Do Rehabs Really Help Addicts Part 3

Hi i will be telling you about the third rehab i attended. It was a South-African rehab and it was situated in the Limpopo Province between Ellisras and Vaalwater. I was in this rehab for about seven months.

Now let me tell you what happened in the time i spent in this establishment:
This rehab is a Christian rehab so they are all about Church services and we used to have cell group twice a week and a thing called Shabat on friday nights (Shabat means that: From Friday evening sunset till Saturday night sunset you have to relax, and your not allowed to do any strenuous work.) we used to have a three course meal and have a church service and praise and worship. And then Sunday morning services as well, during the week we all had work we needed to do so we used to work from about eight in the morning till about four five in the afternoon. We used to have breakfast before work, lunch at about twelve or one and then supper at about six or seven at night. In the beginning everybody used to be able to hang out together in the pool house but when the amount of people went up they gave the pool house to the girls and the guys had to hang out under a tree in the middle of the yard. The girls were not allowed under the tree and the guys we allowed in the pool house, the only way that you could get in the pool house if you were a guy was if you were dating one of the girls and the only way you were allowed to date one of the girls was if you had the owners blessing so if you did not have his blessing you were not allowed to date one of the girls. In the pool house there were nice chairs that you could sit on but under the tree there was not a single chair to sit on, so all the guys tried to hook up with a girls so that you could actually have a chair to sit on after you have been working the whole day. I really think that, that is not very fair if you ask me! So now you have a bit of background about what went on in this place I will start to tell you how my time there went!

