rehab

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Falling into rehab

I sort of fell into the rehab I have received for my getting off of drinking every night.

What does “fell into rehab” mean?

I had a normal rehab planned from a company that specializes in it. I gave it about 3 hours before I knew it wasn’t for me. Fortunately I hadn’t started the process yet and made the right choice.

So my rehab wasn’t planned and I had to do some give and take to get it to where it worked for me. I think that is what you should think about in planning something like this. What works for you? Perhaps a more formalized process or in my case more informal.

I am blessed to have great support. My family is glad with the direction I am going and my lovely wife doesn’t drink, so I have very little temptation at home to be pushed into a direction that is wrong for me. I have had some ups and downs so far, but all in all it has been very successful.

Now I will describe the good and bad of the process I’ve undertaken. To begin with, I didn’t have specific structure other than help and support of family and friends. Of course I got rid of all alcohol in my house (which by the way it was everywhere and in odd places).

The Good

I took 4 weeks off from work, more of a sabbatical than a vacation. The first week was used in detox in a hospital. The nice thing there was I wasn’t allow a phone or computer, so I had 4 days of nothing and I was with others going through what I was going through. This got me away from work completely and got me “detoxed” from those things so I could totally disconnect from my work, the internet and TV.

Next I worked with a friend who has a lot of wisdom. He helped me figure out my issues with stress and moving past things that I needed to move beyond and working on the ones that I could. He was awesome with his direction and help.

I am in the third week of my sabbatical and this hasn’t been an 100% removal from work, but about 80%. I do not get any calls, emails or texts. My managers take the important requests and we meet every morning and decide what would be good to work on for that day. I then work on these issues each day for 3 – 4 hours. This helps me get some work done and still be detached. Finally my lovely wife and I spend the rest of the day together. Usually about 10 – 12 hours. This has been great for us as our kids are all grown now and it is nice to get our lives back. \

The Bad

Really the bad isn’t horrible, but it is to me. I can’t sleep well. I keep trying and seem to fail at figuring it out. I have been given different sleep meds (and taken off the one I had used for 10 years). I think my blood pressure is getting too low as I was on 3 pills during my drinking years and now that I have not had a drink in 3+ weeks, my body is trying to adjust.

Personally I hate sleep. I freak about it and that make it worse. The doctor at the detox hospital said to just not care. “If you are awake at 3:30 in the morning, just let it go and read a book or something”. That makes sense, but to the sleep freak in me, it is terrifying. Yesterday I went back to my family doctor for the second time in two weeks and he took me off of a blood pressure drug and put on some meds for sleep that I have had for a while, but just a higher milligram. That seemed to have worked last night. I still got up a lot, but there was about 2 – 3 hours of sleep and I was able to sleep until my alarm went off this morning, so my sleep is getting better, I think. 🤔

I go back to work the Monday after next. I’m working on a plan to be able to still have some of the protections that have been developed over the past month while returning to my full time position.

The hope

My hope is that with everything that I have learned and experienced over the past month that, my life, and more importantly others lives will be improved for the better moving forward from the ups and downs I have experienced.

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Tomorrow will be the biggest day in my life

Tomorrow I head to rehab. I leave at 6:00 in the morning and I get to the hospital for my 5 day detox around 10:00 am. I am scared but excited. By the grace of God, He waited for me to get to the point when I really wanted this. I wasn’t pushed into it and no one forced me. I realize I’ve used alcohol at night as a crutch. But perhaps I needed a crutch. Some would say, “why didn’t you just trust God”, but evidently I couldn’t at the time. My life, at times has been hell, but everyone has their own hell to walk through and not everyone becomes an alcoholic.

I miss my sister

Tomorrow is also my late sister’s birthday. She was a good sister and always looked out for me. She passed away almost exactly 18 years ago in a scuba diving accident. My parents had just moved into a nice retirement community and that night had friends over. In their discussions, the topic came up of losing a child. My parents said they could never imagine having to go through that. That night I got a call around 11:30 pm. The voice on the other end told me that they found me on the internet and asked if I were her brother. Then he informed me she had died. My life crashed around me. My two brothers lived up north and so I called my oldest and then my second oldest. The second oldest lived in the city that my parents lived in. He went over and told them. All of our lived changed that night.

I got my sister’s computer and read her emails to try and figure out why this happened. Perhaps I should have buried her computer with her and not read about her life, but she lived many miles away and to some extent, we lost touch, though we talked a couple of weeks before she died, which I’m glad about. In one email written 3 days before she died, she wrote her boyfriend and all it said was “10 Days” in big bold letters. She wrote that because her birthday was in 10 days… She died 3 days later.

Second Chance

I don’t have 10 days, I have 1 day. I may not even have that. No one is guaranteed the next breath. My sister had so many plans, but they were over in 30 minutes. She probably didn’t know what hit her as her blood boiled from the bends. I am thankful that I have a second chance for my life. I am thankful for my lovely wife who wants me to go get help. I am thankful that I have a great family and great friends who are praying for me and my lovely wife.

I am thankful, hopeful and happy that I get a second chance, I only wish my sister had one…