Institution

By Zelda Getz

Not to be an elitist or anything, but I was definitely the brains of the operation in there.

Sure, it was a community, and sure, we were all there because we'd failed in a fundamental way, but I'll go out on a limb here and say that I was the most mentally competent patient at the Smacky McDrinksalott Rest Home for Fucking Hopeless Addicts.

I'd been to college, after all. I was the one that rankled at the lack of any good books in there. I was the one who'd paid my own way into perdition, with money I'd earned quite legally, thank you. I was the intellectual, dammit. I was no dumb smackhead.

My, svelte frame convinced everyone that heroin was my drug of choice, and my pale skin and suburban upbringing, coupled with my use of complex sentences, made my actual chosen poison seem all the more unlikely. But there I was, twenty-one years old, educated, privileged, and with an enormous crack habit.

So there I was, with drunks and junkies of all ages, races and sizes. I had to fight to be allowed to bring in a notebook. It was thoroughly searched. I had obstinately insisted that I was only staying for five days, so I didn't have much to wear or enough cigarettes.

The first thing that happens in rehab, if you aren't in physical danger from withdrawal, is the intake interview. They try to get a sense of who they're dealing with, and how fucked they are. You give them a list of the people who, should they call and ask, can be told that you are there, and how close to death you are. Mine included my boyfriend and the rotten-toothed crackhead I was cheating on him with. Neither ever called. I spit out monosyllabic answers to their probing, open-ended questions. They took my height and weight, and a Polaroid of my shell-shocked face. I've never seen that photo, but I have a sick feeling if I ever become famous, it'll show up on the internet.

I was immediately placed into the Dual Diagnosis program. Dual Diagnosis is secret code for not just addict, but Crazy Addict. In addition to smoking crack, some of my favorite hobbies included starving myself, bingeing and purging, putting burning cigarettes out on my arms, and sawing away at my flesh with serrated kitchen knives.

Crazy Addicts get slightly different treatment from regular addicts. They get a psychologist as their caseworker, and they get time with Herr Doktor Oktagon, the heinous Teutonic pill-pusher and dream-crusher.

No one escaped Herr Doktor without medication. Herr Doktor was not a kind, compassionate man. He held addicts in unique contempt, and informed me at our first meeting that my dream of the Peace Corps would never come true, not with this on my Permanent Record.

In addition to Herr Doktor's grueling pill regimens, us Duelies got group therapy a couple times a week, in addition to a weekly one-on-one with our caseworker. Mine, the goodhearted and long-sober Dr. Pete, decided one day at Group to out me.

It wasn't just any Group, either. It was one day when two of the sections were combined, so a good two thirds of the Duelies were in there. "So, Zelda, want to talk a little bit about what's been going on after lunch?"

Newly clean and sober drunks and junkies are like little kids. Letting them in on the deep dark secret that a member of the Community was running to the toilet in her room (a forbidden place to be during the day) and puking up all her food was like telling them she had a confirmed case of cooties.

Looking back, Dr. Pete was a good guy. But if you're reading this, fuck you for that one, Dr. Pete. Fuck you.

Now, every lunch period, I was the object of intense scrutiny, some of it good hearted, most of it consisting of mocking fingers being shoved down throats in my direction. Lunch was already bad enough because I was the only vegetarian in the place. Now I had junkie whores telling me what was best for my health.

Two of my roommates, in fact, were junkie whores who'd been in rehab time and time again. They were decent women, I suppose, and looked out for me because I was scared and naïve and too book-smart for my own good. There was Drunk Steve, who somehow seemed to be wasted all the time, inside a rehab campus. He always insisted it was time for him to go; ready for "society world."

There were women who'd been there so many times they knew every staff member's pet peeves, and who had ongoing fights with one another that they'd just pause upon being released and take back up when they landed in rehab again.

Then, there was Pierce. Pierce had rotten teeth, a baby and another on the way, an electricians' union card and a Philly drawl. He had studs in the cartilage of his ears, tattoos, and a way of looking at me that made me remember what sex was like before crack made it into a sickening, dry, flaccid parody of itself.

For some reason, Pierce was hot property in that place. Our one stolen kiss by the soda machine almost made up for the silver cigarette case he stole from me. Whenever he caught me talking to tall, dark, handsome Brian, his eyes would narrow and I'd excuse myself. The isolation and absurdity of rehab makes you cling to whatever "relationships" you find. That and a lot of people who are coming off heroin remember what a libido is, so sex is on everyone's mind, all the time.

The weeks stretched on. One group of kids found out that I was from the area and wanted my help escaping to the nearby big city. I didn't tell them, and agonized over telling the staff about their plans. I didn't.

They all left one night, and trickled back in about a week later with none of their jewelry. The youngest, a girl of about 17, had sucked a few cocks for money. She'd never had it that bad before. The Community welcomed them back. They left again, a few weeks later.

Sundays were visiting days, and both of my parents would come, and bring me cigarettes and forced, exhausted smiles, and news of my younger sister in college. On the third week, they told me they wouldn't be coming the next week because they were driving up to see her, so they brought a whole carton of Camel filters.

But by the middle of that next week, my 28 days were up. I was cured, I guess. At one point I'd been made "president" of the Community, which meant pretty much nothing but a vote of confidence from the staff. I'd been granted outside A.A. meeting privileges, which meant coffee with caffeine, more cigarette breaks, outside contact and the chance to hold hands with Pierce at the general attendance meetings held in a barn on the campus.

Saturdays were special days-we got to sleep in until 8:30 , and there was the talent show at night. I had taken to writing poetry, and reading it then. Once, I sang a song about how the blisters on my thumbs were gone. Only the crackheads got it, and they laughed: crack has to have fire held to it constantly, and is usually smoked through metal. That's why crackheads have burnt thumbs and white, chapped lips.

The day I left, Dr. Pete was optimistic. I was, too. I used my leftover cigarette packs to purchase a green knit shirt from a desperate newbie.

When I came back to meetings at the barn in the weeks afterward, I was received like a returning hero by those who remembered me. I was clean. I was sober. I had a job and some flesh on my bones again.

I eventually went back to college. I graduated, and found a decent job that grants me a fair bit of satisfaction. My secret, such as it is, is something of a selectively open one; one I've bandied about in who-the-bigger-badass pissing contests in company I think is relatively tight-lipped.

Sometimes I look around at my modest version of professional and material success and think, you done alright, Zelda. But then I think that if the people surrounding me, here in the office, knew what I came from, they'd look at me like I just shit on their shoes.

I still have the green shirt. I still have the scars. My thumbs are still pristine.