Intervention

The following is an excerpt from The Heart and Other Monsters by Rose Andersen.I cannot remember my sister’s body. Her smell is gone to me. I do not recall the last time I touched her. I think I can almost pinpoint it: the day I asked her to leave my home after I figured out she had stopped detoxing and started shooting up again, all the while trying to sell my things to her drug dealer as I slept. When she left, she asked me for $20, and I told her that I would give it to her if she sent me a picture of a receipt to show me she spent the money on something other than drugs. “Thanks a lot,” she said, sarcastically. I hugged her, maybe. So much hinges on that maybe, the haunting maybe of our last touch.The last time I saw my sister was at an intervention at a shitty hotel in Small Town. Our family friend Debbie flew my stepmother and me there in her three-seater plane. The intervention was put together hastily by Sarah’s friend Noelle, who called us a few days beforehand, asking us to come. There were little resources or time to stage it properly—we couldn’t afford a trained interventionist to come. Noelle told us she was afraid Sarah was going to die. I agreed to fly with Debbie and Sharon because Small Town was far away from home and I didn’t want to drive.Debbie sat in the pilot’s seat, and I sat next to her. My stepmother was tucked in the third seat, directly behind us. It wasn’t until takeoff that I realized with my body what a terrible decision it was to fly. I am terrified of heights and extremely prone to motion sickness. I was not prepared for what it meant to be in a small plane.I could feel the outside while inside the plane. The vibration of chilly wind permeated through the tiny door and gripped my lungs, heart, head. It would have taken very little effort to open the door and fall, an endless horrifying fall to most-certain death. From the first swoop into the air, my stomach twisted into a mean, malicious fist that punched at my bowels and throat. For the next hour I sat trembling, my eyes shut tight. Through every dip, bounce, and shake, I held back bile and silently cried.When we landed, I lurched off the plane and threw up. I do not remember what color it was. My stepmom handed me a bottle of water and half a Xanax, and I sat, legs splayed on the runway, until I thought I could stand again.My sister vomited when she died. She shit. She bled. How much is required to leave our body before we are properly, truly, thoroughly dead? I dreamed one night that I sat with my sister’s dead body and tried to scoop all her bodily fluids back inside her. Everything wet was warm, but her body was ice-cold. I knew that if I could return this warmth to her, she would come back to life. My hands were dripping with her blood and excrement, and while begging her insides to return to her, I cried a great flood of mucus and tears. This I remember, while our last touch still evades me.<#>My sister was late to her intervention. Many hours late. Seven of us, all women, five of us in sobriety, sat in that hot hotel room, repeatedly texting and calling Sarah’s boyfriend, Jack, to bring her to us. I realized later that he probably told her they were going to the hotel to get drugs.The hotel room was also where Sharon, Debbie, and I would be sleeping that night. It held two queen-size beds, our small amount of luggage, and four chairs we had discreetly borrowed from the hotel’s conference room. I sat on one of the beds, perched on the edge anxiously, trying not to make eye contact with anyone else. I didn’t know many of the other people there.When I told my mom about the intervention days before, I had immediately followed with “But you don’t need to come.” There were so many reasons. She has goats and donkeys, cats and dogs who needed to be taken care of. She didn’t have a vehicle that could make the drive. She could write a letter, I said, and I would give it to Sarah. The truth was, I didn’t feel like managing her now-acrimonious relationship with Sharon. I didn’t want to have to take care of my mom, on top of managing Sarah’s state of being. It occurred to me, sitting in this crowded, strange room, that I might have been wrong.Sitting diagonally across from me was Sarah’s close friend Noelle, who had organized everything. Sarah and Noelle had met in recovery, lived together at Ryan’s family home, and become close friends. They had remained friends even when Sarah started using again. Helen, a fair-haired middle-aged woman who was not one of the people Sarah knew from recovery but rather the mother of one of Sarah’s boyfriends, sat on the other bed. Sarah’s last sponsor, Lynn, sat near me. I had to stop myself from telling her how Sarah had used her name on her phone. Sitting in one of the chairs was the woman who was going to run the intervention. I cannot remember her name now, even though I can easily recall the sound of her loud, grating voice.The interventionist had worked at Shining Light Recovery, the rehab Sarah had been kicked out of about a year and a half before, and was the only person Noelle could find on short notice. She had run her fair share of interventions, she told us, but she made it clear that because she hadn’t had the time to work with us beforehand, this wouldn’t run like a proper intervention. She smelled like musty clothes and showed too many teeth when she laughed. She talked about when she used to drink, with a tone that sounded more like longing than regret. When she started to disclose private information about my sister’s time in rehab, I clenched my hands into a fist.