Out of the Darkness

by Ted Arnold content editor

Looking at how the Traverse City community approaches addiction treatment and rehabilitation

Photos: T. Arnold

espite its dangers, addiction has long been a dinner-table taboo, a disease impossible to put into words. The process of recovery is a long and often hidden road, but not one that can be taken alone. Many services exist to help addicts recover and take important steps toward sobriety. Here in Traverse City, Addiction Treatment Services (ATS) has been providing assistance with recovery for over 40 years. ATS offers a variety of services including a detox facility, residential services, and outpatient support. Dan Rockne, Access Manager at ATS, who describes his job as “communication and coordination.” Rockne is responsible for fielding calls from clients seeking help, as well as family members looking for ways to support their loved ones. Beyond that, he works internally to determine what kind of care someone will need. Rockne has access to a powerful tool when working with clients: he has personally felt the toll of addiction. For many drug and alcohol counselors, experience in recovery allows them to “look across as opposed to look down, it allows me to relate, and it’s the most disarming thing that I can say to anyone.” Rockne’s first task is to “figure out: What are they using? How much are they using? Do they have other kinds of issues that are going on, as far as legal, social, medical?” Then, his team can figure out what it is going to take to treat them, and will they be safe to bring in? Treat-

Dment varies depending on what substances someone is using, how frequently they’re using them, and what sort of home environment someone is coming from. Rockne notes that having “people around you that are safe and supportive” is a very different recovery experience than “coming from a pretty chaotic environment,” and as such, is something the team needs to factor in. As a result of this process, ATS can offer a full spectrum of care, allowing them to properly treat anyone who comes in. According to Rockne, ATS uses their detox facility anytime that someone is using a substance and “develops a chemical dependence in their body.” The facility is designed so that ATS can first assess and then provide constant care and observation to someone as they are medically withdrawn from those substances. This process is incredibly dangerous outside of supervision. Withdrawal from heroin is “like having the worst flu of your life for about 10 days,” and someone with a dependence on alcohol will get a condition called the delirium tremens, when they are “liable to be hypertensive, be very ill, potentially have a seizure, [or] potentially die.” The facility is “the best, most structured environment we can keep them in. They’re under observation. If anything goes south and we don’t have the capability to take care of it here, they’re in the best position to go directly from our

facility to the hospital.” At the same time, some people will only have mild symptoms and will soon move to the next level of care. After the detox program, ATS offers residential services at varying levels of supervision. The first level is highly supervised, where residents do a 30 day stay, and do “intensive therapy with a designated therapist when they come in, and then they’re also doing kind of group work and developing those social interactions that they maybe didn’t have or missed out on while they were using.” The lower level is called recovery housing, which is a less structured environment where there is an expectation of maintaining sobriety, and of either employment or volunteering. The benefit of this style is that “they’re living a normal life where they come back at the end of the day and they stay in a sober environment.” The lowest level is outpatient services, which “usually involves some sort of group component, and some sort of individual component [where] clients will go to our outpatient facilities.” For those who have fought addiction, like Patricia Steele, the idea that someone might see their struggle is “horrible and terribly embarrassing.” Her family was very successful, but everybody drank, and Steele was cursed by “the gene of alcoholism.” As time went on, Steele slowly developed a dependency on alcohol, “my drinking increased and it went from once in a while on the weekends to regularly on the weekends, to once in a while during the week, to regularly during the week, all that kind of stuff.” By the time Steele reached her forties, she had experienced “a lot of ups and downs and my patterns of reaching for it had increased. I was drinking it for all kinds of reasons.” At that point “my second husband said to me ‘I think you need to slow down on your drinking’ and it wasn’t until then that I realized I couldn’t. So the more I tried, the more I found I couldn’t, the more people wanted me to, the more I began to lie about it, the more I began to sneak alcohol, the more alcohol became an obsession for me, the more it started ruling my days.” Following a citation for driving under the influence of alcohol, Steele began to seek help. Yet, after three trips to rehab, she still found herself coming back for a drink. In rehab she would “relax and let my guard down a little bit, I would feel comfortable with other

people in the same circumstance. I would go to AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] with other people in the same circumstances and feel comfortable. But when I would go home, whether I was there for a month, or, in one place, three months, it was like the world expected me to be fixed.” However, she wasn’t fixed, and she found herself “not being able to talk about it, not being able to deal with it, not having the courage to say ‘no, I still want a drink’ or ‘yes, I’m still drinking.’” Then Steele’s world flipped upside-down. On December 12, 2007, Steele got into an argument with a friend about her drinking. She left their house in anger, and, on her way home, her car crossed the yellow line and hit another car head on. The driver was killed and the other passenger became severely injured. Steele woke up days later in the hospital, having gone through several surgeries. Her first memory is of “my kids standing at the foot of my bed. I can remember the looks on their faces that were devastating.” Two weeks later, Steele was taken to prison, and later sen “I realized I couldn’t. The tenced to seven years in jail. As a result, Steele became more I tried, the more I found I forced into sobriety. In couldn’t, the more people want- prison, Steele was required ed me to, the more I began to lie about it, the more I began to to attend AA meetings, where she met a group of women who “seemed to see sneak alcohol, the more alcohol how broken I was and how became an obsession for me, the more it started ruling my days.” much I hurt, how scared I was and all of those things. And they were the ones who finally taught me that I could let down my guard [and] I could be me.” Steele’s mentor in prison was “this wonderful grandmotherly type woman. She would say to me, ‘Patty, if you could just put down your shame and your guilt just for a little while, you would have some room for healing, but you have to do that.’” After Steele’s release from prison, she devoted herself to becoming a drug and alcohol counselor, eventually landing at ATS, using her experience to help others with their struggle. Recovery looks and feels different for everyone, and it’s key to remember that addiction is “not just a black and white thing.” Everyone struggles differently, and recovers differently. Addiction is present everywhere, lurking just below the surface. Rockne thinks “we need to be sending the message of hope, and that if someone’s breathing, they’ve got a chance, and that even as a young person, even high schoolers, they can get, and stay [sober] if they want to.” //