28 Days

Today at living grace we are watching 28 Days with Sandra Bullock. I have seen this movie many times now as it is part of our program. If you haven't seen it, I would recommend it.
In my opinion, it's one of many views into what "recovery" might look like for someone coming out of drug addiction. It is set in a very upscale rehabilitation centre in New York, where access to doctors, nurses, guest speakers, and residential facilities are part of the set up. In this way, living grace is very different. Let me tell you how...

Living grace is an outpatient centre, clients come in at 8 and leave at 3. Also, we don't have residential facilities. Most of our clients stay in shelters for homeless people. This highlights another difference, in that our clients typically cannot afford a "28 Day Rehab", so we have fundraisers and applications for support on the government of South Africa. This is so that we can offer help to those in the city who cannot afford any other help. Unfortunately, this is he majority of people...and I say unfortunate because it shows the level of poverty inflicting many people in Cape Town.

Another difference is we don't have doctors and nurses on staff. Over time, I have come to find that this difference can be a real setback. The reason is that we have more and more heroin addicts coming for help, and heroin withdrawal often requires medical detox. As I type this, I sit looking at a new client who came in for help but is trying to detox himself...and my heart breaks as I know this is a very unlikely success plan for him. He is administering the methadone a doctor prescribed him. An addict trying to detox himself from drugs by using another drug. It just doesn't work.

But what do you do with these clients?! What other options are there? My mind has been preoccupied with this dilemma for a whole now. As Simon and I spoke about this issue last night, we came to the conclusion that there is no formula for successful "healing" from addiction. Addiction morphes from one thing to the next. We who seek escape aren't always going to discriminate...at the end of the day, anything that takes away the pain will do. But what about the shame, guilt, fears of relapse, insecurities that tell us we can't so normal life like others can? What about the fact that we don't believe in ourselves, or people don't believe in us? Addiction is much more fuzzy than any formula. And so, recovery cannot be a carbon copy thing.

In the movie we are watching as i type this, one of the many characters just died of a heroin overdose. I look over to our new heroin client, and he is sound asleep against the wall, numbed out from the dose of methadone he gave himself this morning. His life is just as in danger as this deceased girl in the movie. I sit back, breathing in the painful ambiguity of it all. The painful realities of the country I call home. 

Sadly, my point is proven. Some of my questions just don't have easy answers. 

Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 15, 2014 at 11:25 PM

    Thanks for sharing. Good stuff...the words, not the problem

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

another abundance.

1 Corinthians 4.9-13 ..for it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men. We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless. When we are persecuted we endure it. When we are slandered we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world… I think I must have fallen asleep during this lesson in Sunday school class. Somehow, I missed this part. Because over the past few years, I have faced some difficult days and for whatever reason, the framework I was using to understand those confusing times wasn’t the one above. I thought hard times were a sign that I...
Read more

Like Mike (And the man at the Pool).

Image
My brother was born with down syndrome. Due to his mental handicap, he perceives the world differently than I do. Things I would never do are no big deal to him. He doesn't have as much of a filter as me. Sometimes thats a great thing, other times it's life-threatening (like the time he thought he was superman and jumped out my bedroom window). But overall, Mike teaches me an incredible amount about my faith. While visiting America this last time, we attended one of his baseball games. Mike walked up to the plate convinced he was going to do something SO BIG that everyone would remember him forever. He picked up that bat, strode to the home plate, pointed out at the pitcher as if to warn her of the pending doom, and then took charge. After a few missed swings, he knocked the ball into the field and somehow managed a home run out of it! With his slow running pace and half the fielders being in wheel chairs, the odds were not necessarily in his favor but he pulled it off :) ...
Read more

visual updates for all you right-brainers...

Image
poem's sisters, all grown up and living in ocean view. L to R: mckayla, melissa, spune. capricorn boys overlooking the burial of one of their own. RIP Mabuti. christmas 2010. the boys played soccer while the girls played shy. crazy people on a crazy elevator. penny and i went to prom as dates. they had a foam machine. this was the state of her feet after five minutes. see next photo for details. the child is bonkers. visiting keaton in prison (the one getting his nose pseudo-picked :) he recently was hit by a car and really struggling. pray for my little man) on my way to simonstown via train. try to blame me for living in south africa :) the old man who lives at beth rapha. me and my little men: leshwin and ryan. penny shot. the child loves her dried meat. (it beats gas station beef jerky any day of the week, american readers). penny's breakfast at the old biscuit mill. no wonder she l...
Read more