Waving Not Drowning 14: Escaping from Rehab is Easier than You'd Think

‘Would you like to kick off our session Jess?’ Shirley asked.
I could think of nothing I would have loved more.
‘For those of you who haven’t been introduced, Jess is one of our dearest friends.’
‘Dearest friend’ obviously a euphemism for ‘Basket case’.
I scanned the room. The man opposite was clutching an extra large box of tissues as if it was a life buoy holding him afloat. Next to him a girl was twisting a piece of hair round her finger, her eyes red-rimmed and watery. An older woman, maybe forty- five or more was quite literally ‘flesh and bone’. You could have cut bread with her cheekbones. Or sliced the top off a nice shiny bottle of Pinot.
‘Jess,’ Shirley said.
Shirley was the counsellor. She could look kind and benign one minute and fierce and ferocious the next. Her style icon was Dame Judi Dench and she smelt like she'd been marinated in lavender water. I’d like to be able to tell you that she was my saviour but unfortunately we’d been through this whole scenario once before. And Shirley wasn’t over the moon to see me back. Shady Sands was miraculous in her view. MIRACULOUS. And me sitting on the plastic chair in front of her, hair all back-brushed, lips so chapped that they’d started bleeding all over my T-shirt… well that wasn’t MIRACULOUS. Not one bit.
‘I feel sick,’ I said only realising once I’d said it that I’d spoken it out loud.
The man lent forward and proffered me a tissue.
‘You’re bleeding,’ he said softly.
I took the tissue and held it up to the corner of my mouth. Everything was hurting. The organs in their usually cosy little cavities were hurting, the cavities, the walls of the cavities they were hurting and then the muscles around them, they were definitely hurting and the fat, well then the fat it was just suspended in a dull sort of floating pain with the skin resting on top, except it wasn’t resting it was completely without rest and all prickly and starting to hurt too.
It was obvious my poor body needed alcohol.
It needed alcohol like a bird needs a nest, like a nest needs a tree and like an ageing barista needs a teenage boy to come and rescue her.

‘We’ll come back to you Jess, maybe Carl you can start?’
Carl was the tissue addict. He was obviously so addicted to those tissues that he couldn’t bear to be parted from them. The red –eyed girl next to him tried to take the box but he shook his head and carried on gripping it, his fingertips white. He took a deep breath. His eyes were trying to fix on something. I could feel another sweat coming on. I wasn’t in proper detox, not yet but it was starting, the sweat gathering right at the back of my neck and slowly travelling down my spine, towards the base of my back, then gathering somewhere at the top of my buttocks. I shifted uncomfortably in the plastic chair. Surely this hellhole could afford a nice comfy chair or two? I want a drink. Carl’s eyes had fixed on mine and his mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear anything he said because the voice in me was shouting louder and louder. Drink Drink Drink DRINK. Make you sweat sweat sweat SWEAT. Then I started to get a feeling not dissimilar to the feeling just before you get a water infection, the urge to pee was urgent. So then it was Pee, Pee, Pee, PEE.
‘Jess are you okay?’
I realised I was rocking backwards and forwards and was actually mouthing the word ‘pee’ over and over. I probably looked like the kind of person that you throw fifty pence at as you walk to work in the morning.
‘Can I go to the loo?’ I asked.
‘Wait until Carl has finished please,’ Shirley said, her silver eyebrows wafting in the still, humid air like a pair of antennae.
If I’d been five years old this would have been the point when I clutched my crotch and ran crying from the room without another word. Instead I nodded and practiced tightening my pelvic floor muscles.
One two, one two.
‘And so today, I say thank you for…’
Three four, three four, thank you for three four.
‘I know I have the opportunity, this time …’
It was over. I no longer needed to pee.
‘I take each day at a time. And each day that passes without my tablets is a great day,’ Carl’s hands were shaking.
So it was tablets, not tissues. I wondered what kind of tablets. But I wasn’t interested enough to ask and also I’d just remembered the next thing that was going to happen which would be shaking, not vigorous shaking but just very subtle, a small tremor accompanied by fear, like you’ve done something really terrible but you can’t quite remember what but it’s awful and could even be murder if only you could remember. I held my hand up in front of my face and looked at Carl from in between my fingers.
‘I will always be an addict. But I won’t always be addicted,’ he said and smiled except it wasn’t really a smile just the muscles next to his mouth contracting and releasing.
He fell back into the hard, uncomfortable, water infection- inducing chair. Everyone clapped. This was ridiculous. I wasn’t even a proper addict. Carl was a proper addict. He’d simply replaced his tablet addiction for tissues
‘Jess are you ready?’ Shirley asked.
I nodded. It had to be done. I accept that I have been blown over by a force bigger than myself. I surrender to the law of sod. I give myself to a life full of boredom and sobriety. I promise to froth the lather. To stand straight and tall. Iron my uniform and give up my unnatural friendship with a certain young boy.
‘My name is Jess,’ I said but then realised they already knew that.
Mrs Flesh and Bone nodded in an encouraging way, the skin on her forehead was translucent, I could just make out a tiny pulse beating at the side of her head.
‘My name is Jess and I am a Womble!’
I said this cheerily and accompanied it with a little air punch. Nobody laughed. Shirley didn’t look amused.
‘Sorry,’ I said just counting the minutes till I could get back to my room and ring Stephen who would no doubt by now be on level five hundred trillion and would have forgotten that there were frankfurters in the fridge that he could roll up inside a couple of slices of the white loaf that I’d left on the side just before the whole intervention thing.
‘I am here because I have a problem with alcohol. I cannot have one drink,’ this was true I couldn’t, ‘I have to have at least two drinks and then I can’t stop and I’ve lost my job and find it hard finding a reason to get out of bed most days but then I also have this friend that is quite cool and he makes me laugh, some people might see it as being a bit...’
‘Can we get back onto the subject of your addiction please?’ Shirley interjected.
‘People might see it as being a bit what?’ Carl asked his grip briefly loosening on the tissue box.
‘Well they might see it as being odd I suppose. I mean he’s like fifteen or he says he’s fifteen but I think he might be even younger than that.’
‘So you’re addicted to young boys?’ Skeletor lady asked.
Shirley sighed heavily.
‘Can we please get off the subject of boys and talk about the real problem? The real problem being your alcohol addiction!’
‘But I want to hear about the boyfriend, it sounds more interesting,’ Red-eyed girl was joining in now.
‘You see he’s quite small for his age so it’s difficult to imagine he could be more than say fourteen max but he’s also really clever, I mean he would say he isn’t but he managed to wire one of my plugs a few days ago …’
‘Have you got a photo?’ Red-eyes asked.
I shook my head.
Just talking about Stephen was making me forget the pain and the fact that most of my back was now covered in a thin, cold layer of sweat as finely woven as a spiders web. Maybe I was addicted to Stephen. When he was around things felt better. The fact that I was without a job or boyfriend didn’t matter. When we were playing computer games together or making ‘Chunky Dogs’ covered in ketchup or he was bringing me my breakfast in the morning before we watched our first DVD of the day, all of these times I was happy.

