All patients agreed to tell their stories for this article; all names have been changed.

Anne wanted to turn over a new leaf. She was tired of depression and suicidal thoughts. She was tired of the mood swings that devastated her family, especially her two kids.

Desperate, she came up with a plan. No more depressed mom. No more frightening thoughts. For the sake of her family, she decided, she’d dull the emotional pain with drugs.

It made strange sense at the time. After all, a happy mom meant happy kids. Numbing herself would surely make everything all better, she felt.

Getting drugs wasn’t difficult for the cherub-faced, middle-aged homemaker with curly brown hair. She suffered from Fibromyalgia, and the doctors were happy to give her prescription medication for the pain. “I went to Doctor Feel Good,” she said.

He prescribed round patches the size of silver dollars, each filled with pain medication. Anne was supposed to stick one to her body every few days, but it didn’t take long for her resistance to grow. Soon she needed more and more patches to keep the dark thoughts at bay. “I didn’t think I could live without the pain medication,” she said.

Caught in a desperate cycle, she started cutting the patches open, looking for ways to get relief faster. Her chances of overdosing exploded. She easily could have died. “I knew I had a problem the first time I started cutting those puppies open,” she admitted, “but it was difficult to come out of denial because it was all legal. After all, the doctor gave it to me.”

But Anne had to face the hard truth when she could no longer get enough pain medication to dull her emotions. Hitting bottom, she told her doctor about her addiction and made arrangements to come to Lake Chelan Community Hospital’s Addiction Recovery Center (ARC).

Two months ago, Anne sat in a circle with four other alcohol and drug addicts. They came to Chelan to confront their worst fears and pick up the pieces of their lives. Each faced chaos. Each clung to one thing. Hope.

Holding a clipboard and dressed in a red plaid shirt, Anne pointed to her heart. “The things I’m learning are beginning to go here,” she said. “And I’m beginning to hope and believe there’s a life out there free of pain.”

About Addiction Recovery Center
The hospital’s ARC started about 20 years ago with a few beds on the first floor. Now it’s one of a handful of its kind in this part of the state. Wenatchee has one addiction recovery center, and there are two in Spokane; although none of them are hospital-based. The addiction recovery unit at Spokane’s Deaconess Hospital closed two months ago.

“Our program’s goal is to create a safe environment where people in trouble can learn with others in the same boat,” said Larry Peterson, Chelan hospital administrator. “They come here full of fear. We want them to leave with hope, a glimmer that there is a way out.”

A surprising number of patients find the way. According to Peterson, 62 percent of the program graduates are sober a year later. “If we had that high a success rate with lung cancer or AIDS, it would be a miracle,” he said.

Inpatients can go through detoxification in the medical/surgical unit. From there they move to the recovery center, where they participate in intensive counseling and education for about three weeks. “The center’s objective is to help each patient achieve sobriety and give them all the tools we can offer,” said Donna Nelson, clinical supervisor of ARC.

The hospital is very committed to its addiction recovery program, said Peterson. One and a half years ago, it was relocated to a third floor space once used for storage. Funded by bonds and costing about $130,000, according to Peterson, the new unit looks like a typical vacation condo - hardwood floors, upholstered chairs, oil paintings on the walls. There are three bedrooms, sleeping six total, and a kitchen/dining area. It smells like coffee.

Hitting Bottom
“With no retired cider [alcohol], this stuff is lifeblood,” said Mike*, holding up his coffee mug. A big, burly man with rolled up jeans, long chestnut hair and a mountain-man beard, he introduces himself as an alcoholic and addict. His grip is like a grizzly’s.

Mike stole his first drink from the family’s liquor cabinet when he was 15. By 18 he was doing pot. By 22 he had experience with every drug on the street.

Working as a lumberjack, he said the whiskey and drugs kept him going, pushed him up those mountains. He didn’t think he had a problem. Then he got hurt in the woods. He broke his leg, injured his shoulder and lost his job. Sitting around his house, Mike nursed pitchers of beer and smoked pot. “I started getting more and more depressed,” he said.

About two years ago, he had two DUIs, his marriage was falling apart and he still couldn’t work. He spent his days at the bar. He went to court-ordered Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings but drank all the way home.

Within six more months, he carried whiskey with him wherever he went. “I was drinking 100% Southern Comfort like bottles of pop,” he said. “I’d puke in the morning, take a couple shots, puke more, be drunk by 10 or 11 in the morning. I even started wetting my pants. I knew I was in trouble and tried stopping everyday, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have guts to do treatment.”