“I’m the one that threw her out,” the woman said. “I mean, she’s a good kid, but once I caught her in the showers with that other girl, she had to go.” Someone else said something, but I couldn’t hear anyone else in the room. “No sexual conduct,” she continued. “The rules are there for a reason.” She chuckled and took a swig from her generic-brand cola. I felt hot and ill, my insides still a mess from the plane ride. We waited two more hours, listening to the interventionist talk, until Jack texted to say they had just pulled up.When my sister arrived, she walked into the room and announced loudly, “Oh fuck, here we go.” Then she sat, thin, resentful, and sneering, her hands stuffed into the front pocket of her sweatshirt. Oh fuck, here we go, I thought. The interventionist didn’t say much, in sharp contrast to her chattiness while we were waiting. She briefly explained the process; we would each have a chance to speak, and then Sarah could decide if she wanted to go to a detox center that night.We went in turns, speaking to Sarah directly or reading from a letter. Everyone had a different story, a different memory to start what they had to say, but everyone ended the same way: “Please get help. We are afraid you are going to die.” Sarah was stone-faced but crying silently. This was unusual. When Sarah cried, she was a wailer; we called it her monkey howl.When we were younger, we watched the movie Little Women again and again. We would often fast-forward through Beth’s death, but sometimes we would let the scene play out. We would curl up on our maroon couch and cry as Jo realized her younger sister had died. For a moment I wished for the two of us to be alone, watching Little Women for the hundredth time. I could almost feel her small head on my shoulder as she wailed, “Why did Beth have to die? It’s not fair.” She sat across the room and wouldn’t make eye contact with me.I addressed Sarah first with my mom’s letter. I started, “My dear little fawn, I know that things have gone wrong and that you have lost your way.” My voice cracked and I found I couldn’t continue, so I passed it to Noelle to read instead. It felt wrong to hear my mother’s words come out of Noelle’s mouth. Sarah was crying. She needs her mom, I thought frantically.When it came time to speak to her myself, my mind was blank. I was angry. I was angry that I had to fly in a shitty small plane and be in this shitty small room to convince my sister to care one-tenth as much about her life as we did. I was furious that she still had a smirk, even while crying, while we spoke to her. Mostly, I was angry because I knew nothing I could say could make her leave this terrible town I had driven her to years before, and come home. That somewhere in her story there was a mountain of my own mistakes that had helped lead us to this moment.“Sarah, I know you are angry and think that we are all here to make you feel bad. But we are here because we love you and are worried you might die. I don’t know what I would do if you died.” My sister sat quietly and listened. “I believe you can have any life you want.” I paused. “And I have to believe that I still know you enough to know that this isn’t the life you want.” The more I talked, the further away she seemed, until I trailed off and nodded to the next person to talk.After we had all spoken, Sarah rejected our help. She told us she had a plan to stop using on her own. “I have a guy I can buy methadone from, and I am going to do it by myself.” Methadone was used to treat opioid addicts; the drug reduced the physical effects of withdrawal, decreased cravings, and, if taken regularly, could block the effects of opioids. It can itself be addictive—it’s also an opioid. By law it can only be dispensed by an opioid treatment program, and the recommended length of treatment is a minimum of twelve months.“I have a guy I can buy five pills from,” Sarah insisted, as if that was comparable to a licensed methadone center, as if what she was suggesting wasn’t its own kind of dangerous.“But honey,” my stepmother said gently, “we are offering you help right now. You can go to a detox center tonight.”“Absolutely not. I am not going to go cold turkey.” Sarah was perceptibly shaking as she said this, the trauma of her past withdrawals palpable in her body. “I don’t know if I can trust you guys.”She gestured to my stepmom and me. “I felt really betrayed by what happened.” The heroin in her wallet, the confrontation at Sharon’s, Motel 6, breaking into her phone. “You guys don’t understand. Every other time I’ve done this, I’ve done this for you, for my family.” She sat up a little straighter. “For once in my life, it’s time for me to be selfish.”It was all I could do not to slap her across the face. I wanted desperately to feel my hand sting from the contact, to see her cheek bloom pink, to see if anything could hurt her. She wasn’t going to use methadone to get clean. She just wanted us to leave her alone. I made an excuse about needing to buy earplugs to sleep that night and walked out. I did not hug her or look at her. I did not know I would not see her again. I did not know I would not remember our last touch. I did not know that the next time I held her body, it would be chips of bone and gritty ash in a small cardboard box. THE HEART AND OTHER MONSTERS (Bloomsbury; hardcover; 9781635575149; $24.00; 224 pages; July 7, 2020) by Rose Andersen is an intimate exploration of the opioid crisis as well as the American family, with all its flaws, affections, and challenges. Reminiscent of Alex Marzano-Lesnevich's The Fact of a Body, Maggie Nelson's Jane: A Murder, and Lacy M. Johnson's The Other Side, Andersen's debut is a potent, profoundly original journey into and out of loss. Available now. 

Drinking Surged During The Pandemic. Do You Know The Signs Of Addiction?

