What a day. Too physically and emotionally exhausted (I've laughed and cried a lot) to write much apart from to say that the treatment centre and the group are amazing and diverse and hilarious. I'm surprised there has never been a sit-com about a rehab group, and if not I'm pitching one right now.
1. First thing I had to give a urine test with the toilet door open (I guess to prevent Withnail-type trickery) and was just unable to 'go' - had to keep going back into the waiting room and drinking more water and trying to undo my perfectly reasonable human pee-shy conditioning.
2. There is no coffee allowed in the centre and - although I go home alone every night and cycle in every morning - for the first two weeks, I have to be accompanied at lunchtimes if I leave the building - in case I decide the group therapy and hand-holding is just too much and nip off to the pub / Costa.
3. Yes. Handholding. In a circle, at least four times a day, reciting the serenity prayer. It's actually pretty awesome.
4. In the afternoon we had a session with this brilliant 'non-religious'(?) nun in her 70s, who has worked with addicts and in prisons for years. At one point she lost her red marker pen even though it was right in front of her and one of the 'old timers' (he's been there about six weeks) whispered to me "she's pissed". This is obv the oldest joke in the recovery book, but it made me giggle and giggle.
5. I'll probably go back tomorrow.
INFINITE JEST UPDATE: Pages 65-66 (Don't scoff - there are reading groups in Ireland who meet to discuss Finnegans Wake one page a week - this would take approx 13 years). I should probably be ploughing through the AA Big Book instead but, after a day of (watered-down) 12 Step Stuff, I prefer some more esoteric, morally-ambivalent literature. That or Snog, Marry, Avoid.
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