The Rehab Lesson
Rehabilitation is a term often thrown loosely upon solutions
to society’s problems. Is it really so easy to change a person’s
character? To alter habits that has
become integral to a person’s life.
For 21 year old Jake Brown and his budding addiction to
prescription painkillers, rehabilitation may have served its purpose, but
perhaps not in the way it was intended. His time in a drug rehabilitation
centre in July of 2012 may have yielded the right results, but perhaps in the
wrong manner.
Jake had recently moved to Michigan to live and work with
his uncle, the manager of a Holiday Inn. His father lived overseas and his
mother in his hometown of Fontana, California.
In April 2012 Jake began taking prescription pain medication
for back pain. Vicodin; One of the most widely abused opiate analgesics in the
United States. Over 2 million adults across the country suffer from Vicodin
addiction. Jake, like so many before him, found himself increasingly dependent
on the euphoric high produced by the drug.
Each day he would consume his prescribed dosage, and then
some. It started small, just one or two more than he should, just to relax.
Then it became more, he would have to fill two prescriptions, he couldn’t feel
one or two anymore, it became five or six pills at a time, his tolerance
steadily growing. Before he realised the scope of the problem he was hooked,
not like a stereotyped drug addict, he wasn’t undergoing withdrawal, but he had
become reliant on the drugs to allow him happiness.
He didn’t consider the liver damage, vision problems and
mental conditions that long term abuse of his drug of choice could cause. By his own admittance Jake said, “I was
taking far more than was prescribed to me”. Fortunately for him his habit was
abruptly halted when he found himself caught red handed.
While at work Jake was caught purchasing Vicodin pills off
of a co-worker, the result of his prescription having run out. When it came to
the attention of his uncle, who was also his manager, he found himself without
a job or a place to stay.
His world fell apart. His reliable job that paid for his
habit had been taken away, his carefully planned operation halted in its
tracks. He couldn’t understand the outrage, the disappointment that was felt
for him.
When his father was informed of the situation he felt he had
no choice but to admit Jake into a drug rehabilitation centre, a choice that
Jake was not enthused with.
“It wasn’t effecting how I functioned in day to day life, If
I hadn’t been caught nobody would’ve had to know” said Jake, however his father
Dan saw the issue in a very different light. “There was a serious problem that
needed to be stopped before it progressed and damaged Jakes future.” Jakes
Father.
Jake was admitted into a drug rehabilitation clinic for a
one month stay. It was during this time that he would be turned off
recreational drug use, for all the wrong reasons.
“I felt like I’d been written off, I was surrounded by
addicts of the worst kind and I didn’t belong”, Jake Brown.
Jake was immersed in an environment of experienced drug
users, people whom he felt no association or similarities with. He was
marginalised, categorised with the worst of recreational drug users. With his
world shattered Jake had no choice but to engage himself in his rehabilitation.
“It wasn’t like I couldn’t have stopped using while I was at
home” said Jake, The rehabilitation centre put Jake in an environment where he
was surrounded by more drug references and users than anywhere else could have
provided. “I wanted to leave, if only to avoid being in a place where I didn’t
belong”.
He felt as if he’d been ostracised. Like his family had
written him off as the worst of society. Wrongly accused and downtrodden he
couldn’t bring himself to fight the unsaid allegations he felt were being
thrown at him. He resigned himself to simply doing whatever necessary to return
his life to how it was.
While Jake was successfully rehabilitated and ceased using
Vicodin it wasn’t because he had been shown the consequences of his previous
drug use but because he wished to avoid any extension of his stay in rehab. “Rehab
was like a punishment, I just wanted to do whatever it took to get out of there”.
So Jake followed the instructions of his doctors and was discharged from the
clinic one month from the day he was admitted.
The process of rehabilitation attempts to not only halt
detrimental behaviour but to alter the mindset that caused it to begin with.
Rehabilitation failed with Jake. His use of medication may have been stopped
but his mindset was merely warped by the ordeal. “I feel like the consequences
of my drug use were a huge over-reaction, nothing has changed for me”. Jake
remains the same person he was before rehabilitation, he beat his addiction for
all the wrong reasons.
Rehabilitation is a powerful term that has become a staple
of the modern judicial system. In Jake’s case, rehabilitation proved to be more
of a punishment than a cure. His experience and rehabilitation can only be
deemed a success if it is only the immediate future that is of concern. Were he
to have been placed in rehabilitation with people who were experiencing similar
drug dependency issues rather than vastly disproportionate ones, his mindset
may have been changed. Unfortunately it wasn’t. “The rehabilitation centre and
its treatment were unnecessary and irrelevant to my problems”.
He resumed his day to day life; he was given his old job
back and moved back in with his uncle. He was still the same man however,
regardless of what his family thought, nothing had really changed. He worked
hard, loved and supported his family, studied well and changed his ways. He
learned his lesson at rehab, a valuable one that he would not soon forget; not
to get caught.