Despite the lack of dine-in customers for nearly 2½ long months during the coronavirus shutdown, Darrell Loo of Waldo Thai stayed busy.Loo is the bar manager for the popular restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri, and he credits increased drinking and looser liquor laws during the pandemic for his brisk business. Alcohol also seemed to help his customers deal with all the uncertainty and fear.“Drinking definitely was a way of coping with it,” said Loo. “People did drink a lot more when it happened. I, myself, did drink a lot more.”Many state laws seemed to be waived overnight as stay-at-home orders were put into place, and drinkers embraced trends such as liquor delivery, virtual happy hours and online wine tasting. Curbside cocktails in 12- and 16-ounce bottles particularly helped Waldo Thai make up for its lost revenue from dine-in customers.Retail alcohol sales jumped by 55% nationally during the third week of March, when many stay-at-home orders were put in place, according to Nielsen data, and online sales skyrocketed.Many of these trends remained for weeks. Nielsen also notes that the selling of to-go alcohol has helped sustain businesses.But the consumption of all this alcohol can be problematic for individuals, even those who haven’t had trouble with drinking in the past.Dr. Sarah Johnson, medical director of Landmark Recovery, an addiction treatment program based in Louisville, Kentucky, with locations in the Midwest said that, virtual events aside, the pandemic has nearly put an end to social drinking.“It’s not as much going out and incorporating alcohol into a dinner or time spent with family or friends,” Johnson said. “Lots of people are sitting home drinking alone now and, historically, that’s been viewed as more of a high-risk drinking behavior.”There are some objective measures of problematic drinking. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines heavy drinking as 15 or more drinks a week for a man or eight or more for a woman.But Johnson said that more important clues come from changes in behavior. She explains that, for some people, a bit of extra drinking now and then isn’t a big deal.“If they are still meeting all of their life obligations, like they are still getting up and making their Zoom meetings on time, and they’re not feeling so bad from drinking that they can’t do things, and taking care of their children and not having life problems, then it’s not a problem,” Johnson said. “It’s when people start to have problems in other areas of their life, then it would be a signal that they are drinking too much and that it’s a problem.”But there are signs to watch out for, she says. They include:Big increases in the amount of alcohol consumedConcern expressed by family or friendsChanges in sleep patterns, either more or less sleep than usualAny time that drinking interferes with everyday lifeJohnson noted that for many people, living under stay-at-home orders without the demands of a daily commute or lunch break could be problematic.“Routine and structure are important to overall mental health because they reduce stress and elements of unknown or unexpected events in daily life,” Johnson said. “These can trigger individuals in recovery to revert to unhealthy coping skills, such as drinking.”Johnson explained that while some people may be predisposed to problematic drinking or alcohol-use disorder, these can also result from someone’s environment.Johnson said that people who are unable to stop problematic drinking on their own should seek help. The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration runs a 24/7 helpline (800-662-HELP) and website, www.findtreatment.gov, offering referrals for addiction treatment.Peer support is also available online. Many Alcoholics Anonymous groups have started to offer virtual meetings, as does the secular recovery group LifeRing. And for people who are looking for more informal peer support, apps such as Loosid help connect communities of sober people.Darrell Loo at Waldo Thai said that he has been concerned at times about people’s drinking but that he generally has seen customers back off from the heavy drinking they were doing early in the pandemic.Loo and others in the Kansas City restaurant business are pushing for the carryout cocktails and other looser laws to stay in place even as restaurants slowly start to reopen.“This will go on for a while. It’s going to change people’s habit,” Loo said. “People’s spending habit. People’s dining out habit. So there’s definitely a need to keep doing it.”This story is part of a partnership that includes KCUR, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

A Partnership Approach to Recovery

If you’re like a lot of people, you’re struggling right now. You might be white-knuckling it through early sobriety during a global pandemic, or finding yourself using drugs and alcohol more and more, tipping the scales from acceptable use to problematic abuse. If you’re in either of those situations, finding a sober partner to help you though recovery can be an important tool.A sober partner is someone who works with you one-on-one to support your journey to sobriety or help you through the ups and downs of early recovery. While entering a treatment center with other people can seem risky, there are ways to get help for your drug or alcohol addiction in an individual or small group setting that allows you to tightly control your exposure.An individualized approach to treatmentIn order to succeed in treatment, you need to feel comfortable. If you can’t imagine lying in a bed in a detox facility or even sharing a double room with someone else in early recovery, you might need a more individualized approach to treatment.Luckily, there are plenty of options available that can be tailored to your specific needs. For example, executive treatment plans. This approach to treatment is designed for people who are accustomed to being in control and living with certain amenities. You’ll be treated with respect and understanding that you might not find in other treatment centers. Plus, you’ll be exposed to other people who are in your situation — highly accomplished and