The Right Time, Finally, at The Right Place By Dean S.

I knew my sponsor’s sponsor, Jim B., was on some committee bringing meetings to hospitals and detoxes.  I thought it was an odd thing for a working lawyer to do.  I figured that he was probably not much of a lawyer and had lots of time to kill.  Then, when I had only been clean and sober about seven months, he asked me to come with him.  Well…he didn’t so much ask me as inform me that I had volunteered.

As we drove through what I thought was an unfamiliar section of Broward County I kept thinking of what a good AA I was—less than a year clean and already bringing the program to some poor drunk in detox.  It wasn’t until we pulled up into the parking lot that I recognized where I was—The Right Place: Residential Detox, the very place where I had been separated from drugs and alcohol, thank God, for what I pray will be the last time.

The Right Place is set up like a group home, with bamboo landscaping in back and a comfortable living room right off the entrance.  We walked in and immediately I was overcome with a feeling of safety.  I hadn’t realized how much The Right Place had meant to me, but the moment I returned I knew it was like coming home.

We had lunch with the clients and right away I recognized the Jamaican Grilled Chicken Yvonne prepared for us on weekends.  I saw myself in each of the clients.  One guy about my age,  kept scheming, wanting to borrow our cell phones, insisting he didn’t need treatment, and, man, I felt like I was in a time-machine and talking to my old self.

We went into the living room for the meeting. I thought I was just there for support and that Jim would do most of the talking, but I guess the depth of my gratitude sunk in and it seemed I couldn’t shut up if I wanted to.  I talked about my experiences at The Right Place and how appreciative I am now for the care and help I received there.

I am twenty-seven years old, so when I arrived at The Right Place it wasn’t my first time in detox.  In fact, it was my fourth.  I thought I knew how to work this place.  During in-take the nurse asked me how often I drank.  I gave her my standard answer, “a beer or two every now and then.”  She nodded, looked again at the .021 I blew on the breathalyzer she had just given me, and smiled.  I told her I was just there to get off Oxycontin, told her what medications she should give me, what doses.  She nodded, pretended to listen.  I got insistent—what a sober person would call belligerent.  The louder I got the calmer she got.  By the end of the interview I was red-faced.  She reached over, touched my shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she told me, “we’ll take good care of you.”  And, despite my best efforts to be in charge of my own detox—my desire to have an active drug-addict-alcoholic (me)—decide how much medication I should have and when, The Right Place did just that, took good care of me.

They took care of me with a comfortable, homey environment, good food, and an obvious concern for my health and medical well-being as I went through the trial of detox.  They gave me just enough medication to assure relative comfort, but were certain I was chemically clean by the end of my stay.

What mattered most though was that they cared for me without buying in to my B.S.  I’m not the biggest guy in the world but not the smallest either, so my anger usually intimidates people enough to get me what I want.

One day I was low on cigarettes and low on cash, so I knew just who to call: mommy.  I told a tech I needed to call home, call my mother.  He put me off.  I got tired of waiting.  “She’s sick,” I lied, “and I want to make sure she’s okay.”

“I spoke to her,” Joe, the guy who runs the place told me.  “She’s fine.”

I got right in his face, nose –to-nose.  “I said I want to speak to my mother.  Get her on the phone!”

He didn’t blink, but greeted my attitude with a knowing smile.  “Look,” he said, “give her a break.  Don’t you think she’s been through enough with you?”

Selfish addict that I was, it never occurred to me that I wasn’t the only one who suffered from my illness, that even in insisting on running my own recovery, I was doing more damage.

Joe still runs The Right Place, still offers a level of care and comfort seldom seen in a residential detox.  Most importantly though, he still knows who his clients are and what they need.  The medical and physical comfort were essential for me, but it was the loving honesty and visible integrity that really gave me the push and the strength I needed to decide that recovery really was for me.  “Thank God,” I told the clients as I wrapped up, “thank God that, when I was ready, I found The Right Place.”