Ten months.
I've been thinking about a woman I met in the treatment centre. She had come from a residential rehab - where she had been living with her baby son - and had been off heroin for nine months but was honest about the way she felt: "I'm not comfortable in my skin", "I still want to take drugs". I liked the way she didn't just say what they wanted to hear. She talked shamelessly about her "sugar daddy" and her "baby father", said the groups were boring, fidgeting, complaining and struggling to complete the work.
She was moving house, from a B&B into a local authority halfway house, and I offered to help her carry some bags but - unsurprisingly - she didn't turn up at the agreed time and place. After that weekend she didn't come back to the centre and I'm almost certain that she's back to her old life working as a prostitute, using heroin and that her son has been taken away from her.
I think for some people it's gone too far, all the help in the world isn't going to make them go straight and the trappings of a normal life will always be frustrating. I guess I've been thinking about her because - although superficially I seem much more adjusted to sobriety - I know how she felt: trapped, dissatisfied. But on the other hand, I know she will not be happy now, out there. So I've got to try and find a way to make it work.
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