So what was I doing here? Okay so now and then my drinking took over. Perhaps I didn’t need to drink a WHOLE bottle of wine at one sitting. And perhaps the whole ‘Pear Pleasure’ thing had gone too far; it was after all not the kind of thing to have for breakfast. And besides it wasn’t responsible, not with Stephen living with me. I needed to be a good role model. Weren’t they always saying that part of the problem with kids these days was no good role models and there was me burping ‘Pear Pleasure’ all over the shop and sleeping all day! No wonder Stephen was stealing handbags and burning pets. So yes I would need to think about cutting down (not cutting out, that would be unnecessary) the booze. ‘Pear Pleasure’ was out unless it was a weekend or a special occasion (what kind of special occasion I didn’t question, the truth was Stephen and I never went out together anymore unless we were going to the off licence but perhaps this would change with my new relative sobriety and we could start going to the theatre or a concert and then and only then in that context would it be okay to drink stronger stuff).

I realised someone else was talking now. It was Skeletor lady. Her teeth were gnashing up and down and all I could hear was all the usual garbage and good intentions. At least they were leaving me alone. This last bit of the session was really dragging. After Skeletor had finished, Shirley stood up next to a big flipchart and drew a circle. On the outside of the circle she wrote ‘Life Problems’ and on the inside she drew a stick figure. Then she drew a line from the stick figure out to what looked like a fun place which was dominated by a big bottle of wine and some tablets floating in the air. Then she drew an arrow between the ‘Life Problems’ and this new place (which I would have called ‘Home Sweet Home’ but she labelled ‘Self-deception’). Then she asked each of us to draw a picture which represented our feelings. Pens and paper were passed around. Carl used his tissue box as a mini desk and lent his paper against it. He was doodling really vigorously and at some point I saw the pen go clean through the paper. He carried on regardless. At this point I was shaking quite badly and I drew something which basically looked like an omelette but was supposed to be a desert island. And then I drew two people on the island. One of them was me and the other was little guess who. I drew a school of small black fish in the sea and a nice sun shining down. Then we handed our drawings in and Shirley took them away to laugh at in the privacy of her lavender infested chamber.

