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  • EADD Moderators: Pissed_and_messed | Shinji Ikari

The Cult of Rehabs

C

charlie clean

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Joined
Feb 5, 2011
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Drug affairs are pretty central to the way our civilisation is going. In legal circles, drug laws and their implementation are at the heart of developments in civil liberties. In economic terms, the drug trade is a close second to the arms business as a worldwide money maker while the impact on society is well documented and obvious to anyone with eyes in their head. And that's before we get into the arcania of philosophy and what it all really means.

And, at the centre of drugs policy, we now have the rehabs. The whole subject fascinates me. The rehab culture has really taken off over the past decade to the point where drug users no longer 'come off' but 'go to rehab'. What happens in rehab? What are they all about?

How do they help you handle the actual 'kick'? Is it somehow easier in an institutional setting than otherwise? I notice one major provider says " ..many of our clients do not need detox when they enter our facilities." Why not? And what about afterwards? What do they teach you and how does it relate to 'drugs'? How many 'clients' walk out? I see another rehab boasts of '85% residential rehabilitation retention' - why can't they say 'less than one in six of our customers leg it'? Are rehab clients subject to other example of language manipulation and does it alter the way they think?

First hand information about what happens within rehab walls is hard to come by. Can BLers with experience fill the gap? Be as honest and as thoughtful as you can about whether they did you any good and were worth the money. I'd really like to know.

Thanks,

Charlie.
 
I often wonder why many rehabs make you be clean before you go into them too. I'm an addict and so I realise that staying clean is harder than getting clean but I always thought that rehab was for both.

Anyway, a good mate of mine is currently in rehab and has been for 8 months now. They seem to drum into him a shedload of mantra's like "Life is what you make it" and "It is what it is" etc...Even he says it's all jumping through hoops and a load of shit.

I think it's just a way of changing your mindset so that you become almost brainwashed into becoming a 'functional member of society' (whatever that is). He lives away from where he spent most of his life in a crummy bedsit paid for by the government but if that makes him functional then so be it! He's told me a few of the lads he met in there have since buggered off and are using again.

For me, you have to really want to come off gear if and so if you do really want it then you will do and ditto regarding staying clean. Therefore, I conclude that they're probably a waste of whatever money they cost (plenty in some circumstances, I'm sure). Maybe you're supposed to find God or some shit, I dunno!
 
No rehab stories here i'm afraid just years and years of inept Key workers , GPs that i could use to get ridicolously big scripts and alot of time spent waiting.
I'm still waiting btw.
I have had a couple of really good key workers but they soon legged it when they realised the ineptitude of their bosses.
My present Gp ain't bad either but thats like my 6th one in 16 years , been with him 4. The only one that i haven't played a game with and wouldn't , he's a canny chap if a tad blunt.
Anyway i to will be intrested 2 hear what goes on inside Rehab facilities .
 
hooks said:
I think it's just a way of changing your mindset so that you become almost brainwashed into becoming a 'functional member of society' (whatever that is).
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IME, from not a drugs IP unit, this appears to be a fundamental tenet to any psychiatric hospitalisation. but i would comment that, at least i feel, mental illnesses brainwash you anyway, so getting brainwashed to recover appears just to be a reversal of the process that got you in the mess in the first place. though obviously you need more than brainwashing for a useful period. and with that musing i'll leave as i'm not really qualified to be here, just don't feel that brainwashing in this case, as long as accompanied by real therapy, is as bad as it sounds.

charlie, i'm not surprised that advertising doublespeak has reached all areas of life, but you're right that it leaves a bit of a gap for people wanting to know what to expect. massive respect to anyone who feels able to share their experiences on here.
 
charlie clean said:
Are rehab clients subject to other example of language manipulation and does it alter the way they think?


Orwell was right about so many things - the survelliance society, the obliteration of the individual due to industrial systems etc - it wouldn't be stretching things to imagine that "well intentioned people" might just start to use the sort of tools desribed in 1984, in fact language manipulation has not yet been seriously taken up because manipulation via the visual image has been the main focus, so far.
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Well there is certainly at least one Rehab provider that uses the techniques of a cult, largely as it is an offshoot of a cult. Narcanon, which uses the techniques of Scientology.
 
While the focus has indeed been on the visual image, I'm not so sure language manipulation hasn't gone a bit further than we realise. If you take a job in Drug Treatment you're told you're a 'key worker' who helps 'users' to 'get clean'. It goes beyond the bureaucrat-speak where a lot of words are employed to mean absolutely nothing. Whoever the manipulators may be, you can bank on their having read 1984 from cover to cover. Just becuase there's not a 50 foot screem image of Big Society Dave looking down on every street, it doesn't mean Big Brother is only a harmless tv show.