Then, coming home from the liquor store one evening, he looked in his rear view mirror and saw flashing blue lights. Now, he knew, he’d be forced to get treatment. “Before I even got out of the car,” he said, “I told the cop thank you. Thank you. Thank you for saving my life.”

More than 17,000 people in the United States died in alcohol-related car crashes in 2001, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. It also reported 19,358 alcohol-induced deaths, not including automobile accidents, in 2000.

It’s estimated that alcohol intoxication is associated with 40 to 50 percent of traffic fatalities, 25 to 35 percent of non-fatal traffic accidents, 64 percent of fires and burns and 20 percent of completed suicides, reported the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

What are the chances of getting sober and improving your odds?
It depends. If a person wanders into an addiction support group meeting, like AA or Narcotics Anonymous (NA), his or her outlook isn’t good. Maybe about 12 or 14 percent will be sober in a year, said Milt Parham, ARC intake coordinator, much less than the hospital’s 62 percent success rate.

Another factor that boosts chances of sustained recovery is six months to a year of structured outpatient counseling after release from the hospital. Each patient is encouraged and set up with an after-care program. They’re also encouraged to get involved with some kind of support group, such as AA, where they’ll have sponsors to help them through the rough spots.

An ARC Graduate tells his story
Chief, a graduate of Lake Chelan Community Hospital’s ARC, has almost two years of sobriety under his belt. The 63-year-old with slicked back gray hair is finishing his third quarter in Wenatchee Valley College’s chemical dependency counseling program. He’s a firm believer in treatment.

Chief took his first drink when he was almost 15. He and some family members were coming home at 1 a.m. after working a shift at the nearby oil-drilling rig. Chief sat in the back seat feeling very satisfied. Besides going to school, he was helping out the family, working on a five-man drilling crew.

“You worked like a man, have a beer like a man,” urged one of his family members, passing back a can. After the third prompting, Chief took him up on the offer. It was a rite of passage, a slap on the back for a job well done.

He kept drinking but didn’t see it as a problem. After enlisting in the Navy, he tended bar. “I’m very familiar with alcohol,” he said.

Things starting getting rougher in the 70’s. Chief retired from the Navy, trained as a farrier, someone who shoes horses, and started a new career. Unfortunately, he woke up one morning with emphysema. Struggling to breathe, he hung up the horseshoes and went on disability.

“They said I couldn’t earn any money and still get disability checks,” he said. At first he sat with idle hands, having a drink around dinner time. Before long he poured the drink an hour before dinner, then two. Soon he was drinking by noon, and eventually he grabbed the Black Velvet whiskey bottle as soon as his feet hit the floor each morning.

He bought it by the case and was going through three half- gallons in two days.
“Somewhere along the line I stopped living to drink and started drinking to live,” he said.

The last straw came when the Veterans’ organization he volunteered with held a mid-winter conference in Wenatchee. Wanting to be at his best, Chief didn’t take a drink that day. In the evening, he sat down to dinner; 17 students who were receiving awards sat across the table from him. Chief tried to eat his meal, but he couldn’t stop shaking from the withdrawal. He couldn’t take a bite. He couldn’t hold his cup.

“I was embarrassed,” he said. “I was humiliated. A friend leaned over and asked if I was okay, but all I could do was lean back and put my hands in my lap.”
“I made up my mind that that was it.”

He called his doctor and made an appointment to go through detoxification at Lake Chelan Community Hospital. From there, he moved upstairs to the addiction recovery center. It was difficult at first, he admitted. He was there to get sober, not sit through classes and counseling sessions. “I didn’t expect to learn anything,” he said.

But that changed. The things taught and talked about started to sink in. He became an active participant.

When he returned home after treatment, there was still a half gallon bottle of whiskey on the counter. Half an inch sat at the bottle’s bottom, and his wife asked him what to do with it. “Pour it down the drain,” he told her.

She handed him the bottle instead. Determined, he poured the whiskey down the kitchen sink; he hasn’t had a drink since.

“An alcoholic always has the urge to drink,” he said. “An addiction is an addiction.”
“The urge is sometimes overwhelming, but it’s always there. I could walk out of here and in a minute be at the liquor store buying a bottle. It takes a lot of sponsorship and support to overcome the power of alcohol. You always have to be on guard; it doesn’t matter it you’ve been sober a day or 25 years. It’s the same thing.”

And when the urge comes? Chief goes outside and looks to the east. It’s where the sun rises, he explained, and he believes it’s the giver of all life. In the Native American way of prayer, Chief, part Commache and part Cherokee with some Irish thrown in, turns the desire to drink over to his Creator.