skilled individuals who happen to also struggle with substance abuse.Executive treatment plans give you all the creature comforts that you’re accustomed to on a high-end business trip. You can have a chef to meet your dietary needs or a personal trainer to keep you mentally and physically fit. Without worrying about the inconveniences of living at a treatment center, you’ll be able to focus on your recovery.What is sober coaching?You might have seen the term “sober coach” in the newspapers, describing someone who accompanies the latest celebrity around after their rehab stay. But sober coaches aren’t just for the famous — they’re for anyone who needs one-on-one guidance for early recovery.Sober coaches have been where you are. They’re in recovery as well, and they’ve figured out how to balance sobriety with living a full and fun life. A clinician can help you identify destructive patterns or underlying mental health issues that contribute to your substance abuse. A sober coach, on the other hand, gives a more intimate approach, relating to you on a personal level. Your sober coach will be able to share that they’ve learned, giving you a glimpse into how recovery will fit into your day-to-day life.In that way, sober coaches help to fill the gap between your life in rehab and your normal life. Rather than worrying about making the transition from treatment to home, you’ll be working to ease that transition from the start. Your sober coach will be able to give you insight into navigating social events, repairing your relationship with your children or spouse, or saying “no-thanks” to a drink at your next big work function.Treatment that works for youWhether you’re a high-flying executive, an artist, or an introvert who does best in small groups, you deserve to have a treatment option that works for you. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to drug and alcohol treatment.Before signing up for treatment, think about what your priorities are. Do you want to keep in touch with work and family, or take some time away? Do you want your treatment plan to have a spiritual or religious component? What creature comforts will make you feel more at ease, and ready to tackle the hard work of recovery?Putting in legwork ahead of time to find a treatment that is right for you can go a long way toward ensuring your success in recovery.Sober Partners provides residential treatment in Newport Beach, California. Get more information at their website, by calling 855-982-3247, or on Facebook.

A Thousand Wasted Sundays

I heard the baby crying again.I didn’t get up. I stayed, hiding in my bedroom. He needed me, but I couldn’t do it. I was too hungover. Again.I don’t remember getting home. The last thing I recall was seeing both my hands outstretched in front of me clutching two huge jugs of Sangria. The red liquid was lapping over the sides as I declared triumphantly,“It’s two for one!” to my wasted, smiling friends.My life had always been one big party. A social drinker extraordinaire. A binger that never drank alone and never went home early. I wouldn’t have described my drinking as a problem. I thought I was just like everyone else, overdo it on Saturday then feel like killing myself on Sunday. That’s normal right? Wasted hungover days were as ingrained as my habit. My drinking felt ordinary, typical. You wouldn’t have picked me out as an alcoholic, you’d have thought I was great company. My addiction was clever, absorbed into everyone else’s, diluted by the crowd.I had my first child at 34. Mothers group nights out catapulted me into a whole new style of heavy binge drinking. The mundanity of motherhood and the long gaps between piss-ups accentuated my indulgence. By the time a night out was upon me I was gagging to get annihilated. I was expected to be tucking in, singing lullaby’s and instead I was going out and dancing on speakers in a dodgy underground nightclub.Weeks would pass of being good mummy. I had the right snacks, the softest cotton wraps and a sporty three wheeled pram. I’d fought my way out of germ-infested ball play pits and had wipes on hand for any unpredictable leeks, drips or explosions. On the outside I was doing well at my new role. But, inside I was hurting, mourning the loss of that fun party girl I knew, the one that linked arms with strangers and did bad 80’s dancing.I wanted to go out and be me again.Drunk me, the only me I knew.Mum’s nights out became my escape.I heard the crying again. There was no point in feeding him, my milk was toxic. Spoiled. The sun shone through the bedroom window, cutting the room in half. As I closed the curtains I had a sudden flash back of stumbling around in the bathroom with my bra shoved down around my waist, demanding my husband hand the baby over. I was covered in vomit.“Get in the bath” he’d said.I sat in the empty bath as my husband put the baby to bed with a bottle. He then plugged the hose in and sprayed me down, fully clothed, like a zookeeper that was washing a muddy elephant. I saw lumps of sick lodged in the plug hole….The embarrassing memory stung my heart, guilt crept into my bones. Panic kicked in and filled my body with negativity. I began the slow painful demise into my hangover. My mind took over and led me down a dark and frightening path. I envisaged dreadful ways I might die; irrational thoughts filled my being.It wasn’t meant to be this way.I thought I’d be able to carry on being me, a Rockstar mum that partied, got the kids mohawks and wore ripped jeans. This motherhood thingy was ruining my fun, interrupting my hangovers. Giving me consequences.I sighed as I heard the front door open and close. I guessed it was my family going out, doing fun stuff without me. Joining them wasn’t an option. I was too broken. Instead I chose to lay there in my pit of self-hatred and discontentment hoping to fall asleep.Sleep didn’t come. Only questions did…Why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep doing something I hate?What’s wrong with me?My anxiety had been getting progressively worse every time I went on a bender. Being the drunkest person at every pub, club or wake for the previous 26 years was catching up with