Narconon is one of the more interesting rehabs. At least they don't deny they're trying to sell you a creed. I'd love to hear from anyone who's been an inpatient at one of their facilities.

For the rest, I'm curious not just about the techniques applied to 'help' you in your drug free life but about peoples' motivations for going in. Was it your own decision or under pressure from family, employers or friends? Did you pay and, if so, do you think it was worth the money? Most important, did you have a problem with the criminal lifestyle or the pharmacology? Many of the brochure photos - the ones not 'posed by agency models ' - give the impression of a doss house clientele. The tributes could substitute 'stayed out of gaol' or 'stopped fucking goats' for 'stayed off drugs'. What about those of you who weren't down and out? If you'd been given a prescription for your drug of choice, would you have taken that instead and, given it and time, do you think you'd have sorted yourself out better than 'the professionals' did?
 
I'm not so sure language manipulation hasn't gone a bit further than we realise.
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You're likely correct my post wasn't entirely (if at all) within the context of the thread but rather an observation of what I see in wider society, which probably does have some bearing on what happens in rehab actually.
Have you signed up on the government website to have drug legalisation/decriminialisation "debated in parliament" Charlie ? I'm asking because you were seen a while ago badgering inoccent folks with some lurid tale of about a petition to give heroin to drug addicts if I recall correctly.
 
I hope I'd never badger innocent folks to do anything other than to stay innocent.

No, I'm a bit cynical about petitions. But I did sign the one to hang everyone not in favour of liberalised drug laws and policies. I'm a moderate, but to a degree.

Have you put in rehab time yourself, B9?
 
^^ No I've never been keen to get deeply involved with the system - something about it I find simply uncomfortable - I only had experience with GPs, drug workers & addiction psychiatrists.
I think it's a good thread & there's more to it than just rehab, rehab serving as the point of experimentation in societal controls springs to mind- tho I guess you already thought that anyway.
 
I got put into a twelve step rehab, where they work you through the NA program in a controlled environment with the help of therapists. They have lots of rules and regulations in place to address your lack of structure and general attitudes and behaviours that will of made you use/ or used on them. Just general things like getting you back into a proper sleeping pattern, having three set meals a day, wash every day, shave everyday, stuff like that that you wouldn't do in active addiction. Addressing your complete unmanageability whilst using.

They make you write down examples of your powerlessness in addiction, and then you get put in a group where you read it out to everyone and then they tell you what they think. Because you can't see things by yourself, it takes other people to point them out to you to see. For instance one of mine was I gave a girl an injection, she overdosed, but I managed to get her back round. I'd always thought I was the 'hero' saving her life in my head, but in group everyone brought it to my attention I could of been a murderer, gone to jail, and how lucky I was. Alot of it is based on 'what if', but it's just to make you realise the seriousness of your actions as every addict is fillied with insane amounts of denile and delusion.
 
^ Would you have given the girl the injection if you were able to buy your heroin legally & cheaply ? If you could simply get a days supply of heroin at a time would you not shave & get washed ? When I was scripted I did both those things I also did them when not scripted but less so.
 
Again, that's the criminal lifestyle, not the drugs. Explains why my recently trained 'key' worker seemed suspicious I was always washed and shaved, as if I was pulling some form of junkie scam, and positively shocked that I bought vitamins as well as ate regularly. Of course, without the script I'd spend money on overpriced black market dope and wouldn't be able to afford such indulgences. You wouldn't have been a 'murderer' had your friend taken her prescription drugs; and, of course, if she had prescription heroin she'd be highly unlikely to overdose in the first place.

This is my point. It seems the same kind of people make a 'drug' illegal and then blame that drug for all the problems caused by its illegality. Next they say you need to be 'rehabilitated' from the drug. You're at fault for finding it so useful you defied a 'law' neither of nature nor your making. They make you feel guilty and charge money for it. While drug users are conned in this fashion, the actual and very real pharmacological addiction is ignored. Thus, you leave 'residential retention' and use again.

Rehabs are not only a fraud and potentially re-indoctrination centres,, they don't work in terms of their remit. The reality of the matter, as illustrated by the statistics that show exactly the same percentage achieving lasting abstinence without rehabs as do with their costly 'help, is that you and you alone come off; nothing else, apart obviously from locking you up and denying your supplies, makes a blind bit of difference.
 
brimz said:
were they funded by the local authority or by yourself ?
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The local authority funded me. TBH it wasn't planned, I just got caught up with Addaction through my local GP service.

Initially things went well.
It was when I went to secondary that things went pear shaped.

I must admit, it has helped in some ways & I'd even pass a piss test @ this very second.

My worst mistake was going back to the same area and being surrounded by the same people.
 
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