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whyyallsweatin · 4 years

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My experience in a recovery house.

I’d like to share a story about my recent experience while in recovery housing.

At first I moved in with really high hopes. The place I moved into seemed very positive and safe. It was run by a nurse who was also a recovering alcoholic.

When I moved in, there were two other women in the house, L** and T****. They were both older. L** was the senior roommate with the responsibility of reporting any suspicious behaviour by the other tenants.

A few weeks in and I noticed some tension between L** and T****. Eventually, T**** relapsed on alcohol inside the house and was removed. This was scary for me, because T**** tried to get me to leave the house a little earlier with her, likely to use, but I refused. She exposed herself as drunk later on in the evening and was quickly removed.

About a month later we got a new roommate. Her name was C******. When she moved in she started to behave in a way that would make me embarrassed for her. When she first came to the house, she had just left a rehab facility and seemed to be full of stories about how ‘hard core’ her drug use was. She admittedly was taking suboxone, but she also admitted to being a regular cocaine/crack user and alcoholic. What was strange was she had a lot of glory stories about how she was a successful drug dealer, pulling in a few million a year. Her friend had a bunker where they hid from the cops, bla bla bla.

She took quickly to L** and I’d often hear them outside chatting in the early hours of the morning while smoking. So I figured she’d be easy to get along with since my roommate liked her. I trusted L**’s judgement at the time.

Quickly after moving in though C****** started to say weirder things. This included stories about how she frequented a well-known biker group’s clubhouse in Victoria. The only thing is, there is no clubhouse currently in Victoria. I asked her when she went, since there was one briefly here a few years ago and she told me right before she went to rehab a few months prior. Okay…

Following that she’d frequently go for walks on her own to the pharmacy or the store. She came back twice with two weird stories. Once, she told us while in the pharmacy she told my roommate and I that a man approached her and told her she was incredibly good looking and that he’d like her to model for him. I don’t want to be judgemental – C****** is in her fifties, is about 4’9 and is not really someone I’d see modeling.

Another time she came home and told us some knight in shining armour approached her on steel horse (motorcycle) and knew her name. He spoke comforting words to her – as if to encourage her on her mystical journey in sobriety. Since we lived in a private location, I was concerned that this man may have followed her home. I asked her and she told me that he already knew where she lived because he told her that he was expecting her. This was her destiny.

She also went into great detail about how her friends knew how to cheat urine tests. This alarmed me because she was super wobbly at times and looked sedated. I don’t know if you can supplement suboxone with illicit heroin and pass a test, but if she used clean urine – that would be a fail too since she had to test positive for suboxone. I asked her a few times about what suboxone would show up as and she didn’t really answer.

C****** was also very animated about her therapy sessions. She would be in her room for hours undergoing intense therapy and she would tell us how hard it was on her, garnering sympathy from L**. To me I wasn’t really buying it. You don’t get exhausted talking on the phone laying in you bed. She said she had a lot of trauma. I tried to relate to her and asked what some of the things she experienced were that traumatized her. She went into detail about an abusive boyfriend – then the next week she was elated having spoken to the same boyfriend she had claimed to have been abusive.

Whenever the conversation wasn’t about her she’d turn it into a conversation about herself. She had so many different incongruent stories about her family life, boyfriends, husbands, friends. It was hard to keep up. She admitted that her daughter and her had a strained relationship – which I could understand since she was a junky fuck up who neglected her.

She’d often complain that friends had alienated her who were still using, and then make statements that these friends she owed money to, then she said they forgave her. Etc. who cares. She gave me about five different names of boyfriends she had and she told me that she knew a male friend of mine that I was close to and insinuated she had a relationship with him. When I asked him, he told me he didn’t know who she was.

Another girl, named J**** came to the house a few weeks after C******. She was suffering a great deal. It was clear that she had either relapsed or was being heavily medicated still. She also came from the same rehab facility as C****** but there was no indication that the two had interacted, which I found strange. They were there the same time.

I knew J**** from my first attempt to get sober a year before. She was doing quite well and actually was in charge of the recovery house I was at the year prior. It made me sad that she had relapsed because she was very young, and when I knew her a year ago, I was really confident in her recovery and thought of her as an example.

J**** was struggling quite a bit and C****** and my other roommate quickly began to gossip about her outside. I could hear them through the open window. This upset me since they seemed to judge her quiet behaviour immediately. They reported her and we took drug tests which J**** and the rest of us initially passed.