When i got to this rehab i was still as high as a kite and i knew that i would start my withdrawal symptoms at about nine or ten that same night so i just wanted to eat and go to bed because i knew that i had a lot of sleep less nights ahead about two to three weeks worth. The first night i was there i was still sort of okay because i had used just before i signed in. I found out the next day that i would have seven days grace that i think is about fair if you have been using for a year or two but if you have been using for ten years and you had to use a gram of heroin before you can get out of bed in the morning seven days is a bit short because i used to have withdrawal symptoms for at least four weeks and i used to have insomnia for six to eight week where i used to sleep a max of one hour if i even slept at all! They used to give us medication for the withdrawal but you are very limited to the amount of medication that you used to get so the medication did not really work so well because they never really gave us the dose we needed to get. So eventually my seven days grace was over and i had to start working like everybody else and the jobs we had, well they were horrible for instance chopping clean used bricks, we had to chop off all the cement that was still stuck on them or we had to build walls because the farm we were staying at was not really done being built so we were actually building the place just because we were the first people to join this rehab center. The people that was well liked by the owner did not really have to do anything that they did not want to do. They also had the system were recovering junkies that have not even been clean for a year have power over the new arrivals and that i think is so stupid because everybody has there own issues that they need to be working on but now the older inmates have to "babysit" the newer inmates so in the end of the day when you leave rehab you have not worked on a single problem you had when you went in to rehab so 90 % of all the patients would just relapse as soon as they left! 
In my seven months there i really got to know how everything works so i basically had free rains of this rehab because i knew when to do something and when not to do something so i was never really in trouble. I was in trouble a couple of times the reasons for me being in trouble was that in the first month i was there i tried to run away but i was not really sure where i was going so i got caught that time. The owner of this rehab told my parents that its basically imposable to run away because there was only one road out of this center on your way to the main road and this road is about eight kilometers to the main road. So i ran into the bush because i thought it would be harder to find me there, so i was running through the bush for about  three or four hours till i got to the main road and i was just about ten kilometers away from the closest to and they spotted me and picked me up and took me back that was my first attempt and i tried to run with somebody. They took me back to the center and my punishment was that i will have to wash dishes for four weeks.
After my four weeks of washing dishes i was very tired and i just wanted to go home and go used drugs again. This time i went alone and i left at eleven at night this time it worked  the only thing was that the main road was dead i think the whole night i only saw one or two cars so i had to walk the whole 48 kilometers to the next town called Vaalwater and i was through Vaalwater by six that morning. Just as i wanted to sit down and have a smoke a car pulled up next to me and the driver asked do you need a lift and where are you going so i said i would love a lift to Pretoria. He said well i am on my way to Johannesburg but i need to drive through Pretoria so i got in the car and about an hour later he dropped me in Pretoria about 5 kilometers away for Sunnyside I just started to walk towards town and someone else picked me up and dropped me right in front of my dealers house so i called my dealer and he gave me some drugs on debt then i went across the road to sunnypark shopping center toilet to go and use after i had finished using i sold my jacket just to get ten rand to get to one of my friends house and i spent the next two days there and during those two days we were just shoplifting all the time so that we could just keep using so after two days i went back hope and i spent a day there and the day after wards i went back to the rehab center. This time my punishment was a bit worst i got locked in the dog box for about three weeks the dog box was like a one bedroom flat that about fourteen people were sleeping in. The people that used to be locked up in the dog box used to get all the worst jobs in the center like cleaning toilets and dustbins, chopping bricks clean and chopping fire wood.
After my three weeks in the dog box I started to behave myself because I wanted to become a "leader" but I had some problems because not many of the leaders at that time liked me because i ran away and they could not catch me and they hated it.
After i had been there for about four months I met a girl there called Ane, she was also from Pretoria and she even got her drugs from the same dealer i used to buy from. We started talking and one day we decided that we want to start dating. We were dating for about a month, but most of the people started to treat her very badly so we decided that we are going to run away together, we set a date that we wanted to run away and we stocked up with juice and chocolates for the road. Before we left i made it very clear to this girl that I am not running away to go and use drugs I was running away to make a point. So that night at eleven I stuck my arm through her window and i shook her awake. Ane' was a small skinny chick so she fit trough the burglar bars so she go out and i had cut the fence already so we slipped trough the fence and we started walking on the way to Vaalwater again but this time it took very much longer that when i went alone because Ane' was scared and she could not walk as fast as i could so she slowed us down a bit. So this time we stopped at a road side resort because we herd that there are cars that come out there often that head to Pretoria so we waited and the first car that came out gave us a lift to Vaalwater then in Vaalwater we sold some clothes and we caught a taxi to the next town then in that town a man with a pick up gave us a lift to Warm-bath (Bella-Bella) and in Warm-bath we met a retired cop and he gave us a lift right to our front door. We only spent a day or two in Pretoria then her stepfather took us back again even though i had a very expensive camera with me we did not get any drugs in the time we were home. When we got back to the rehab center and all the other people saw us they all cheered me and her because we were not going to allow this place to suppress us just because they can. The point i tried to make by running away was that they will not stop us from being ourselves and that they will not treat us like slaves ether we are there to kick our drug addiction, we are not there to be walked over. So then after they searched us for drugs and after they did a drug test they saw we were clean but i still ended up in the bog box for two weeks for running away.  After I got out the dog box I decided that i wanted to leave the rehab because they started to give me a lot of trouble because i was the only person that got it right to run away and not just ones i got away twice! If the people running this rehab was interested in my recovery rather than my parents money they might of been able to help me but most people that work in rehabs don't have an idea what they are doing and they don't really care ether!

If you come check my next blog i will be telling you what happened after myself and Ane' left this rehab!
In Loving Memory Of Ane' Smit Died (2010)             

Do Rehabs Really Help Addicts Part 2

Hi I will be talking about my second rehab that I attended today.
I will not name the name of this rehab for personal reasons but if you know anything about the toughest rehabs in South-Africa you will know exactly what I am talking about! Being in hell would be nicer than being in this hell hole of a place. It’s hot as hell in the summer and it snows in the winter. No matter if its 100 degrees Celsius or -100 degrees Celsius they make you work and if you don't work you don't eat, no matter if you are still going through withdrawal or if you are dieing from cancer they don't give a SHIT.
The program at this rehab consists of work, work and more yes you guessed it more work! The question I would like to ask them is how can you put a recovering junkie that has not even been clean for a year in charge of another recovering junkie that is twice his age???? Now you have a bit of back round about this place let me start to tell you about my time in this Demonic hell hole. 

