Visiting a Rehab Clinic

The first thing I notice when I walk in to the center on an early Monday afternoon is the smell, that acute smell of spray-on cleaning solution used in hospitals. Everything is completely static clean, and the entrance lobby reminds me off my dentists' office. Tasteful blue chairs and maroon couches surround a large waiting area in full view of a receptionists' desk on the side. The magazines on the coffee table are of the inconsequential type, stuff like "Parenthood" and "Popular Mechanic." A couple people are casually waiting; pleasant, normal looking people. The whole effect is of a pleasant doctor's practice, and on first look you would never be able to tell that this is the waiting room for a chemical dependence treatment center. A rehab center. I talk to the receptionist, Anne, and she tells me about the clinic. This one is fairly small, fifteen rooms or so. Outpatient only, this clinic is mainly a place for people to have some quick community support for their addictions and to place people into programs that they need or find them support groups. Anne tells me that almost everyone who comes there had asked for help that day. About twenty people work full or part-time at the clinic, mostly as counselors and as group leaders. Most of the clientele are white collar workers, people whose health insurance cover the cost of the clinic. She tells me that the majority of people who come in for treatment come for alcohol addiction, though in last five years crystal meth has quietly become more popular in Oregon. They usually don't deal with the meth users as extensively here, though, because the neighborhood is fairly upper-class and crystal meth isn't very popular here as it is in other areas of Portland, particularly in the outlying areas beyond the suburbs. She tells me it was getting pretty bad for a while because it's ridiculously easy to make crystal meth with common supermarket items, at least until tighter restrictions were put on some of the main ingredients, particularly pseudoephedrines like Sudafed. I talk to her for little while and she gets a hold of one of the group leaders to give me a breakdown of what the typical session is like. A tiny hispanic woman in a smart looking navy blue pant suit approaches me and introduces herself as Lora Hanson, and begins to give me a short tour around the building. I follow her down the hall and into another waiting room, though this one is smaller. The hall is discretely pleasant, with framed pictures of flowers around the room mixed with posters proclaiming short mantras of positivity like "One Step At A Time…" and such. She pointed to a closed door and told me we have to be quiet because there was a group meeting inside. I could see them through the small ported window in the door, a group of about ten people sitting in a circle in deep discussion. She leads me past the door to a small office, her office, and I begin the interview. Lora tells me about her background. She is a recovered alcoholic. She began drinking at the age of thirteen and was a heavy drinker by her standards by high school. She then dropped out of school and married her now ex-husband, who, on top of being an alcoholic was also addicted to gambling. She tells me that being married to someone with the same addiction made it impossible for her to see it herself. It wasn't until her husband lost eight thousand dollars in a single day and sold her watch, a gift from her father, to help pay off a debt that she decided her relationship was not good for her. I was really surprised at how candid she was being about the details of her life, but she explained to me that she believed because of everything she went through she is able to connect with others who are seeking help more easily. "People will trust you if they believe you've already walked the same path." She told me that the vast majority of her colleagues were also recovered addicts or otherwise had their lives profoundly affected by an addiction. She told me that after her divorce she things got worse for her and that she was drinking 3 bottles of wine a day. She got fired from her job as a secretary at a CPA firm for not showing up. She told she believes she hit rock bottom when she got a DUI for running a stop sign….at eleven in the morning. That was what she called the turning point in her life. The court assigned her to do community service and to start going to alcohol support group meetings. She showed me her Alcoholics Anonymous pin, a golden triangle that had the words "Happy Joyous Free" on it. After she sobered up, she went back to school, got her GED, and eventually ended up on the career path of helping others sober up, mainly because of the direct affect it has had on her life. She now has a fulfilling job, a daughter, and dog that she's been grooming for four years now as a show dog, of which she is very proud of, seeing as she showed me multiple pictures of it, much to my chagrin.
Lora told me that, even though it's been fifteen years, she still goes to AA meetings twice a week. "A recovered alcoholic is still an alcoholic, even if they haven't had a drink in ten years." I myself have been to a couple of AA meetings and also Alanon meetings, in support of a family member, and so we talked about my experience for a little bit. She was very keen on both groups and told me she recommends one or the other to almost everyone who ever comes to her, because support they to addicts/ family members of addicts is invaluable.
Lora is a certified Addictions Counselor in the state of Oregon. She had to go to school for about 2 and half years on a part-time basis to finish all the courses to get her certifications. She stills takes a class every so often to stay up to date with current trends.
Her current job now is as an Addictions counselor and she told me she gets paid "about as much as a first-year teacher" and joked that it wasn't polite to ask, but told me she made roughly around 35 thousand. Lora then walked me through the average group meeting. Every meeting starts with what she called a role call, in which each person takes a turn to introduce themselves and to say exactly why they are here. For example: "I am Lora and I am here because I am an alcoholic." After that they go through various exercises, like role-playing in which you play the role of a family member or friend confronting you about your addiction, or guided meditation. Sometimes they use acupuncture during guided meditation, putting needles in people's ears to help them fight of their cravings. In the end I found that Lora found her job deeply satisfying, though she was the first to admit that she wasn't always successful in helping people." Some people just don't want to be helped." She told me that it wasn't always easy to tell which people were going to make it all the way to recovery, the ones who seem like they will never make it out of the hole that life put them in miraculously make it out while those who have everything going for them sometimes just fall apart and disappear. In the end I found my trip to the clinic to be a great learning experience, though I do hope to never have to go to one ever again for as long as I live. The biggest thought that I came out with is that the difference between the person behind the desk and the person in front of the desk, the counselor and the counseled, is very small.