Bob and his Counselor

Bob was calling me everyday with the blow by blow daily accounts of just how terrible it was there.
His brother had found the place. It was famous because of Kurt Cobain having left there and then went home and killed himself.
They had an open door policy. Imagine giving someone that doesn't want to be locked up permission to come and go as they please, especially when all they want to do is get a drink or a drug of their choice. In my humble opinion, what kind of moron thinks that is going to work. Might and well just take their money and never let them in to stay. Same things.

For some reason, it gave Bob a legitimate reason to have a resentment. I agreed with him. What kind of program was it that lets the patients walk out when they want to. I met a woman who was there. An athlete who had been on a show on TV. She was given permission to get a pass to go to a party.

Neither Bob or myself had ever heard of that. In the fourteen years since he had been in a rehab, I guess things had really changed.
Recovery had become Big Business. Doctors were making a lot of money from the insurance companies. Actually it was hard to find an empty bed. Business was booming. Only problem was, it wasn't like the old days. It had become somewhat sheik to be in rehab. What a sick world.
When I first met Bob, AA was the last place in the world anyone wanted to go to, or admit they needed to go to. Now the program was littered with celebrities in every field.
I recently watched a TV show about recovery and AA. There are no sure methods for recovery. Over fifty percent of addicts relapse with or without a program. All those thirty day hospitalizations only helped line the pockets of the doctors. Not even they could figure out how to keep people from going back to the bottle or the drug of their choice.

I must say at the time I did think that Bob was right. They would find bottles of alcohol stashed in the bushes after someone "Went for a walk". It was simply unacceptable to him. He was there to save his life and people were drinking.
When he got into it with his counselor it was basically just a matter of time before the shit hit the fan between them.

They didn't like each other. Bob thought he was a punk who thought he knew it all, and his councilor thought Bob was a no it all with no sobriety.
A recipe for disaster was brewing in there.

His counselor would call me and complain about Bob. What did he expect me to do. I tried to be supportive of Bob, but I knew how he was. When he was mad, there was no reasoning with him. I tried to listen to him, but I was conditioned to think that the hospital staff would know what was best.
This time I was wrong and Bob was right. I just assumed that Bob was going through yet another horrible withdrawal. I knew from years past that Valium was the worst drug to get out of your system.
It has what is known as an "After Life". That means that it lodges into the bones and tissues and the withdrawal for Bob took almost a year. He would be crazy and then calm, hot then freezing, and he was still having occasional seizures. His eyes were dilated for weeks, he could not sleep which added to the strange behaviour. He was in drug withdrawal with severe sleep deprivation.
I got calls several times a week from his counselor. I told him that Bob had announced to me and the family that he was getting a divorce and there really was no reason to keep calling me.
I told him flat out to call Meagan.
That's when he told me she had been banned from the hospital.
I guess they figured it out soon enough that she was trying to bring him "Whatever".
I never did get the story straight.
All I know is that when I brought him a suitcase with some clothes for the month, not only did they go through all his stuff, but they went through my bag as well.
That never happened before and I'm not sure if it was because it was normal or because they banned Meagan.

Things in our marriage could not have been worse really, where I used to visit him everyday in the past now I had our son and his activities to put before the rehab visits. Actually without Bob knowing it, the best thing I could have done for him at the time was not visit him every day. I was too hurt and angry.
It did not do him or me any good to fight about what we could not change. I just backed away more than I ever had.

It truly was self preservation for me at the time. I had no support group what so ever. There were so many feelings in me that I couldn't even begin to understand what had happened.
I was really grateful for the two kids at the time. Even his daughter was really in my corner the entire time.

One Sunday she took me and Matt along with her other brother to the House of Blues gospel brunch. Bob was really upset. What the hell was he mad about? It was always like that with him. He would look for anything to turn it around on me.
He shacked up with a woman he met and he was upset that I went to the House of Blues with his children.
That was crazy. He was still blaming me for the kids knowing about her. He threw that in my face for years. Talk about misplaced anger.
I would not lie for him ever again. He broke the bond and as far as I was concerned it would never be the same and it really wasn't.