Regardless, J****’s behaviour was withdrawn and they continued to insinuate that she was relapsing until she was finally kicked out. I don’t know if she did relapse but being under that kind of scrutiny could very easily push anyone into a position where they would.

Once J**** was gone, things between my roommates quickly turned to me. We were stuck inside due to Covid and I became quite depressed, wanting to get out and get a job and other things. I didn’t like online meetings and the group meetings we had on Zoom were heartless and seemed forced. Additionally, my roommates were given permission to go out and do things, but for some reason I was not.

Things got weird one evening when I went for a walk with C******. She told me her any my other roommate were “worried about me.” I had recently expressed my frustration with the situation, but nothing alarming. I echoed things my roommates said about the circumstances and tried to keep myself occupied.

During that time, the owner of our house, J*, employed a ‘helper.’ Her name was T*****. We were directed to call her twice a week and check in. After the first few conversations with her, I started to feel like the conversations were forced and T***** seemed combative. I began to forget my phone calls and the J* and T***** implemented a card system, where you were issued a yellow card as a warning. After 5 yellow cards, you’d get a red card, which meant eviction. I was issued a yellow card after missing a phone call with T*****. I didn’t think much of it but I felt like I was interesting in moving out since the restrictive rules of the house, which fluctuated in severity between tenants, seemed to make it impossible for me to have a healthy social life. But, I never indicated that I was officially moving out since my finances were a mess.

At this time, I was quite interested in getting back to work. And at this very time the local newspaper ran a story about a company I worked for. The company was ensnared in a money laundering scandal. This concerned me because I was worried about my reputation being involved in this company when I was set on finding new work. I told my roommates and showed them the article. I was also contacted by a news reporter, who wanted me to speak on the matter but I declined due to the fact that I had signed a confidentiality agreement.

I expressed my concerns during one of the forced group chats on Zoom while T***** was present. I didn’t know at the time, but talking about these matters – things that were concerning to you – was not of essence during group. Group was a place where recovering addicts and alcoholics were expected to parrot each other, feel guilty and talk about what they’re doing in recovery to better themselves by talking about the same things over and over, like making a gratitude list. My idea of getting better was to get a job and get out in the real world instead of isolating – so my contributions were not appreciated.

Everyone was sort of crumbling from the isolation due to Covid, and the household chores were being ignored. I took it upon myself to do many of the chores without complaining, even if they weren’t my assigned tasks. We would write down the chores we did and I did this after doing the lion’s share of chores. One morning, after doing every chore, I heard L** and C***** angrily chatting about the chore log book and saying it was “bullshit” that I did them all, even though they heard me vacuuming, cleaning the washroom etc.

One night, the mop was broken, so I used detergent and a rag to clean the floor on my knees. It wasn’t a big area to clean, so it wasn’t really a big deal. However, I bumped into a mirror that was hanging on the wall and it fell and broke. I made sure to clean up the pieces and then told my roommates to watch out for shards because I wasn’t sure if any had gone under the fridge or might emerge, even though I had scoured the entire area of any sharps. I also had to dispose of the mirror, so I told them I had put it outside. Neither of them saw or heard me, but they quietly nodded as I told them and then retreated back to their rooms.

The day after that I could hear them talking about me upstairs while I watched tv downstairs. “Does she think that, like, she worked at that company, or something?” I heard. “Yeah she broke that mirror and she probably did it on purpose.” What? I went upstairs and asked them if they were going to talk about me to keep their voices down. They were stunned. They then went on to say “we’re not talking about you.” I bluffed and said I had recorded them. “Oh, well we’re very concerned.” Ok, I thought – you weren’t talking about me but you were. Which one is it? They made all sorts of claims and when I responded, asking them again, to simply lower their voice they started making dismissive remarks like, “JUST WOW!” “YIKES!” I didn’t speak to them for the rest of the night. Honestly, saying things like “JUST WOW” and “YIKES” are a dead give away that the person saying it has already made up their mind about you – and that what you said was horrible and they expected it.

The next morning I was asked to take a drug test and passed. A few days passed and things seemed normal again. Then I missed a call with T***** and was issued another yellow card. Whoops.