me. I was losing my sparkle, suffering with terrible panic attacks and low self-worth. I felt depressed, I was lost and had no idea how to stop.I tried slowing down. I failed at moderation. I drank waters between gins and ate carbs before big nights. Dry July’s dribbled down the drain along with my own sour tasting bile. None of it worked.Then the baby.That perfect little bundle of human that was crying beyond my bedroom door got me questioning my drinking. Questioning my life. I had a baby to look after. I had to do better.Laying there that afternoon, smelling like a brewery with a bucket of sick next to me, I knew the time had come.I stood up, put on my bath robe and plodded into the lounge. My son was eating spaghetti in his highchair. I leaned down and gave him a kiss on his forehead and whispered that I was sorry. I plonked myself down on the couch next to my husband and said,“I want to stop drinking. I think I need help”At last, I had taken responsibility for my drinking and admitted that, perhaps, I had a problem.My husband took my hand and promised to support me. He said he hated seeing me so unwell and he told me he loved me.The next morning, I searched the internet for help. I reached out.I found a local counselling service and dialled the number.“Hello, I’m Vicky. I’m a mum that hates binge drinking but can’t seem to stop. Can you help me?”I thought she was going to laugh and say,“Sorry love, we only deal with real alcoholics here”But she didn’t, she said,“Yes, we can help with that”I booked an appointment.That exact moment is when my sober story began. Reaching out saved me, therapy cracked me open and helped me understand my reasons why.One Saturday, a few months after my therapy finished, I asked my husband,“What shall we do tomorrow?”It sounds like a simple statement, but it was the first time in my adult life I’d considered doing something on a Sunday. It was the moment I became an available parent instead of a drunken one.I’m now a better mum that’s determined to never waste a Sunday again.Read about my journey -www.drunkmummysobermummy.com

Waismann Method®

Waismann Method® Opioid Treatment Specialists have been providing rapid detox since 1998. Although they are recognized as a rapid detox center, they also provide a number of medically assisted detox options in a private room of a full service, accredited hospital. On the first day of treatment, patients undergo a comprehensive medical assessment, which often includes blood work, EKG, stress test and any other recommended examinations based on the health needs of each patient. Patients also receive IV fluids, vitamins, and electrolytes to stabilize nutrients in the body before, during and after the detox process. On the second day, those who receive rapid detox are transferred to the ICU. Patients remain in the hospital overnight or until they are physically stable. Then they are discharged and transferred to Domus Retreat, a private recovery center where guests receive around-the-clock aftercare and support during the physical and emotional adjustment period.Since Waismann Method® is primarily a medically assisted detoxification, it differs from the typical rehabs that are reviewed in this section of The Fix. Because of this, the following alumni-provided details mainly describe the aftercare component of treatment, which takes place at Domus Retreat. For more information about Waismann Method’s medically assisted detox, please see their website.Waismann Method® specifically treats patients who are dependent on opioids. The alumni who took our survey report a variety of opioid drugs of choice and patterns of abuse as well as variation in length of treatment. Some clients arrived dependent on heroin or methadone while others reported an addiction to Oxycontin, for example. One patient who was “addicted to prescription pills for 7 years,” stayed about two weeks in treatment, while another who had been addicted to methadone was home in less than a week. This is not a long-term facility.When asked why they chose Waismann Method®, the vast majority of respondents placed quality of treatment and privacy above all else. While undergoing the detox process in the hospital, patients do not interact with one another. Once they have completed detox and move on to the Domus Retreat, there is some interaction with other residents. For the most part, other patients were “respectful and helpful. There was a feeling we were all getting our lives back and so we could appreciate each other’s experience.”Accommodations at the retreat were very highly rated by former clients. Rooms were described as “big, private and clean,” all with televisions, internet access, and private bathrooms. There is a private chef and maid service. Clients do not do any chores.Treatment at the retreat is “centered around physical recovery along with emotional recovery.” To that end, clients avail themselves of any of a number of services including individualized psychotherapy, massage, acupuncture, and yoga. There are no group therapy sessions and no 12-step meetings. Those looking to stay fit can choose from an array of activities such as “basketball, swimming, Jacuzzi, exercise equipment...things to keep you occupied.” There is also art therapy and Tai Chi. Unlike typical treatment centers, there is not a lot of structure and scheduling. Clients are free to choose how they spend their days. There are no restrictions on phone, internet, or TV but “You are encouraged to not do too much work so this can be a respite.”All meals are prepared to order for each client by a private chef. The menu consists of “very healthy meals (fresh salads and smoothies, for example) along with immense flexibility in our choices.” If clients have any specific requests, dietary restrictions, or food allergies, accommodations are made. Clients described the food as “healthy,” “gourmet,” and “delicious.” Favorites were steak and vegetables for dinner as well as fish, chicken and pesto pasta. “It was like dining out all the time,” said one client who “Couldn’t have been happier.” When a client didn’t like a particular item, they would request something different for the following