Problem? What Problem? - Part Two

by Jacqueline Sewall Golden

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The Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, just south of Palm Springs, was established for the rehabilitation of chemically dependent people in 1982 by the wife of the 38th President of the United States and is situated behind the huge Eisenhower Hospital. The program is an outgrowth of  Long Beach, California, Navy Hospital’s program and the famous Hazelden Foundation in Minnesota.  But no two patients ever take the same treatment or react the same.  It can be rough. 
    

It is technically a center, not a clinic, although the buildings were constructed to hospital specifications.  When I was there, there were four outbuildings behind the central administration building.  The Cork Pavilion for abused children is right behind the center.  Joan  Kroc of McDonald’s hamburger fame, ran the center at the time with Barbara Sinatra, now the widow of the famed singer.   Betty Ford was a frequent visitor and lecturer,  lovely and welcoming to all of us.  Those who worked there, so far as I could determine, had sought help for problems with addictive substances in the past and, therefore,  were very knowledgeable about our conditions.  The counseling staff was professional; many had numerous degrees in the field.

The drive into the center is not a straight one; the road is crossed by speed bumps and has two 90 degree turns. There is no sign  in front to guide the casually curious visitor.  Security is enormously tight and effective. In its few years it has become the best known and among the most successful institutions of its kind in the world. 

 At the time of my admission,  patient fees were $155.00 per day plus the admitting fee, $150; the therapeutic reading material, based solely on Alcoholics Anonymous, $65; a psychological assessment, $110; medical fee for physical examination, $240; and some lab testing and x-rays, $215.  My charges totaled a little over $5,000 when I left; now the inpatient cost is at approximately $13,200. 

 The philosophy at the Center is to treat patients without chemicals or drugs.  Within 24 hours,  all of us could have killed for an aspirin and there was a very active black market promulgated by doting visitors and parents for these relatively harmless painkillers, brought in under very creative disguises.

 My living assignment was to Fisher Hall, room 406, the newest of the dormitories at that time.  Each hall housed 20 people, men in some, women in others.  That first day was one of confusion as, sick in heart and body, I asked to go to my room for a lie-down and an attempt to reorient myself.  Things were happening very swiftly and if there’s one thing a drinker can’t stand, it’s change.  In the past I had made my existence fairly comfortable by never altering anything.  Around four-thirty in the afternoon,  I joined the rest of the women in the coffee room, where we introduced ourselves.

 Life at the Center is regimented:  it has to be to control all these people coming out of drugs and alcohol and a self-proscribed way of life.  Dinner was at five-thirty and the choice that night was a roast beef sandwich on a kaiser roll  or pork chops, along with what became a favorite, papaya slush.  I drank gallons of it.  Each hall is assigned certain times and you’re allowed a half-hour to eat, after which you tidy up your space and take your tray to the clean-up area. A lecture by Dr. James West was scheduled for that evening on alcohol's effects on brain, kidneys and liver accompanied by rather disturbing slides of actual organs. I hoped that my insides weren’t in that bad a shape.  Returning to the hall,  I settled in by playing many games of Gin with B.J., soon to become a close friend.  At nine-thirty,  I went back to my room (I hadn’t yet been assigned a roommate) and was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to sleep.  But I did.  Very well.  And awoke at five, ready to see what the day brought.

 I was to report to the nursing station where my vitals and blood were taken along with X-rays and an EKG, then waited for a physical exam, which afforded me an unhurried look at my surroundings.  The staff was mostly women, beautifully dressed and groomed.  The patients’ ages are from 18, the minimum age for admission, to 70.  The rooms are light, airy and nicely appointed.  Mrs. Ford did get stung on the beds, however, as they were rock hard and small, even for twins.   That night, tired from all the activity and poking and prodding, I slept well yet again. 

The days evolved into a routine of hall meetings, AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meetings, lectures and personal and group meetings with my assigned counselor.  We were assigned chores around the hall, vacuuming, cleaning up the coffee area and setting tables.  Morning lecture was at nine and at ten you met with eight others for a group session.  These turned out to be the most painful, for every nuance of your life was thoroughly examined, motives discounted, rationales thrown out and slowly, surely,  you were reduced to a child-like person, cleansed and ready to begin again.  Alcoholic Anonymous pamphlets were everywhere to be read and I was encouraged to write frequently and candidly in my ever-present notebook.  Every evening I was to write how and what I was feeling and that was to be turned in each morning by eight to my counselor. 

 These writings were mainly about feelings: happiness, loneliness, anger, hate, anxiety, resentment, love.  I was to write about what I felt emotionally, not what I thought intellectually, for the simple reason that after all those years of burying my emotions under the weight of alcohol I had to get used to living with them again, healthily.   BFC has been a proponent of AA’s Twelve Step Program which they believe is a discipline found to work with the alcoholic and addict.  “Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions” was our theme, our anthem and for the next four weeks I applied myself to those twelve steps.  But there were no sermons for us at BFC, no proselytizing.

After all these years of happy sobriety one happening still stands out like lightning.  While in group one day, about two weeks into the program, I heard a woman say, “But I thought I was the only one who felt that way!”  All of us would say that.  We had so isolated ourselves in our drinking that it never occurred to us that someone else could be feeling the same self-pity and self-loathing, the same thoughts of suicide, a total lack of self-worth, accepting a husband’s beatings because we weren’t worth anything else, accepting a parent’s wrath because we deserved it.  I was proud of the wall I had built around me, for that kept away all those who wished me harm.  I soon was to learn that that wall also kept me in.

On January 23, 1987, I accepted a chip, a little round piece of black plastic, and worth more to me than anything else, for it proclaimed to all that I had been clean and sober for eighteen days.  Everyone got something that evening, a special combined meeting for all the halls, held by AA groups from the surrounding communities who would often come by and speak to us about their successes.  So I accepted mine, on my fiftieth birthday, honestly crying for the first time in many, many years.  At the end of my twenty-eight days, I again cried as I received the little round brass token with the Betty Ford Center at Eisenhower engraved on one side and the Serenity Prayer on the other:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

There was something more important than anything else, besides remaining sober:  I had to make amends to those whom I loved the most.  I did, with my heart full of joy.

I wear my medallion to this day.

 

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