A few days later things got very strange. Around noon, I saw my roommates dramatically run for the door, get into a car and leave. The tires squealed as they left, as if they were the Dukes of Hazard or something. Then the owner of the house, J* and he husband came over. They began to confront me about breaking the mirror and told me that the psychiatric unit from the hospital was on their way. They insisted that they were worried about me, and I admitted that I was frustrated and depressed so maybe I should go to the hospital.

When the psychiatric unit came, they seemed quite friendly. But they asked me questions that started to make me alarmed. There was a male and female psychiatrist there, and the male asked me if I was paranoid about someone following me, or that the company I worked for that was in the news was stalking me. I didn’t understand where they had heard that I thought that so I was stunned. They then asked me if I thought my roommates were part of a conspiracy to stalk me with the company I claimed to work for. I was agitated, so I expressed my disbelief in why they would come to the conclusion that I would think that. During this time, I did admit that I was experiencing anxiety and agreed to go to the hospital under certain conditions. In my previous dealings with Victoria’s Psych Emerge, I had been repeatedly treated like a criminal. I asked that I not be exposed to this and they agreed.

I rode to the hospital with J*. When I got there she gave me a hug and I was escorted in. I took a drug test and waited to speak with a psychiatrist. I spoke to a nurse, a social worker and several psychiatrists in a private room while security guards looked on. They asked me over, and over, and over again why I had violently broken a mirror. I told them each time that it was an accident. The last psychiatrist I spoke to noted that I was getting agitated and that she was going to give me something.

I was let out of the room and I heard the doctors and nurses debating on whether or not to administer powerful anti-psychotics while restrained in isolation while I sat patiently in the wait room. I sat patiently without showing any signs of violence while they loudly debated restraining me and administering anti-psychotics.

There isn’t a lot of documentation on anti-psychotics and their misuse because no one understands why psychiatrists would prescribe medication that makes people miserable. Unfortunatly, anti-psychotics are lauded for curing everything from anxiety to delusions, depression to psychosis. I don’t doubt they have some benefit in short term use by minimizing psychosis, but their long term use has never been accurately documented and psychiatrist cherry pic anecdotal testimonies about patients who benefitted from them to cure an broad, unbelievable range of psychiatric problems.

I’ll briefly explain how they work: they block dopamine. Dopamine is responsible for regulating the brains reward system. Hard drugs like cocaine, crack, meth, heroin etc. high-jack the brain by flooding the dopamine receptors. People feel good, too good, on these drugs. That’s why they’re addicting. Anti-psychotics do the opposite. How in the hell does high-jacking and retarding the brain’s reward system help with depression if it stops your brain releasing dopamine? They’re tranquilizers in that they make people subdued because they feel nothing. They don’t feel rewarded for their actions. This is good because they may be rendered unable to act violently because they have no desire to do anything. So, that’s good, I guess. It’s good for someone who’s violent and impulsive. Temporarily.

Naturally patients who aren’t violent or don’t fit into categories of psychological distress that require sedation have no idea that a doctor would give them something that would impair them from feeling good, so if they experience the overwhelming negative effects of anti-psychotics, they likely won’t make the connection that they’re actually being caused by the medication the doctor has prescribed to make them feel better. Regardless, they’re non-addicting and some patients reported they feel better, maybe. And, they put people to sleep making agitated patients easier to deal with. So, with that overwhelmingly limited amount of evidence to support the administration of anti-psychotics, they’re given out like candy by psychiatrists all across Canada.

I’m sure psychiatrists don’t do this because their intentions are bad. Big pharmaceutical companies like Johnson and Johnson have made incredibly convincing arguments to support the use of Risperidone, despite overwhelming cases in which males were reported to have grown female breasts, thousands of patients displaying suicidal ideation, mental impairment and brain shrinkage. Marketers from Johnson and Johnson make powerful, emotional pleas to defend this drug – lauding it as a cure all for austistic patients, depressed patients, psychotic patients, bi-polar patients. You name it. And since the goal is to sell, they claim the sale of this drug is both beneficial to them monetarily, while saving the world from mental illness. It’s fucking beautiful, everyone wins!