“The urge to drink passes,” he said. “Sometimes in a second. Sometimes in minutes. Sometimes in hours.”

ARC Education Program
The class going on in ARC today is about relapse. “What are the signs you’re going to start drinking again?” asked the counselor, a recovering alcoholic with several years of sobriety. She wrote lists across the white board at the front of the room. The five patients offered suggestions and shared experiences.

Education is a crucial part of the hospital’s intensive inpatient program. The program provides a 24-hour structured environment with regular treatment-oriented activities seven days a week. Individual sessions are scheduled at least twice a week, and family members are encouraged to participate in the recovery process by attending a weekend family program.

Chances of sustained sobriety skyrocket when patients’ families are involved in the healing process, said Peterson. According to two studies, family involvement and support boosts chances of sobriety after one year by at least 16 percent, sometimes by as much as 40 percent.
 
This fall, Anne’s son skipped his first home football game of the season to come to an ARC weekend counseling session. Sitting next to his mom, he shared his feelings with her for the first time. “I missed out on things because you were so out of it,” he told her.

Anne hopes those words were healing for both of them. “He was right,” she said. “I’d give the world to go back and do it over, but I can’t. I can’t change the past. The only thing I can do is live differently from this day forth.”

Regular group counseling sessions are a must as well, said Peterson. In group sessions, patients discover their dark secrets are similar to those others hide. They learn from one another and start to trust a little. “Alcoholism crosses all the boundaries,” said Peterson. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a woman dripping gold and drinking wine or a grizzly old man chugging aftershave lotion, we’re all in the same boat.”

The hospital uses a multi-disciplinary team approach. Certified counselors, nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, dieticians and activity therapists, as well as a psychologist and psychiatrist, work together to help patients.

A large percentage of patients have problems other than addiction, and the team addresses those. When a person first comes to the hospital, healthcare workers assess him or her. They look at his family, health and mental histories, and then a counselor uses the information to work with the patient and develop a treatment plan.
Because ARC is part of the hospital’s Behavioral Care Services, a psychologist and a psychiatrist are available if a patient has emotional health issues. “Drugs and alcohol are like a magnifying glass,” said Peterson. “They make other problems bigger. We try to offer a holistic approach, to heal the mind, body and spirit.”

Fighting for her life
Caroline*, an attractive patient wearing a stylish floral dress and gold earrings, grew up with a mentally ill mother and a long parade of father figures. They came in and out of the picture like extras in a movie. Somewhere along the line she was sexually abused.

Even as a thirty-something suburban housewife, an affluent wife of a pilot, the past continued to plague her. She started medicating the dark feelings away. She tried it all: food, shopping, drugs, alcohol. “I’ve probably used all the things you can use and abuse,” she said with a sigh. “I felt so raw and vulnerable.”

A few months ago, Caroline abused a narcotic a doctor had prescribed for a physical condition. She lost control, turning combative and aggressive. She threw things. She slapped and hit her husband.

He called the police, and she was arrested. “I experienced my biggest nightmare,” she said.

Caroline spent two nights in jail. During that time her husband decided to divorce her; he also requested a restraining order. But it didn’t click, said Caroline. She went back home to get her things. After her husband threw out a suitcase of negligees and toiletries, she started banging on the front door. He called the police again, and when they got there, she lost control again. And consciousness.

She ended up in the hospital, a place she would have once volunteered. This time she was dressed in a jumpsuit that said “county prisoner.” She was shackled and wearing handcuffs.

After being treated, she was taken back to jail where a previous physical condition flared. She couldn’t stop throwing up, and back she went to the hospital. “This time I wasn’t just in prison wear,” she said. “I was covered in my own waste and vomit.”

Lying in a hospital bed, a guard outside her door, Caroline felt she’d reached the end. How could she, a well-off, successful woman, be in this position? She finally admitted she was an addict, then and there. “I really begged God to step in,” she said. “I left the decision to him. If I lived I would know I had a purpose. I would fight for my life.”

After recovering and being released from jail the second time, Caroline immediately started looking for a treatment center.  She ended up in Chelan.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do after this,” she admitted, “but I’m more confident and hopeful. Before I believed I was damaged goods. Now I feel relief and freedom.”

She’ll need those good feelings. When the patients walk out of the hospital, they’ll take some of the hardest steps they’ll ever walk. Some face criminal charges. Their families are a mess or gone. Others have lost their jobs and friends. Drugs and alcohol will still be there. It’s a frightening world outside the safety of ARC.

