My company has an employee’s assistance program, an EAP. So does my husband’s. Total confidentiality. We went to a counselor and this person was only going to be able to help us but so much. The counselor gave us guidelines, free sessions, advice: do this and do that, and to seek a support group. ANN When you’re in a meeting you’re there for yourself, from the sense of learning how to detach yourself, with love, from that person who is using or drinking. You are mixed in with a group of what we call qualifiers, all different qualifiers, and so that kind of helps in the sense of keeping the focus on you, which is why we say: Keep the focus on yourself. finding treatment for loved ones After his big event, Ann’s son was jailed for nine days, released, binge drank for three days and then turned himself into a treatment program on Easter Sunday three years ago. Because he was sober that day, his insurance did not cover the treatment. Out-of-pocket costs for a 90-day program were $12,000 per month, totaling $36,000. His ensuing 12-stretched-to-18-month outpatient treatments were included. Betty’s son was admitted to the New Hanover Regional Medical Center psych ward until a bed opened at Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Betty’s son went to Cherry Hospital for a 30-day treatment plan, which cost $10,000. The total rehab was followed by living in a halfway house, then outpatient treatment. ANN A six-month program has a greater success rate than a three-month, 90-day program. BETTY On any given day there are 30 to 40 people waiting for beds in the treat-ment facility. We committed my son. He was in a psych ward and we didn’t go get him. I remem-ber I went to the psych ward after about three or four days to tell him he wouldn’t come home, and I looked down at him and could not look at him. He had no shoelaces and my heart was just crushed that they thought he would kill himself in there. It was just so emotional. My son knows his addic-tion is so real — he deals with it every day. He offsets his urges with AA groups, he runs programs, volunteered with a group that went to a psych ward. He’s always going to a meeting, chairing a meeting. may 2015 30 WBM
Wrightsville Beach Magazine May 2015
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