day.Patients spoke highly of the staff, describing them as “always friendly and respectful.” When asked how infractions are handled, one person described staff as “very accessible,” and that they “explain the rules in a way that helps you feel safe and helps with relaxation.” Additionally, “The staff was open to the patients’ input and they helped us understand the thinking behind each decision.” Most clients felt infractions were rare or non-existent. “Everybody seemed civil and well taken care of.” For example, one alum who was smoking near the house “was asked politely to move further away.”For the most part, clients gave high marks to medical personnel, both in hospital during the detox and at the retreat which has full-time nurses in residence as well as a visiting physician who is also on call. Doctors and nurses were described by one client as “compassionate, respectful, and humane.” While one alum felt the doctor should have been more attentive in the period post-detox, another described him as “extremely helpful and knowledgeable and he never treated me like an addict but instead like a patient with respect and kindness.” This sentiment was echoed by others who appreciated the medical approach to their addiction. One client described it as “different than a rehab. I was treated like a medical patient and received therapy.” When asked what was most memorable about treatment at Waismann Method®, there was a variety of responses. Many clients appreciated being in a place that offered an alternative to 12-step programs. Several people gained insight from the one-on-one psychotherapy, which was “Very helpful - I gained a real understanding of some of my concerns.“ Another alum recalled “Being treated with such respect and empathy while going through such a rough time in my life.” Another was grateful for the speed with which they were able to detox from opioids, appreciating “How good I felt, and how fast I recovered.” One person did not have a good experience and said that withdrawal symptoms remained after the procedure.The alumni who took our survey have been doing well since treatment, with some reporting multiple years clean. Their parting sentiments were overwhelmingly positive, with comments such as: “Very satisfied and happy. Getting off methadone maintenance can be difficult but it is possible.” “Excellent experience. Top level care which minimized my discomfort and helped me get better quickly.”

Unacceptable

Even if they’ve only dipped their toes into Alcoholics Anonymous, recovering alcoholics and addicts are familiar with one of the organization’s go-to passages: the Serenity Prayer.God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,courage to change the things I can,and wisdom to know the difference.True to its first line, the recitation’s overarching message is that most matters are beyond our control. The vast majority of items within our power to change are internal: our thinking, our actions, our sobriety. Many of us, myself included, are recovering control freaks accustomed to banging our heads against the wall in vain attempts to get the world around us, including its inhabitants, to bend to our will. In sobriety, we learn that placing outsized expectations on others invariably leads to disappointment and resentment.As someone who is decidedly not a “God person,” I have found the Serenity Prayer refreshingly non-religious and spiritually simple. Its first word aside, the passage logically dissects the overwhelming majority of situations into two columns: those that I can do something about, and those that I can’t and must therefore, however begrudgingly, accept. All that is required of me is an honest assessment of which column any given matter occupies.This binary system has helped successfully steer me through nearly nine years of sobriety and all the marital, financial, interpersonal and attitudinal progress it has made possible. For someone who lacks a traditional God, it has been... well, a godsend.Until now. Until COVID-19.A Delicate DanceAfter three months of house confinement, Americans are beginning to reemerge and reengage. Vaccine or no vaccine, the reopening was inevitable because the opposite was unworkable: if we didn’t start returning to some semblance of business as usual, there wouldn’t be an economy to return to. Unemployment figures exceeding 40 million simply aren’t sustainable. Zero income is not an outcome and, while many of us can work effectively from home, most can’t make a living from their laptops.So here we are, restrictions easing, preparing to head back out into the world. Successfully reopening the economy will require a critical mass of people to perform a delicate dance of mask-wearing and social distancing. And already, the Serenity Prayer's well-founded advice of limiting our expectations of others runs into a stubborn contradiction: it is one thing when the actions of others merely threaten to impinge upon our spiritual well-being; it is quite another when those actions threaten our very lives.Expert simulations have shown that if 80 percent of the population wore masks, infection rates would plunge by more than 90 percent; a study published by the World Health Organization on June 1 aligns with these findings.Americans' response has been... mixed. A USA Today poll found that 84% of Americans have worn masks in public, while other surveys put the total closer to two-thirds - figures that, unsurprisingly, include a gap according to political leanings. The protracted nature of our efforts is an additional hurdle, as many are understandably fed up with treating every excursion like a germ gauntlet; even in epicenters like New York, there are signs of citizens waning on safe practices, prompting warnings from government officials.My daily life reflects these concerns. Each day, I go into my empty office (my colleagues are currently working from home; I have a visual disability, and the customized setup at my office makes working there far easier). While offices are mostly empty, the building manager has taken the opportunity to undergo a renovation. The number of workers wearing masks? Close to zero.A few weeks back I got into the