“Detox doesn’t cure,” said Peterson. “It’s sustained sober that’s hard.”

Donna Nelson agrees. “When the patients leave, it’s not the end. It’s just the beginning. When they get out in the real world, that’s when they put sobriety to the test. They have to put the tools to work, face the world and face alcohol or drugs.”

An alcoholic's story
When forty-one year old John* leaves the center he’ll face the court systems. He was ordered to come to the addiction recovery center after his second DUI.

John knew he was an alcoholic from the time he was 15, he said. “I was at a drive-in movie, and when I took that first drink, I was hooked. It was like flipping on a light. I never slowed down, just kept drinking.”

He owned an auto repair business and was able to cover his problem for years, hiding his bottles around the house. He didn’t drink in public, and he only bought a couple bottles at a time. He thought he was handling things fine.

Then, last December, he got his first DUI. He was driving 85 miles an hour in a 20-MPH zone, but his lawyer worked a deal. If John agreed to outpatient treatment and attended regular Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, he  had to serve only five years of probation. He was also ordered to use an ignition interlock system.

Interlock devices are installed in a person’s car, and he or she must blow into it before turning the key in the ignition. The machines measure the amount of alcohol on a person’s breath, and the information is recorded in a computer. If there’s too much alcohol, the car won’t start.

But John managed to thwart the system, he said. He figured out how to trick the computer. He kept driving drunk and didn’t go to any meetings. Then, after nine months, his counselor called and told him that if he wanted to stay out of jail, he needed to attend eight  meetings in the next two weeks.

John agreed, but before going to the first meeting, he drove into the woods with some vodka. He needed to get primed for the meeting, he said.

After getting good and drunk, he tricked the interlock system, but about a mile from the meeting, the device started beeping. It was a random test where the person driving has to breathe into the unit without stopping the vehicle. He knew he couldn’t pass the test, and his “method” of beating the system wouldn’t work this time.

Panicked, he stuck the end of the unit out his truck window. Maybe the air blowing through it would fool the computer, he thought. He raced faster and faster down the mountain road, going 70 miles an hour, trying to force more air through the hose. His eyes were on the gauge. It might just work, he thought.

But he wasn’t watching the road. When the toolbox from the back of his truck flew over the front window, it caught his attention. It was too late. He was flying as well. His truck flipped four times, and he ended up over the bank, in the river. His face hit the windshield, and he woke up in the hospital, on a ventilator and with a tube down his throat.

“Next thing I knew I was here,” he said, looking around Chelan’s addiction recovery unit.

John lost his family, his house, his marriage and his business. Now he’s hoping for a clean start. “There are still going to be problems,” he said. “But I have hope for a quality life instead of the hole I was in.”

Finding hope and making changes
Hope is what this program is all about, said Hospital Administrator Larry Peterson. He knows the horrors of addiction first hand.

Alcohol ruled his life for years. At one point he had a head-on collision going 70 mph. During the five months he recovered in the hospital, he lost everything important to him, he said. His brother died in a house fire. He lost his family, his restaurant business and his self esteem.

Entertaining thoughts of suicide, Peterson ended up on skid row in Portland. But eventually, he made it to a treatment center. He quit drinking, turned his life around and went back to school.

In 1977, using a crutch and a cane, Peterson was working on his masters degree in business administration and running low on money. His vocational rehab counselor suggested he become a counselor as well. Within a couple years, Peterson had a job as a drug and alcohol counselor in Portland, Oregon. In 1980, he opened an adolescent drug and alcohol recovery program and, after running it, he was asked to open similar programs in Eugene, Oregon and Spokane.

From there he became a hospital administrator in Sacramento, starting its addiction recovery program, the first in California. Then he and a team helped set up the Betty Ford Clinic, the second of its kind in the state.

Now he’s dedicated to Chelan’s program. “I’m really invested in recovery,” said Peterson. “For me it’s such a big part of my life.

“I want people to know if they have a problem, or if they’re living with someone who has a problem, they can call. Assessment is free. They’ve got nothing to lose. We’ll try to find them help, here or somewhere else, with money or without money.

“I want people to know there is hope. It does work. True miracles happen in these programs.”

Outpatient treatment is also available at Lake Chelan Community Hospital, and an outreach program has recently opened in Wenatchee. For more information about the hospital’s addiction recovery programs, inpatient or outpatient, call 1-800-233-0045 or 509-682-2948.

*Names of all patients in ARC have been changed.  They signed releases agreeing to tell their stories to the article's writer.

Story written by Celeste Thomas posted by permission of The Lake Chelan Mirror.

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