Anyways – I was force injected with the anti-psychotic Risperidone for 6 excrutiating months in 2018. It was like being stuck in a torture chamber – mental anguish 24 hours a day. I reported the side effects but they were dismissed, repeatedly. I often resorted to using hard drugs just to escape the absolute anguish just for a few hours to watch a tv program. While on Risperidone, I went to the hospital several times because I couldn’t breath, the anxiety was overwhelming. Regardless, no one listened. I was under threat of imprisonment while under the mental health act if I did not take the medication, so to prevent me from not taking it they gave me injections. It was so unbelievably terrifying. What my psychiatrist at the time did was a crime – but, no one cared. I guess if he believes it works, and I’m telling him it doesn’t and I’m the one taking it, then he must be right. Okay…

After months of fighting for my life on this drug, I admitted myself to rehab, mainly to get off Risperidone so I no longer needed to supplement my drugs with illicit ones just to feel normal. However, I was not informed that Risperidone causes a deadly withdrawal symptoms. The withdrawal included symptoms of anxiety, restlessness, ruminating thoughts, sleeplessness and depression that were so severe I could barely walk. Naturally, my councillor at rehab assumed I was ‘faking it.’ It took roughly 30 days for the injection to wear off. I still experienced some anxiety and was, you guessed it, administered another anti-psychotic. This time it was the lesser of all the evils, Abilify. I trusted the psychiatrist there so I stayed on it. It was a low dose and I was on a few other medications that probably cancelled its effects out including Concerta – a life-saver for people who abuse stimulants to concentrate.

Anyways, fast forward to my recent stay at the hospital this year after J* convinced me to go, where I listened in fear as they debated on putting anti-psychotics in me. I had a wrist band on when I signed in that said not to administer anti-psychotics, but when they asked me about it, they asked me why they couldn’t. I told them I wasn’t under the mental health act and that anti-psychotics caused adverse effects. Frustrated, the doctors just administered my normal sleeping medication.

The next day I was released the doctor I saw told me he didn’t understand why I was admitted in the first place. He believed I hadn’t acted violently and I showed up the confidentiality agreement that was sent to me by my former employer so I could convince him I worked there and wasn’t delusional.

After that, I was free to leave and got on the bus and went home. When I got home I went to the door and tried to get in by punching the buttons to the code on the door lock. Only, the door lock was dead. I rang the doorbell several times and one of my roommates came to the door. I could hear her on the phone, “should I call the cops? SHOULD I CALL THE COPS?” Eventually she opened the door, muttered something at me and I went to my room.

I called J* and told her what happened. She seemed disappointed and upset and told me to call my case-worker since she was busy at work – dealing with Covid (there was no one in the hospital with Covid by the time, but Okay…). I called my case-worker, S*** and he told me that I was being kicked out. He didn’t have time to talk to me much either. Wanting answers I then called T*****. I told her I was very nervous about what was happening and she became very combative. I asked her why I was accused of deliberately breaking a mirror and she asked me why I did it. I then asked her why I was asked if I thought people were after me because of the job thing and she told me that she knows the owner of the company I had worked for and none of that stuff has anything to do with me. I asked her if she, my housemates and J* didn’t believe I worked there and she told me she didn’t believe anything I said and repeated that she’s friends with the owner of the company, they’re handling it and that the newspaper is publishing false claims. She was also insinuating she had told him about me. Girl – my stay at the house was confidential ya’ll can’t go around telling your friends.

I went downstairs since I was worried about what to do and phoned a friend. When I was on the phone, my roommates dramatically ran down the stairs and I heard them say “I’m scared, let’s call the cops! CALL THE COPS!” They then squealed out of the parking lot - like some kinda post-menopausal Thelma and Louise - just as J* came in. J* worked about 45 minutes away but she arrived within 10 minutes of me talking to her when she told me she was at work. So she wasn’t really working like she told me.

J* came in and started talking. She told me that what she was doing was for the safety of the other roommates. I then cut her off and asked her if she had my safety in mind. I reiterated that I was taken to the hospital, interrogated about a mirror breaking and interrogated about being delusional about a job I worked at. She then told me that what she did was what she was told to do in these situations and that she was legally bound to protect the other tenants. Okay…

I wasn’t comfortable with how combative T**** was or that she had told anyone she knew about me and I questioned her qualifications. J* told me she had a bachelor’s degree - later I’d go on to find that was a bachelor’s in marketing (relevant, right?)