elevator. Then a worker – sans mask – got on with me.I got off the elevator, shaking my head. The displeasure on his bare face was evident. Apparently my self-preservation had offended him.This isn't a spiritual inconvenience; it's a potentially life-and-death health issue. The two choices I had were physically endangering myself and my family, or offending someone. I chose the latter, because the former is simply unacceptable.It is a microcosm of what recovering alcoholics everywhere now face. In exercising the courage to change what we can – in my case, proximity to someone who refuses to abide by the simple recommendations of health officials – we will inevitably do something else we are taught to avoid: cause friction and conflict with those around us.With COVID-19, we are living through a crisis that is both all-permeating and all-important. Efforts to mitigate the spread of a deadly, highly contagious disease have touched every single American and stretched into every corner of the economy and society at large. Everyone has been forced to react to it as best they deem fit.Therein lies the rub: something all-encompassing and lethal has been foisted upon society without warning, causing a widely disparate set of perceived best practices to combat it. Many of us are on the same page – wearing face masks, socially distancing – but many are not. And considering the stakes, the majority of responsible citizens are ill-advised to tolerate the significant minority of those literally throwing caution to the wind around their bare faces.In this fashion, COVID-19 has drawn a red line between recovering alcoholics and the crucial tenet of acceptance espoused by the Serenity Prayer.An Inconvenient Lack of TruthI feel comfortable sharing exactly none of what I just wrote in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Why? Because AA is a strictly apolitical organization attempting to navigate a society in which indisputable facts have become politicized.Until COVID-19, this was manageable, because topics whose facts have been tainted by politics – climate change is a prime example – are easily avoided. They don’t directly factor into our day-to-day recovery.In stark contrast, the coronavirus pandemic has affected everything. It saturates every aspect of our lives, including AA. For example, we aren’t meeting on Zoom because of climate change, or the #MeToo Movement, or Donald Trump’s latest Tweet. And even if we were, it wouldn’t trickle down into essentially every action every person takes.But such is COVID’s cascading impact: an unprecedented health crisis has caused an unprecedented recovery conundrum – and one that we can’t even talk about as a group, no less. Unfortunately, a sizable subset of society seemingly doesn’t believe in simple science; and AA, of course, is simply a subset of society. The problem is societal, and we are part of society.Regardless, even if I could share this in AA, it wouldn’t change the current contradictions of applying my recovery’s teachings in the outside world. That guy is still getting on that elevator without a mask, AA or no AA. I cannot choose to just stand there, and a proselytizing conversation only invites further conflict and confrontation. My only answer – the least bad option – is abrupt, unsettling, silent avoidance.In this fashion, COVID-19 has made recovery more brusque, curt, cold. I cannot convert the maskless masses, nor can I abide them. I did not recover from a progressive, incurable and potentially fatal disease, alcoholism, only to succumb to another.

Is the Time of the No-Knock Drug Raid Coming to an End?

In the mass protests over out-of-control and racially biased law enforcement ignited by the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, Floyd’s name isn’t the only one being chanted by the crowds. There’s also Ahmaud Arbery, the Georgia jogger gunned down by white vigilantes. There’s Rayshard Brooks, the Atlanta man who was shot and killed by police after he fell asleep in his car in a Wendy’s drive-through lane and got into a tussle with the officers when they tried to arrest him.And then there’s Breonna Taylor. The 26-year-old Black EMT and Louisville resident was killed near midnight on March 13, as police executed a no-knock drug search warrant at her apartment, waking Taylor and her boyfriend. The police opened fire after they were met by gunfire from Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. As the circumstances of her death emerged, she has become the face of the burgeoning movement to radically restrict the police resort to no-knock warrants, which could just as aptly be referred to as home invasion warrants.That’s what it must have felt like to Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker. Although Louisville police claimed they knocked and announced their presence, they were operating with a no-knock warrant; the police claim that they knocked is disputed by Walker and Taylor’s relatives. Walker said he and Taylor were in bed together when the door crashed in and he thought someone was breaking into their home. In his statement after the incident, Walker said he fired in self-defense. (Here is that fraught zone where the war on drugs encounters the Second Amendment.)Walker’s single shot wounded one officer, who returned fire along with two other officers. Breonna Taylor was hit by at least eight bullets and died at the scene. Walker was charged with attempted murder (although those charges have now been dropped). No drugs were found at the apartment. To make matters even worse, the drug suspect the police were looking for was already in custody when police raided Taylor’s apartment.