the first thing that happens when you get out of detox and into the general population @ HH is get assigned to 1 of 4 counselors. There are 10-15 patients in each group. I was with a counselor we'll call Julia. She was about 55-60 years old I would guess and a recovering alcoholic. She had been sober for over 20 years. She had short blonde hair and she always wore black flowing clothes. I just remember she always had like a cape on, it was always black,and looked like it was made of silk or something very thin. I never saw her in another color. She had several candles burning in her room. She was kind of a zen person I guess, i am not even sure I know what that means but I hope it helps you understand how she was a little bit. I had a pretty cool group of patients. I was closest to a 20ish party girl names Jennifer. She lives in a hip skiing community and was a hardcore alcy and coke user. She had shown up one day with some freaky looking guy who was a nomad. He was a heroin addict, didn't have any money only the clothes on his back and really wouldn't talk to any one but Jennifer. She said that she wouldn't stay at HH unless he could stay as well. I am not sure how it happened, i think maybe her church volunteered to pay for him, but he was checked in. I don't think it was the place for him. He left after the first night. Jenn wanted to leave with him but we all talked her out of it. After a few days he quit hanging around and we never saw him again. Jenn was tall and blonde. Maybe 6' tall. She was not fat at all but I guess she had some problems with her weight. I remember some of the counselors following her to meals and making sure she ate and didn't throw it up afterwards. She would always comment on how fat she was. But she was real cool, kind of a hippie chick and she would hang out with the guys a lot. Groups met twice a day for 3 or 4 hours so you really got to know the people in your group. I can only remember the people in my group that stood out. There was Mick, he was an 18 year old kid with absolutely no self-confidence. He would alway talk about how hard it was as a teenager. He claimed to be an alcy, but I had my doubts that he was addicted to anything. I always thought he was faking for attention. He was tall and skinny and looked like he was just getting over some nasty acne. He always had atleast one big white zit on his cheek. He talked about how hard it was being fat all his life. We just couldn't believe it because he was a beanpole. Finally he showed us his drivers license. We all laughed so, so hard at the picture. He was huge, his face literally filled up the space for the picture. He felt really bad that we all laughed but it was so funny. I think he said he just quit eating after he dropped out of high school and lost all this weight. One time, he had an assignment to call his father who had divorced his mom when he was little. His dad was always hard on him about his weight. Mick had to call his dad and tell him all this junk about how he made his life harder and stuff. Mick acted like it was really hard for him. During session he went up to Julia and talked to her in private. After evening session I always hurried down to commom area to play spades with the boys. This time however, Julia asked me to stick around and speak with her, I noticed Mick was hanging back as well. Julia said "Mick is having a really hard time with his assignment. He said that he really feel closest to you and has a lot of respect for you and that it would help if you would go with him to use the phone and stay with him for moral support." You have got to be shitting me, this was the last thing I wanted to do at the end of a long day. But, ofcourse I agreed and went down to the phone with Mick. He called and couldn't get a hold of him, I said leave a message for him to call you back but Mick wouldn't. He was all excited to try again the next night. He thought that I would sit with him and talk now since he hadn't talked to his dad, but I was out of there and into a card game 2 minutes later. I could tell it hurt Mick's feelings and that made me feel bad. but I also thought maybe he will find some one else for support. He didn't, well not for a while any way. The rest of our group consisted of Jane a 19 year old hottie who was a heroin slammer. She worked at a ski resort and all the guys were trying to score with her. Jamie a hard core alcy who was a reporter at a major newpaper in the area. Cindy, a total hot mom from Pheonix AZ who was on painkillers, she was getting major pills from a doctor. TJ, he was kind of a grunge dude who liked heroin a lot. He was a ski bum and had the inside track on scoring with Jane. Of course any sexual activity at all would get you kicked out so they were pretty sneaky. the last person I remember was a lady named Nancy, she was a mormon housewife maybe 40 years old. She had 4 or 5 kids and was very into her church. Then one day she just went nuts and bought a bottle of Vodka and started drinking. Her family didn't know what to do. She showed no warning signs, she just went nuts. Her family finally took all her alcohol away and kept someone home all the time to watch her, but she snuck some rubbing alcohol and started drinkingit and ended up in the hospital. There was more to her story I just can't remember all of it. Really weird.
I will pick up from there next time.
peace
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