So, all this time I’ve been saying that I decided on my own to go to rehab. I woke up one day and decided to go seek residential alcohol treatment. Yeah, right. I wish I could say I woke up one morning and looked at my navel and realized I had a problem and decided to do something about it, but it took a little more than that. I was living in a bad dream that I thought was just how things were. Daily life happened in a drunken stupor I just took for granted. Lucky for me, family intervention services and service providers exist. And families do actually bother to intervene in the lives of those they love. Honestly, the first thing an alcoholic needs is a wake up call. That wake up call isn’t going to come from within, because frankly, if you’re waking up hung-over, you aren’t going to hear the alarm. Or any of the alarms that are going off all over the place in your life. If you stop and stay to an alcoholic, “Help is coming!” and light them on fire, they still might not leave the bar. Only when confronted by many of their closest loved ones, does the possibility exist you will get someone to wake out of the denial that has become a life-style. I could write a manual on this.
For me, what did the trick was an intervention of fate. I was getting ready to meet people at a neighborhood dive bar for some pool and my girlfriend called me up. She said, I need to talk to you. I said, Can we talk later. She said, No, you don’t understand, I need to talk you now. Like five minutes ago now. Can I come over?
I sat in my shoes, the same ones I have on now as I kick my feet up on the porch fence of the residential alcohol treatment center, and brushed my hands over my jeans. Okay, come over, I said. What do you have to say to me in person that you can’t say over the phone?