“They executed this innocent woman because they botched the search warrant execution,” attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing the Taylor family in a lawsuit filed over the killing, told the New York Times. “They had the main person that they were trying to get in their custody, so why use a battering ram to bust her door down and then go in there and execute her?”Outrage over the killing of Breonna Taylor quietly festered as the country hunkered down amidst the coronavirus pandemic, but when the killing of George Floyd finally galvanized protests against police brutality, the pain and anger over Taylor’s killing became a rallying cry not just in Louisville but also across the country. And it’s bringing a laser-like focus on a practice more akin to raiding terrorist hideouts in the Middle East than to serving and protecting American citizens, which in turn is leading to a renewed focus on the role of the drug war in all of this.The war on drugs provided the impetus for no-knock raids from the beginning, and the courts were all too willing to help. The 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case Ker v. California, which gave constitutional imprimatur to forcible police entries, was a drug case where the possibility that evidence could be destroyed carried the day for the cops. When the Supreme Court revisited and refined its no-knock doctrine in the 1990s, the impetus once again was enforcing drug prohibition.In a case involving small-scale sales of marijuana and meth to an informant, the court ruled in 1995 in Wilson v. Arkansas that police must generally “knock and announce” before kicking in a door with a search warrant, although it allowed for exceptions as per Ker. In another small-time drug sales case in 1997, Richards v. Wisconsin, the court held that police needed to demonstrate “a reasonable suspicion” that announcing their presence before bashing in the door would be dangerous or allow for the destruction of evidence for a no-knock warrant to be permitted.Those rulings left “reasonable suspicion” up to state and local judges, and while little national or even state data exists on the rates at which judges rejected no-knock warrant requests, a couple of local studies suggest they essentially acted as rubber stamps. A recent PBS NewsHour report cited a Denver Post analysis of no-knock warrant requests from Denver police in 2000, a year after Mexican citizen Ismael Mena was killed in a no-knock drug raid. The cops got 158 out of 163 requests approved. Similarly, a Washington Post analysis of no-knock warrant requests by police in Little Rock, Arkansas, between 2016 and 2018 showed that the cops got approvals for 103 out of 105 no-knock warrants from judges.Police resort to no-knock raids has gone through the roof in recent decades, according to a 2007 study done by Peter Kraska, a professor at the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University. He found that while the number of no-knock warrants or announce-and-enter raids served during SWAT team deployments had grown to about 1,500 annually in the early 1980s, that figure skyrocketed to about 40,000 a year by the turn of the century as the drug war deepened. Kraska estimated the number of such raids to be about 45,000 by 2010.The raids are mainly for drugs. A 2014 ACLU report investigating SWAT teams doing no-knock raids found that 62 percent of them were for drugs. In at least a third of those raids, no drugs were found. In nearly another third of those raids, it’s not known if any drugs were seized because police did not report that information.And such raids can be deadly—both for their targets and for the officers undertaking them. According to a 2017 New York Times report, between 2010 and 2016 alone, at least 13 police officers lost their lives during such raids, but so did more than six times as many civilians. The New York Times report put the civilian death toll at 81, with many more injured or wounded. These include cases of people who were completely innocent like the 19-month-old baby “Bou Bou” Bounkham Phonesavanh, who was severely burned by a flash-bang grenade thrown by a Georgia SWAT officer in a 2014 no-knock raid.But now, with the widespread public outcry over the unjust killing of Breonna Taylor, no-knock raids are being challenged like never before. The Democratic congressional response to the upheaval has been the rolling out of the Justice in Policing Act, which directly targets the practice. As the Democrats put it, the bill “[b]ans no-knock warrants in drug cases at the federal level and conditions law enforcement funding for state and local governments banning no-knock warrants at the local and state level.”Kentucky’s libertarian-leaning U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R) introduced the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act on June 11, “to prohibit no-knock warrants.” The bill would mandate that federal law enforcement officers must announce their presence and purpose before executing a search warrant, and it would condition federal aid to law enforcement agencies to ensure they follow the same rules.“After talking with Breonna Taylor’s family, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s long past time to get rid of no-knock warrants. This bill will effectively end no-knock raids in the United States,” said a statement from Sen. Paul’s office.Meanwhile, even his Republican colleagues are climbing on the no no-knock bandwagon, although to a more limited degree than the Democrats. The just-introduced Justice Act, largely crafted by the GOP’s sole Black senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, wouldn’t ban no-knock raids but would increase federal reporting requirements for no-knock raids and use of force. It would also increase penalties for false police reports.It’s unclear whether any of these bills will pass or whether compromise legislation will emerge, and it’s unclear just how strong any language on no-knock raids will end up being. What is clear is that Congress finally has the issue squarely in its sights.But law enforcement is largely a state and local matter, and it’s going to be up to state legislatures, governors, city councils and mayors to address the issue at the local level. Louisville’s city council has already unanimously banned no-knock raids. Only two other states—Florida and Oregon—have banned no-knock raids, but this is likely to change, given the anger against police misconduct. In fact, this is something that should have happened a long time ago.Source: Independent Media InstituteThis article was produced by Drug Reporter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.