Back in my small cheery, wood-chipped box I located my mobile (they hadn’t had time to take it off of me yet. Ha!). I dialled Stephen’s number. He picked up on the second ring.
‘Where are you?’ he said, sounding out of breath.
Just hearing his voice made me want to cry.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked quietly.
I could hear the bleepy thump of computer mayhem in the background.
‘I need you to help me,’ I said.
‘Why what’s going on? What’s for tea? I couldn’t find nothing when I got in last night. Just some stale bread and one of those Cup of Soups that look like they’ve got maggots in the bottom of the cup.’
‘Look I can’t talk properly now, you have to come out here and get me.’
‘What?’
‘Order yourself a taxi, I’ll give you the address. You’ll have to get him to park by the side exit. And don’t do it yet. Wait till about midnight.’
‘I don’t know,’ Stephen said.
The bleeps had stopped and there was an eerie silence in the background.
‘I’m like a bit worried to be honest,’ he continued, ‘There was like all this shit on the door when I got in.’
‘What do you mean shit? Like real shit?’
I imagined some sort of terrible dirty protest, swear words written in huge swirling shapes of muck.
‘No don’t be stupid durrrr! Words,’ Stephen replied.
‘What words, what did it say?’ I asked.
Now along with the heavy sweating and the water infection feeling, the fear was returning and now I was remembering specifics like Danny’s face when we’d driven away and how it was all screwed up and he’d looked nothing like the boy that I’d nicknamed Nice Eyes and lent my Womble Annual to.
‘I won’t tell you. You’ll just brick it. Anyway, I sprayed on top of it. I made this really cool picture which is half-dragon and half-tiger and it’s breathing fire. I created it. It’s protection.’
Stephen sounded much younger than I remembered. And I realised that I needed to be the adult and make the decisions from now on and the next thing would be to get us both away from the flat. Because I couldn’t get Danny’s face out of my head and he clearly wasn’t going to leave with a Wombles Annual and be done with it.
‘I didn’t even tell you,’ Stephen said cutting through my thoughts, ‘Something weird happened like this big hole just opened up and then all these insects came up out of the floor so I pressed like control and forward at the same time.’
‘What?’
‘You know the bloke with the blue glasses and the double chin…well he came out and he had this long pistol and he whacked me over the head and so I used the extra credits and blasted him in the…’
I realised with relief that were talking about the game again.
‘Look I can’t be much longer, go to the internet café and look up ‘Shady Sands Rehabilitation Centre.’
‘How do you spell it?’ he asked.
‘Shady like shade and sand like on the beach and …’
Shirley walked in. All five feet of billowing linen.
‘Give me that,’ she said.
I hung up and thrust the phone into her palm. I hoped Stephen could remember all the things I’d told him. Would he be able to tear himself away from level eleven and rescue me? He owed me. If we’d been in a video game I would have had at least ten credits and he would have been down to about three.
‘Who was that?’ Shirley barked.
We were two bears in the wood. We were standing in one of those clearings like the ones you get in American forests where the tops of the trees shoot off into infinity. She was a silverback (or is that a type of gorilla?) and I was like a Pooh bear sort of bear. She was standing dead in front of me, fixing me with her glassy stare. And my only objective in that moment was to wrestle her out the way so I could run off into the sunset and gorge myself on honey.
‘My Mum called,’ I said looking under her arm to see if I could duck under it and run down the hallway before they instigated a ‘lock-up’, ‘She’s had some bad news, her dog Nathan (Nathan?) died and she is really upset about it.’
It’s funny how creative you can be when you’re detoxing and every cell in your body is chanting DRINK! Ole Silver-Back Shirley eyed me with suspicion for a couple of seconds, then her face softened. She believed me! Ha!
‘No contact with friends or family, those are the rules,’ she said.
‘Sorry, it’s just Nathan was a good pet. He was a hundred in dog years…it’s really crap.’
I was actually believing the fiction myself now. I could see this small hairy Nathan with one of those terrible under-bites that some small dogs are cursed with and he would be breathing really heavily and have his head cocked to one side…
‘Well I’ll keep your phone,’ Shirley said.
‘So you’re not going to lock me in my room?’ I asked.
‘My God no! We’re not a Victorian asylum! We only lock you in when we’re absolutely certain that you can’t be trusted. Now why don’t you unpack your things? The sooner you get used to the idea that you’re going to be here for three weeks the better.’
I looked down at the holdall that I’d packed in the minutes just after the intervention. Nothing in the bag was of any value.
There was no booze in it for a start.

