I've had to go to drug rehab on more than one occasion. I did not want to go, but I kept running out of places to live, and so the circumstances prevented me from the opportunity of choosing otherwise, or other places to live. On one occasion I had to go to drug rehab at a place called Homeward Bound, in the Oak Cliff area of the Dallas and Fort Worth Metroplex.

When I got to Homeward Bound, I had been without sleep for a large number of days, and had been carrying on in such a manner for a long time. I badly needed to sleep, but was only allowed one day in the detox, and then was set to go on with their rigorous program of recovery. You've little time for rest, and sharing a room with several others in an old building with poor heating and air conditioning while sleeping on a strange bed in a strange and uncomfortable environment aggravates the situation even more.

They do, however, send you to a clinic to see if you need psych meds, and in Texas; we have the Northstar program, which is now called Value Options. This is a program that the very unlovable George W.Bush created for us while governor of Texas. It's hard to believe it, but it is true just the same, George W.Bush created a program for free care for low income individuals in the Republican State of Texas; and nobody is complaining about it at all.

While at the clinic, my doctor, as they always do, decided that I was type II Bi Polar, and prescribed me a number of medications, and one of those medications was Seroquel. I believe the dosage was 400 mg, and I loved the stuff. Seroquel REALLY helped me to get my rest, but the problem was that my body was not used to it, and I'd not had time to become used to it, and it was nearly impossible for me to get up at six o'clock a.m. After several days of sleeping through the slim chances of getting any coffee at Homeward bound, and then sleeping through the early morning roll call; I was deemed a malcontent uninterested in recovery, and I was about to get kicked out of the rehab. I had to literally beg the head counsellor their to give me another chance. I could never even know that I was supposed to wake up so early, I was too deeply deprived of rest, and resting too comfortably under the influence of Seroquel.

So, as a last chance, the head counsellor sent me back to the clinic to have my medications changed. Here is where you work your magic. counsellors at drug rehab have no intellectual authority to compare with psychiatrists, and when your head counsellor has high handedly decided that she knows that your medications are not what you need, she has just stepped on the toes of a much more educated medical and psychiatric professional, and you should work this to your advantage.

When I got to see the doctor, I'd told her, and she was very lovely, about how I was sleeping so well now, as I'd never slept before; and that it was thanks to her, and to her prescribing me Seroquel. But also, I'd told her how I'd had trouble getting up on time, and that I was about to be on the street, because the head counsellor was so uninterested in understanding; and that she wanted my medications changed to her liking, and not mine. Well, this doctor of medicine was enraged, as she should have been, at my treatment, and that a counsellor would be so threatening to one of her patients, and antagonistic to her knowledge of what is good for him, meaning ME. She called the cousellor on the phone right then and right there in front of me, and really let her have it.

When I got back to Homeward Bound, I was given the five star treatment, and everyone there wanted to know what they could do for me, and I damn sure got to keep taking my Seroquel. I hope that this has been helpful to someone.

~WTS~