I just had occasion to reformat my novel Saint Mary Blue and make it available again as both Kindle and trade paperback. To do that I had to read it again. It is the story of a group of patients going through treatment at Saint Mary's Rehabilitation Center in Minneapolis. I wrote it one year after researching this novel the hard way and graduating from Saint Mary's. That particular rehab is now owned by Fairview Rehabilitation Services. That may have changed but inside it's business as usual: putting down the stuff and relearning How To Be A Human.
Working on the republication of this work brought it all back from my nightmarish flirting with suicide, the intervention, my foggy sick arrival at rehab, and my stumbling first days fencing with the disease of addiction, with the rehab staff, with my fellow group members, and even with myself. The work is fiction but there is nothing fictional about it. In a few days I will be celebrating my 38th anniversary clean and sober. I owe a very large part of that success to rehab and to its follow-up program.
There are all kinds of rehabilitation facilities, and of all degrees of quality. If you want to get clean, if you want to get sober, and if you want to stay that way, a professional treatment center can give you one hell of a good start. An incompetent treatment center is often worse than no treatment at all. At the time I thought rehab was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Through a lot of pain and much humility I found that it gave me back my life, my family, my career, hope, tears, love, and laughter: A good deal at any price.
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