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.