Rehab

Creosote de Tucson, a resort for addicts

In the late 1990s, following the lead of institutions such as Hazlden and the Betty Ford Clinic, chemical dependency treatment centers began to sprout up across the country, turning over a multi-billion dollar industry. Buttressed by his father’s medical insurance plan, Lethe was admitted to one of these new-fangled 30-day treatment programs.

In the foothills of the Sonoran Desert, with over 35 acres of beautiful desert landscape, scenic hiking trails, a luxurious swimming pool, Native American mosaics, interlacing cactus gardens and ornate fountains, reposed Creosote de Tucson. Yoga instruction was offered daily. Massage therapy. Group therapy. Nature excursions. Individual counseling. And in addition: how to quit smoking, anger management, the skills of recovery, and the Twelve Steps.

Despite all of the services in modern addiction treatment that were offered at Creosote, most male and female patients gravitated to the smoking tables, which were the hubs of socialization. There they loafed on the benches most of the day, chain-smoking and talking about what they were going to do when they finally got out of rehab. Lethe, who made friends quickly, was offered a place to stay after treatment by another patient.

Some of the characters at Creosote

Out by the smoking tables, a lanky, unshaven patient named Morris thrummed on his guitar and sang country songs in the moonlight. Around eleven o’clock, Nurse Debra came out to tell him to go to bed, but he cradled his rickety guitar in his arms and kept on singing, “Oh, Ida Red, Ida Red, don’t you—don’t you do this again . . .”

From his cabin, Lethe could hear the sonorous string of laments. He always thought of Morris as a semi-talented country singer. Then, one night, Lethe couldn’t sleep and he went over to the smoking table and listened to Morris for awhile. He realized that the songs he had been listening to night after night didn’t make any sense. He had been hearing the melodies, but now, sitting next to Morris, he heard the words. There were a couple lines in the chorus that made some mention of a gal from the state of Texas or Louisiana, but everything after that was a bunch of gibberish. It seemed to Lethe that Morris was a little crazy. “I make them up as I go along,” Morris said. “I’m a television writer.”

“Really?” Lethe wanted to know.

“Have you ever seen NYPD Blue? I wrote the first season.”

“So then, you’re famous.”

“No, just a television writer. Hollywood is filled with them.”

“How did you end up here?”

“Too much Ritalin. 120 mg a day. I snorted it while I was working on scripts.”

Morris wasn’t the only patient who used to have a job in Hollywood. There was an ex-movie director at Creosote, a bald-headed man in his late fifties, who was there for depression. Lethe asked him what it was like to live in Hollywood. The ex-movie director talked about Studio 54 and Andy Warhol.

“So you never took any drugs?” Lethe asked.

“You kidding me? I did tons of drugs. But it was different back then. Everybody did drugs in the 70’s and 80’s.”

The movie director was always paired up with Chesterfield from Palm Beach. Chesterfield was nicknamed Mr. Bronze because his face was permanently copper-toned. His family owned a huge pharmaceutical company, and evidently, he never worked a day in his life. He was in his early thirties and this was his twelfth stay at Creosote de Tucson. Chesterfield had a sociable, carefree, casual relationship to the world, and was endearing and even charming until one glimpsed into the private man’s infinite self-delusion.

Lethe often talked with Chesterfield about his addiction. “I can’t do anything about it,” he used to say. “When you’re addicted to drugs, you just have to accept the fact that it’s never going to change. You’ll always be an addict. That’s what they say, right? They say no matter how much clean time you have, you’ll never be ‘cured’. I believe that man. I really believe it.”

He lit up a cigarette. Pall Malls, he smoked.

“I know when I go back to Palm Springs my disease will be waiting for me. That’s why I always keep three bottles of Valium under my mattress.”

In a good-natured way, he patted Lethe on the back, saying, “We’ll never be cured buddy. Never.”

