Drug Treatment Programs
Essay by people • July 8, 2011 • Essay • 367 Words (2 Pages) • 1,774 Views
Eastwood Clinics is a residential treatment program that I visited frequently when my stepbrother was a patient there for his addiction to heroin. The clinic represents true life and it is not like club med that others advertise. The main floor of this small run down building has a few offices and a small kitchen, furnished just like a restaurant where 3 to 4 patients cook for every staff member and other patients. The upstairs is where the patients sleep and has roughly 12 to 14 rooms with 4 to 5 beds in each room. The bathroom is a community restroom with 3 showers and 4 toilets that are cleaned daily by patients. In the basement, one big meeting room where they hold organized outside NA and AA meetings where the every patient must attend. Eastwood clinics were based on their group meetings and guest speakers, 2 to 3 speakers daily and 3 to 4 group meetings a day with a counselor who is a recovering addict himself. It is an all male facility, small and effective.
I would highly recommend Eastwood Clinics; it is a residential program with a minimum stay of 21 days. The patients are given responsibilities and daily jobs that must be completed every day, cooking, cleaning and laundry, things in normal outside life. Patients must be awake at 7:00am, have breakfast at 8:00am and then it is meetings and education all day until 9:00pm with a one hour break during the day and lights out at 11:00pm. The education and meetings are repetitious day in and day out, outside speakers come in everyday and tell their life stories about using drugs and the things they did while using drugs. They also told them how they recovered which gave my stepbrother hope that he too could recover. I sat in on a few meetings with him and all I can say was it was more than shocking and made me think twice about using any type of drugs. Their testimonies had a double motivator, fear and hope. My stepbrother managed to stay clean for two years, many other facilities failed. Unfortunately, Matt my stepbrother's next relapse he overdosed and passed away.
...
...