The Recovery: My Experiences as a Volunteer for a Recovery Home

I volunteered for a recovery based boarding home for years-my father ran it in fact and so I spent many hours and days there.At first, I was hopeful and idealistic and believed every recoveree who came into the house who said that they were “through with that life”.However, after years the numbers added up and under a handful of people truly stayed sober. It is not only the relapses that bothered me but the lifestyles and tendencies these recoverees had. I suppose trying to change your life after years of drugs, booze, and street knowledge, is hard to break from it and let those tendencies go. Each person who came to the house had an intake and in these intakes the person was always hopeful, and full of aspirations for their new lives but once admitted that all went out the window. Movies like 28 Days often show the recoverees as reproductive, victims with an often happy ending of the person recovering and going on to live a sober life; these are often unrealistic accounts of what happens in a recovery house.The process of detoxing and living as a functional citizen rarely occurs in such a mature and swift fashion. The lies, the secret lives they lived behind the masked happiness was truly an eye opening experience.

Many would secretly use and then cover it up-some would go on for months without notice, but eventually the truth would come out. I couldn’t help but also notice the comparisons of who had the worst past. Seriously, it was like a competition of who did the worst things. If I ever did half of the things these people would talk about, I would never want it known to anyone. However, on it would go of “well I prostituted myself for drugs,” and then “Well I left my child at a crack house for collateral while I went to steal money.” Then it would be “Well I served 13 years for armed robbery” to ” Well I stabbed someone and got 13 1/2 years for it”.The stories constantly changed and were always dreadful and the lies became endless.And everyone gossiped about everyone.Everyone would “rat out ” everyone to save themselves. One woman who I will call Mattie had a long history with tho house. She had been married to the owner. And she constantly relapsed but was excused by her ex husband. My mother and father once had to go get her from “crack town” and when found was running naked around a field,doped up and ranting.When clean (or at least supposed to be) she would try to manipulate people and then later use them for favors.She would one minute come and tell us about some guy in the house who was using and sleeping with so and so and then two minutes later we’d walk out of the room to see her talking to the guy and being best friends with him. Sometimes this happened so that we would focus on the other person and not them. Some just liked to gossip. And some just wanted to brown-nose to win favor with us so that we would go easy on them.