I made the case that I was actually put in danger by her and my roommates insinuating that I was delusional and violent – that she took something my roommates said at face value without asking me. She had no intention to uphold my safety since no one told me at the hospital that I was being kicked out, that the door was locked with my valuables inside and no one in my family was informed. What if I came home the night before instead of staying at the hospital – with no access to my belongings, money or phone. What she did put my life in danger. There’s no limit to what my roommates could make up about me – and since their first claims were taken at face value, who knew what else they could fabricate. Those claims were enforced and legitimized. There’s no limit to what someone can fabricate and when those fabrications are endorsed by a superior, the urge to fabricate more – especially in low self-esteem harbouring recovering drug addicts becomes intoxicating. Why feel bad about your mistakes when you can make someone look worse. I get it. I’ve done it.

Fortunately, I learned that my roommate had bunged up a call to the police when I arrived because she couldn’t report that I was doing anything wrong. She just told them I was at the door. They asked why the door was locked to me and if I had been told that I wasn’t allowed in and she said, “no.” I didn’t hear the rest of the call, but I assume they hung up or told her that they were busy with real problems.

Instead of stay and argue, I called my sponsor who told me to get my stuff and leave. I had real fears – their perception of me ruled how they perceived what was going on, so I’d better just vanish. Which I did. My sponsor told me that they wanted a reaction, so I didn’t give it to them. I had to get my dad to pick me up. This for me was the most difficult part since anyone in any position of authority is right compared to me – so even when J* admitted she made a mistake after I made my case, she did so only to my dad (not me of course), I knew he didn’t really believe that. I knew there was always some reason for him to believe I was kinda responsible.

Just some foreground on my dad – when I was growing up he’d abuse my brother and I verbally and for a brief time physically. The later stopped when my brother punched him straight in the face and knocked him out. His verbal abuse continued, belittling me for things I did because I was dreadfully shy. He called me a loser with no personality in my graduating year. Made me ashamed of my interests. Would talk me out of seeking out better opportunities because he had so many doubts about my abilities. Scary stuff.

So naturally, even if my roommates and J* had done something wrong to me – who the fuck cares, its me, I am the source of all the problems because of the way people think of me. I have no money, no job, lying junky, so – whatever.

A few days later after I left, a resident from one of the other houses owned by J* asked me what happened and I told her. I didn’t want to seem like I was “delusional” or that I feared them in anyway since they might use this as a means to have my committed again.

A few days after that, the same resident told me that C****** had moved out. This struck fear in me. I don’t know where she is, and since the house I lived with her in was a good 45 minutes away, I trusted I wouldn’t run into her at meetings etc. because of this. But, now, I have no idea where she is. I don’t wish her any harm, I just wish to never see her again. I don’t fear her for reasons that are unrealistic. They’re based on things that happened: bold displays of fear about me when I’m doing nothing to her culminating in cartoon worthy behaviour fleeing from the house while shouting things she obviously wants me to hear about calling the cops..Bitch, if you were really scared you would have already done called the cops. Also, the weird stories about knights in shinning armour on motorcycles and modelling scouts, impaired mentality from suboxone and/or illicit drugs to supplement. Bunkers, relationships with men who’ve never met her. etc.

L** blocked me on Facebook, which is alarming for me since she could have some fake profiles looking at my posts in order to try and twist something I write into a threat to her. I just stick to posts about animals and wholesome stuff.

See I have real fears, based on facts because things actually happened to me based on things that people fabricated. But I’m not going to call the cops. I won’t waste their time. I doubt either of these too people can effectively cause me any harm physically - but who knows what they might say behind my back. Fuck it, I’ll just fabricate stuff about them. I’m a better story teller anyways. If people don’t believe me at least they’ll enjoy my story.

I can only guess that the whole delusions about where I worked concept was spawn from some deep seeded disbelief that anyone who had a drug problem could have a professional life, since neither L** or C******* did. Everything seems unbelievable when you’re so self-centered that you only think your level of success is the benchmark for anyone else in your state of recovery.

See, L** and C****** are career abusers. They always failed. They never were anything. Their stories are lengthy ones, filled with selfish actions to feed their addiction. Of course someone else in their situation couldn’t have been anything else but what they were or worse. They can’t see beyond their own experience. And they can’t see beyond the wonderful world they’ve created in recovery – vindication from their failures by parroting their peers in recovery. That’s the easy way out and it takes no effort. It’s a formula.

Go fuck yourselves. All of you.

Bye.

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