Both Sides of the Desk...Rehab as a Patient then as a Nurse

There are a lot of stories out there about drug and alcohol abuse. Who needs another one?

Well, we're all unique (although we're all the same). We never know when our story will reach someone. As long as we continue to have trouble with drugs and alcohol, we will benefit from sharing our stories.

There's no cure so far. There are different programs, but nothing clearly successful with a large percentage of addicts. They say addiction is a disease. That's helpful and not helpful. It can be managed they say, just like diabetes! if you take your medicine. The medicine is meetings.

And meetings are stories. Sharing our stories. 

I don't know why that is so healing. I don't want to question that. I want to take advantage of it. 

I'm not a talker. When I was a kid I was agonizingly shy. Alcohol helped me get over that. Well, no, alcohol briefly untied my tongue but ultimately made all my neuroses worse. But I could always write. Even sober, I could write. In fact, I wrote very little during the times in my life i was using drugs or alcohol.

real writers disdain writing undertaken for therapeutic reasons. Writing is art. Therapy is therapy. But if writing accidentally becomes therapeutic, that's sort of win/win, right?

So many stories. and stories lead to more stories. 

I'm a Dr. Phil junkie. I've written a few times, for myself and others. I want Daddy Warbucks to save me. (A guest called him Daddy Warbucks. He was annoyed but I thought it was fairly appropriate.) I especially like to hear him put narcissists in their place. I also like guests who hit bottom, so to speak, with drugs and alcohol.

well, gotta go. a compelling dr Phil is on-- an abused child confronts her father as an adult. I wasn't abused but I dream sometimes I am chewing my father out for one thing or another. It's too late. He died several years ago.

Still, telling helps. Re-telling and re-telling and re-telling probably doesn't. But I don't think I'm doing that.

Anyway, one of the producers of Dr. Phil wrote me back a few weeks ago. I sent more info as requested but haven't heard back. I'm still waiting. I want to go to one of those places where they are meticulous at finding out just what therapy you need. I've gone down a lot of wrong roads. I wouldn't recognize the right road if it laid itself at my doorstep paved in yellow brick.

One thing AA does is teach you you can't cure yourself. Maybe no one can cure me. Maybe that's why I'm compelled to learn nail art...all that curing of UV lacquer.

If my nail polish can be cured, maybe I can be too.