A Group Consensus

On his twenty-seventh day of treatment (one day before completion), Lethe was told to report to his case-manager’s office. The confidential air of this order gave Lethe cause to suspect that he was being summoned for no small potatoes. As he quickened his steps along the tiled walkway, he tried to guess what he could have done wrong. Since the day he arrived at Creosote, he thought he had done everything perfectly. He was expecting to leave in less then a week.

When he entered the office, Lethe found six people gathered in a circle looking as if they were about to do a séance. They had sly smiles planted on their lips and were questionably tranquil. He picked out his psychiatrist, the director of the program, his parents who must have flown in that morning, his case-manager, and the yoga instructor. (What was the yoga instructor doing there?)

His father’s face was comical. He looked foolish and proud—just what Don Quixote must have looked like whenever he was showing Sancho Panza that he was superior.

Similarly, the Doctor saw that his son had an asinine expression on his face; Lethe was trying to undermine his authority again. To avoid looking at him, the Doctor turned his attention to the case-manager. From all sides, she was a rather large woman, ornamented with a big, bright flower dress.

“Today is a very important day in your treatment, Lethe.” She said.

Lethe glanced at his mother who was hunched over in her wheel chair, spittle dripping down her chin as usual. Her face was angled to the floor with her small black pupils peering up at him in confused apprehension.

The case-manager resumed: “Let me ask you a question, Lethe. Have you thought about your plans after treatment?”

“I plan to live on the West Coast.”

The psychiatrist and the Director exchanged a smile.

“I see,” the case-manager said, nodding her head incredulously, “the West Coast.”

“First we want you to consider,” she handed him a glossy brochure showing a wooded area with cabins and young men walking on a nature trail, “Camp Wo-tuck-a-batche.”

“What language is that?”

“I’m not sure, Lethe. Now your parents arrived here less than an hour ago and I have been talking to them about this program. This is an outstanding program for young people.”

Lethe examined the brochure.

“The Camp is located in the Nebraska backcountry,” the yoga instructor pointed out.

“Hey, there’re only guys in these pictures,” Lethe observed.

“Yes, this is a male-only program.” Another voice gave the affirmation.

Lethe bolted upright in his chair, “Nobody can make me go here.”

“Now Lethe,” the Cuban psychiatrist chimed in, “Your specific medical history requires a great deal of attention. Twenty-eight days is not enough to make a difference in your life-habits. Over the course of your stay here, we have diagnosed you with a number of other disorders including manic-depression, infantile grandiosity syndrome, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Camp Wo-tuck-a-batche has an outstanding reputation in helping adolescents deal with these issues. We feel that you would really thrive in an environment like this, and it would only be six or eight months before you could go home.”

“Six or eight months?”

“Lethe,” the Doctor’s voice was imperious. “You must do this program. There is no choice in the matter.”

“I’m not doing it! You’re not sending me to that place. I already told you I’m going to the West Coast.”

The Director of the program, who had been silent up to this point, now spoke. “I’m afraid, Lethe, if that is your final decision we are going to have to ask you to leave Creosote.”

“What?”

“Unless you agree to the treatment plan we have outlined here, I’m afraid we’ll be forced to give you an unsuccessful discharge.”

“But that’s absurd. We’re in the middle of the desert. Where am I supposed to go?”

“Go to Camp Wo-tuck-a-batche,” the room chanted.

Chesterfield and the ex-movie director help out

Lethe marched to the men’s smoking table, and venting his spleen, said, “Can you believe they’re just going to put me out on the curb?”

“When?” They asked.

“Tomorrow.”

The patients commiserated with the frustrated youth. They patted him on the back and offered him cigarettes. Then Chesterfield said, “Where would you like to go?”

“I was planning to go to the West Coast but now I’m going to be stuck here in Tucson.”

“Not if we buy you a plane ticket,” said the ex-movie director, glancing sidelong at his buddy Chesterfield.

“How does San Francisco sound?”

“Who’s going to buy me a ticket?”

“We are.”

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