that you maxed up.She is paying them slowly thru me. What the F is wrong with your thinking.
Well she started screaming yelling cursing just like the old days and I lost it and told her she needed to get out and find her own way to work if that was how she was thinking.
It turned into an ugly thing and all she could say is how will I get to work. Her car had no insurance and we turned the plates over as she couldn't buy insurance and we were trying to pay other debts off before we got the car back.Stupid me for thinking I was helping. Anyway I told her to ask her friends that she had to call on her cell (one) and have him take her.
She called her sister screaming and ranting I threw her out because she got a phone and wasn't going to let her have my car to go to work. I was sitting there lisening to her rant like I am the bad guy. So I came in and said why don't you tell her that you have other obligations we discussed before you got a phone and you just just went out and did what you wanted and I suppose drugs will be next and I left.
I had a dr, appt, when I came home the guard told me she called a cab and left with a couple suitcases.She is off on the week ends so I think she is at her bf, some of her stuff is gone but not much just an anger pack of immediate things.
I have been hysterical with this. I mean she isn't 18, she is an adult woman acting like a kid to me.
I gave her a roof, my car, my love trying to help herhelp herself to get out of the mess she got herself into and pay me back and everyone else. She could never do it paying $800.00 rent someplace else now. I thought it was a fair exchange plus I needed physical help with being in a wheelchair still.
i can't sleep, I can't see straight with all this. I have sat here wondering how the hell anyone can be so selfish. Can a phone mean that much to her to anyone?:c004:
I don't see where she has been doing drugs,unless someone gives them to her free. But she hasn't been nasty or mean like when she did that till yesterday and I am not sure if she was just angry as hell which to me was way out of line for both of us over a phone? A F phone.
So here I am left holding the bag I can't carry. I just can't do it I can't believe this. I am going to lose everything
Thi s sounds so dumb over a phone. There are plenty of things I would love to buy myself like perfume or get my hair done or buy a new shirt. But I guess I know better. Dumb me.
Sorry this is so long I just don't know what to do now, I don't know what to expect and emotionally I can't handle all this.
Please understand when I say we were paying her bills, I mean she has been giving me money for them but before she was working I was paying on them to keep my credit. She was paying her way not like befor, just there is soooo much debt she made. Oh god I want to vanish from all this.

I am finding that so many things in my life are easier with my husband in jail. I am not thinking about where he is or what kind of trouble he could be getting into. I know where he is. I don't have to hide money, credit cards, check cards or valuables. My cash is in my wallet and I have not had even one embarassing incident where I went to pay for something and discovered that I had no money. I was able to fill the car up with gas and know that it would not be burned off by him running all over the place. I don't have to wonder who he's on the phone with now, because I have disconnected his phone. I don't have to wonder if he's lying about where he's going or how much later he'll be than he says. I'm not wondering who he's been hitting up for money, or if I'll be getting another NSF notice from the bank tomorrow. Taking care of the kids by myself IS tough, but he was gone a lot of the time anyway, and I was always suspicious about leaving them alone with him when he was home. My oldest is having trouble adjusting, he's acting out, etc. but the youngest doesn't seem to notice that he's not around. I even confronted one of my husband's 'friends' who has been enabling him to continue to get pills despite being cut off by everyone in our family. I didn't realize until now just how used to the drama I had become. Well, no more! I'm finished with the cycle. Maybe this stint will be an eye opener for AH, but even if it hasn't for him, it certainly has been for me! Anyway, just venting