Shirley left again, my mobile pushed into one of her enormous linen pockets. Now it would be impossible to ring Stephen or even text him to see if he’d found the address and ordered the taxi okay. What if Shady Sands was a big chain? Perhaps there were dozens of them scattered across the country like clusters of weeping sores? I sat down on the bed. All of a sudden I felt absolutely knackered. The pain had been subsumed by this wave of tiredness and I got undressed, pulled on my night shirt and quickly fell backwards onto the bed. I pulled half of the scratchy prison style blanket round my shoulders. Next door I could hear someone crying. It sounded like Skeletor Woman. But there was a complete absence of feeling. In that moment I had to be selfish. And between now and midnight I needed to sleep. The longer I slept the quicker the time would go and the closer I’d be to seeing Stephen and enjoying a nice cold ‘Pear Pleasure’ at home (a special occasion, then no more).

When I awoke the room was dark, the crying had stopped and there was nothing except a buzzing sound which was coming from the hallway and could have been the air conditioning or perhaps the light. I looked at the clock, it was eleven thirty already so I got out of bed and then replaced the dent where I’d been lying with the hold-all and wrapped the blanket over the top so it looked like a person (a small one) was in the bed, from a distance it would look like I’d crawled into a ball (which was actually realistic as this would have been exactly how I’d have slept during detox because the cramps tended to start on the second night). I was wearing a pair of old Snoopy knee socks and a big oversize night shirt which my mother had bought specially for my trip to Rehab and had a giant glow worm with a little night cap on and ‘Nite nite don’t let the bed bugs bite!’ scrawled across it.

I didn’t want to waste time getting dressed, I needed to be as quiet as a glow worm so I tip toed out of my room and down the corridor which was deserted. Some of the rooms had lights shining out from under the doors, addicts tend to be nocturnal so I just slid in my socks down the hall like I was skating. It would have been fun if Stephen would have been with me but as it was, it was just scary and disorientating because the place was bigger than I’d remembered and definitely bigger than a bungalow. Perhaps I’d been moved from Shady Sands and whisked away to another high security rehab centre? I felt my panic levels rising but then I recognised the entrance to the meeting room that we’d been in earlier. Next to it was the room where the counsellors and nurses hung out. The TV was blaring. I ducked as I went past the window but it was fine and the coast was clear. There were no alarms at Shady Sands, people paid to come into this place (hard to believe but true!) so it was more like a B&B than a medical facility. Once I got past that main office, it was straight out the side door and I was out into the car park where I crouched down away from the light of the windows and sat down on a small patch of damp grass.

The night was impossibly clear and I counted hundreds of stars, each one twinkling individually for me, each one saying ‘Well done Jess, you’ve made it.’ And for the next ten minutes I enjoyed my sobriety. I enjoyed the fact that I could feel everything, the wet of the grass sticking into the back of my legs, the smell of earth and just air and no cabbage, no lavender water.

This was the point where I stopped trying to get sober and simply got on with living. Stephen and I would move to the countryside. I’d encourage him to go back to school and I’d re-train, go into something worthwhile, something more demanding than frothing, maybe I’d even be a dinner lady for a while using some of my core catering skills.
Then eventually, when it was time, when everything was sorted, I’d cut out the booze.
For now drinking was entirely necessary.
I needed all the courage I could muster.

Just as the wet grass became uncomfortable, I spotted two headlights coming into the car park. Then the front door opened, before the car had even drawn to a stop Stephen had jumped out. He was smaller than I remembered, his pants were hanging out even more than usual and he looked like he’d lost weight even though I’d seen him about thirty six hours earlier.
‘You’ve got like a big worm on your shirt!’ he shouted.
‘Ssshh, don’t make too much noise,’ I embraced him awkwardly and he pulled away.
‘Urrr,’ he said.
I ruffled his hair and then patted him on the shoulder.
‘Can I get in the back? I feel a bit self-conscious,’ I said.
Stephen smiled and jumped in the front seat like we were off for a daytrip to Alton Towers.
‘Aren’t I great?’ he said as the door shut and we backed out of the car park.
The taxi driver hadn’t even flinched. Perhaps he picked up people from rehab every other day.
‘You’re clever,’ I said, ‘I wasn’t sure you’d find it but you did.’
‘What kind of place is it? Is it like for mad people?’ Stephen asked turning to face me.
‘No it’s just for people who need a rest…you know to get away from it all for a bit.’
‘I hope you’ve got cash, this is going to cost like about a billion. It took us ages to get here.’
The taxi driver glanced at me in his mirror.
I sat back in the car and took a deep breath. Everything was back at the flat. Keys, wallet, all the numerous handbags and precious things of my neighbours.
I just needed a few beers and then I’d be ready.

By the time my parents and Ruth arrived we’d be gone.