I had come out of my previous rehab and I was still addicted to heroin, crack and weed with out anybody knowing about it so I had a lot of freedom because every body thought I was clean. I was out of rehab for about six months before anybody started to notice that something was not right because every bodies money was going missing and things out the house was going missing (Electronics, Tools, Cell Phones, Money & even food out the freezer) and I was never at home I would leave at nine or ten in the morning and only return at ten or eleven at night, and the times I was home I would be falling asleep all the time or I would be moaning about pain because of withdrawals. So my mother started to check up on me to see what I was up to when I was not home and she used to go through my cupboards to see if I was hiding things. One day out of the blue when I got home my mother was waiting for me and she had a drug test in her hand, she wanted to test me so that is how I got bust eventually. That night my parents sat me down and they told me that they will be sending me to rehab again, I on the other hand was not very happy with that arrangement because I did not really want to stop  abusing drugs but I agreed to it in the end just to get them off my back. So they made the arrangements for me to go!
I did not want to go so badly that I even considered to run away, in the end of the day I did not run away just to make my parents happy. A day or two later we got in the car and we drove that 1000KM or so to the Karoo rehabilitation center. All the way to the rehab I was so paranoid because of every thing I had heard about this place so I was using weed just smoking all the time because I started to withdraw form heroin as I had used the day before last, even before I went in to the center I smoked about three joints just to chill a bit; I really did not want to do this. So eventually I went in and my parents left. Then hell started, they searched my bags and signed me in, they told me that I would have three days of grace as they called it. grace means that for three days they would leave you be so you could just get over the worst withdrawal symptoms but the very next day they woke me at 05h00 to start cleaning the building and I only slept like 45min the night before, my withdrawal was so bad that I actually soiled my pants and I was puking the whole night. So I was wondering what happened about the three days of grace well guess what they only say that to set you family’s minds at ease. In other words three days of grace was a lie! This place would not even give you anything for sleeping or for the withdrawal pain its a "cold turkey" rehab, they don't even have a nurse there its just one of the inmates that hand out the pills to people that have to take prescription pills. I would like to know what they would do if somebody heart stopped because of withdrawals and it has happened before and its not that the hospital is just down the road ether, the hospital is about half an hours drive away. They had a nurse for a couple of days but the nurse ran away with one of the inmates! Another stupid thing was that the guys was not allowed to look or talk to the ladies and if you did they would send you to "C.I." that stands for correctional intervention and believe you me that you would pray to rather go to prison then to c.i. This is what happened in c.i. When I got there they locked me in a cage that is about 1x1x1meter and they put you in there with only your undies on & they give you a blanket but they wet it with water and jaysfluied no mater if its winter  or summer and they give you a bucket to use as a toilet and all you get to eat if you lucky is less than a half a cup of soggy food ones a day and on top of all of that they play a tape with screeching sounds 24/7 so by the time you get out there your barking mad and you don't think striate anymore!
If you have ever worked with a recovering junkie you will know that they do not work with you if you have not won there trust or if they do not want to be clean! So at this place even if they don't like you or if you stand up for your self they will send you to c.i. just because they can and in c.i. if your not in the cage they make you do drills till you puke and then they keep going but the thing with me was I was playing ice hockey before I went there so I was very fit so they said to me they will make me puke and I laughed at them, they got irritated so they drilled the shit out of me and after every body was puking I was still going and they would just keep giving me more exercises and they could not get me to give up eventually five hours after we started the guy drilling us got so frustrated that he came running up to me and he kicked me in the ribs and he broke two or three ribs and just to spite him I got back up and started again. He could not handle that and he started to attack me and he broke two of my teeth, two blue eyes, broken nose & two or three broken ribs! The next day I asked them to go to the Dr because my teeth started to get infected then they would tell me there is a three day waiting period so I would wait, then three days later I would go ask again and I would see there is a new list for people who wants to see the Dr so then they would put my name on the list again  and tell me it will be three days again and it carried on like that for about four or five weeks and at the end of the day I just left it. When I was supposed to get my first weekend where my family could come they cancels it because my eyes were still blue so they would not let my parents see me and wile all of this was happening they would not even let my parents phone me I could not even talk to them. So eventually when they let my family come and visit I talked to them about every thing that happened and they decided to let me go home rather than letting me get killed in this place. There was somebody that got killed in this rehab they got chained to a gate in there underwear in the middle of winter and when he could not hold himself up any more he got choked to death by the chain and the rehab just covered it up just like every thing else that they do that they are not allowed to do! Every night when I pray, I pray that not even my worst enemy ever has to go through what I went through! And once again after leaving this rehab i was not even clean for 12 hours before i was high as a kite!
I will be writing about my last rehab in the next week.

