Intervention

I am in love with a show on A&E - Intervention. It shows addicts of all kinds - meth, alcohol, gambling, bulimia, square-dancing - at their very lowest low - flashes back to their childhoods and films their families crying about how this thing is going to kill them... great TV. I've learned more about the reality of drug abuse through this show than I ever did in social work school. And at the very end they show the families meeting with an interventionist - all of whom basically have the same speel each time they do this I'm learning - from the intro they give the person when they walk into the room, shocked to find their family sitting there, "what I know is you have a family here that loves you like crazy," to the style of the intervention itself. One starts questioning the heartfeltness of these things when the interventionists tell the families to cry and they seem to have a rote script they follow. But, provided the addict hasn't seen the show, I suppose it doesn't matter. And in the end, it seems to work. I'd say 90% of the addicts agree to go to some far off treatment facility. Well, of the interventions they show on the TV. Then they do a little blurb about what happened 3-9 months later - if the person stayed in treatment or was kicked out, stayed sober or away from doe-se-doe's, and usually - if things worked out well - shows them smiling, looking healthy, etc.

Perhaps this is why I decided to go sequester myself in a facilit, er, resort at the end of last week. I flew down to Tucson - reading books on mindfulness and doing stress reduction meditations the whole way - which was really needed being on a plane with people coming and going from my layover in Vegas - and stayed in a resort in the foothills of the desert. I got off the diet soda, and didn't eat sugar. I got massages, drank green tea, took yoga classes, exercised, swam, slept, got room service & read by the pool for 2.5 straight days. Not quite 90 days at the Betty Ford center, but I'm not sure they'd admit someone for Diet Dr. Pepper addiction and stress reduction anyway.

Although if they followed me around and documented my DDP addiction, perhaps they'd make an exception. Hiding a 2 liter in my toilet tank. Shooting it up in the bathroom at work. Snorting it in an alley.

Now I'm back at work and 25% of the hill has been leveled. The same people who are suffocatingly negative at work are suffocatingly negative. I sure have wanted a swig of my pepper to block it out. I miss the bubbles, the sweet taste, being able to say "I'm a Pepper." Sigh. I'm trying to replace it with Yerba Mate and pomegrante juice. Just not the same.