I was given Valium to come off the booze. I started feeling better after a couple of days. The house was filled with talk of recovery.The addicts ranged  from gambling to heroin addicts, eating disorders, psychosis; what a mixture we had. We all suffered from some sort of life warping problems, Men and women alike, black, colored, white, christian, Hindu; the disease of addiction does not discriminate.
I hate the unknown and here i was in a house of about thirty strangers.. the weird thing was that the majority of them seemed happy. I could not fathom how or why. It was apparent that none of them were on drugs, they had "sparkly eye syndrome." Quite unnerving.
My instructions were to do as i was told and listen to my buddy. A buddy is allocated to each newcomer, he is a fellow addict who's job it is to show you the ropes and point you in the right direction when the bell rings... the bell rings a lot. I began to get a jist of how Pavlov's dogs felt.
It takes a bit of time to get into the routine and begin doing the course in earnest. The rehab teaches the 12 steps to recovery developed by Bill and Bob who were themselves raging alcoholics.It is a hell of a lot of written work, making you dig deeper and deeper into your cave of fear and secrets.. not at all pleasant.

After about 2 weeks i was feeling remarkably different. Not only was i sober but my "anxiety monkey" was being kept at bay. Was it possible that this program could work. I had been searching for years to find a cure for my isolated, alone feeling.. could this be the answer i was looking for ? I had to find out, this shit could save my life and change everything. I resolved to stay and find out.