Do Rehabs Realy Help Addicts

Hi Dean here the reason i am writing this post is because i was in three different rehabs and not one of them ever worked for me! My first rehab was only a six week program but it was more like signing in to a hotel because if you did not feel like doing anything you could stay in bed they would bring your food to you.
I only went through one or two days of withdrawals  in the six weeks i was there because the day i went in i met the two (Bad Apples) in there and they used to jump the fence at night and go to the dealer so every time they used i used so again for the first week and a half i was there i was not clean. Then they got bust with Heroin and they were kicked out of the center. So the day they left was the first day i had withdrawal symptoms. In this center if you have been there for three weeks you could carry money on yourself again for things like smokes and snacks, so i started by asking other people in the center for some cash  then i used to phone my friends then they would bring me some drugs. When all the people in the rehab started getting tiered of giving me money all the time i had been there for about three weeks, so i started carrying money around so i used that to get my fix from my friends.
When that money ran out i saw my opportunity, there was some one in the center that had a laptop so i took the laptop to get my fix for the rest of the time i was there. All the time i was there i was using Heroin, Crack & Marijuana! Every time they tested me i had a trick so that the test did not pick up that i had been using and my trick worked like a bomb. Right in the last couple of days i was there they bust my one friend smoking Marijuana and he split on me, that was the only way that they found out that i used in six weeks.
It just shows you how stupid people that run rehabs are that they cant even see when someone is so high on Heroin, Crack & Marijuana that they falling asleep and then so paranoid that i was eating my nails till the blood ran and i was stinking from the Marijuana.
90% of people who work in rehabs don't have a clue about drugs!!!!!!!!

This Post was all about my first rehab so come check again later in the week or next for the next two rehab stories they only get more shocking!   

Intro to Dean Life

Hi my name is Dean and i created this blog to give you some of my insights. I was a HEROIN&CRACK addict for more than 10 years of my life and i managed to kick my addiction! I have been sober now for more than 2 years, and believe me when i tell you that addiction was the hardest thing i have faced in my 24 years on this earth! In the 10 years i was addicted i have been to 3 different  rehab centers around South-Africa, from the best to the wurst. The best being like 5star hotels and the wurst being wurst than prison-belief me you do not want to spend a year or two of your life in a hell whole like that because you only come out there wurst than when you went in! I will still tell u all about that one day!
Me and my colleague realized that we have a wealth of knowledge on this subject and both of us have beat drug addiction, so we decided to create a website to help other people suffering from the same problem we had so we created the website called Http://www.recoveringjunkie.com  to pass on all the knowledge that we have gathered over more than 30 years and we know if your really interested in beating drug addiction! We can help you so just go on to our site and subscribe to the free 10 week mini coarse or write to us at info@recoveringjunkie.com . See u there!