Rehabs take people away from the pressures and temptations of the world and miraculous transformations can take place there, but eventually it is time to go back into the real world and, in my experience working for one, that is where the problem is. Even if they are taken to outside meetings, it seems hard to get across the message that they need to keep doing that after being discharged. At the one I worked at, most ended up drinking or using after going back to a place and the only life they knew there. One guy who had gotten quite frustrated trying to run a program said, "If you take a guy from 111th St. in New York, rehabilitate him, and return him to 111th St., he would be the only sane guy on the block and, after a while, that would drive him crazy." I think one reason that AA and NA works is that we slowly adjust to our environment, or chose to leave it, without any shock of re-entry. For me, going to 90 meetings in 90 days would have meant cutting back a bit, but I was fortunate to live in a big city where that was possible. Around here is pretty hard to get most newcomer's to keep coming to even a single weekly meeting. |