PHP – I think it stands for Partial Hospitalization Program, no one really knows and it’s misleading anyway – is supposed to be a good thing, where you “step down” from Residential where you almost never leave the house, do all your group meetings there, eat there, shit there – literally and figuratively.
RB and BN both weren’t happy campers, when they first got to RR, the house where I usually worked. RB, coming off heroin and cocaine, predictably had some attitude issues with several of his peers, and several techs complained he would snatch meds away from them, angrily and aggressively. Granted, they were his meds, but still.
And he had thrown some serious disrespect in my face. On one of my first shifts, JS the super tech told me to address the group at closing, emphasizing the house rules – no food or drink in rooms, up at 7, curfew at 11, make your own breakfast and lunch, communal dinner, etc – for the two new guys. As soon as I started with the rules, RB stood up from one of the comfy couches, tossed a vague curse in my direction and stomped away.
A black guy from Baltimore, RB looked like a mini-Charles Barkley, at 6 feet tall, a half foot shorter than Barkley, but with the same big, round belly. The first few days he was there, I never saw him without a hoodie pulled way over his head, almost covering his eyes; he didn’t seem to want to be there, wasn’t participating in meetings, and at one point got into a shouting match with JN – a cop who had been in and out of rehab for years, with a “been there, know-all-that” attitude.
Even though he had cursed me out, I instinctively – although silently – took RB’s side in the matter. I think I preferred his open-book hostility to JN’s snarky, superior attitude; and, by then, RB had made it a point to apologize to me, after he had judged me to be a “good dude.” Though it seemed at the time the argument would explode into a fight, the spat between the barber and the cop quickly ended, and they later shook hands, though not entirely convincingly (to me, at least).
BN was a white guy from California, a teacher/bodybuilder, about 5-foot-4 and seriously chiseled. Hard to imagine he would abuse his body with blackout-drinking, as at rehab he was up at the crack of dawn to make and drink power shakes and then hit the weights — a very modest set, which he belittled as “from the 1970s.” He inspired a few of the other guys to join him in workouts, for which I publicly praised him – while being privately leery of what I took to be an entitled attitude. I didn’t care for the muttered jabs he took at others, belittling their cleaning, cooking – just little things, he never got in anyone’s face but seemed to be impatient and put out, like everyone was messing up his precious schedule …
So, it was fitting that he was in a big hurry to finish his rehab, and move on to “the next step.”
After being at the RR house for a week or so, BN and RB stepped down to PHP together – though, since there were no beds available at PHP houses, they stayed in the RR residential house. Everyone in PHP – some people go right to PHP after detox, others go to residential first, it’s all an insurance thing – arrives in those telltale white vans (nice but plain) dubbed “druggie buggies.” The vans deliver alcoholics and drug addicts from six or seven mansions in Scottsdale, Mesa, Surprise (yes, that’s what the town really is called) and elsewhere around Phoenix to a centralized “clinic” in a vague, semi-industrial neighborhood of northeast Mesa.
About two hours after I started my swing shift, a van brought RB and BN back to the RR house. They were both pissed and loudly demanding to come back to the residential program at RR; hanging out all day at the mansion and participating in small, nurturing, non-intimidating, productive, “we got your back, bro” groups suddenly seemed a great idea.
I hadn’t been to the clinic, so I asked each of them what it was like. BN said he sat in the lobby for a couple hours – none of the staff members told him where to go. Finally, he just wandered around and tried a group he thought me might like.
RB said it was just terrible, a waste of time and made him seriously think about using again.
A couple days later, I had my first assignment to the Clinic, and I almost instantly realized they weren’t exaggerating, it truly is a “shit show.”
The building was straight out of the 1980s, drab white, single level, about 15 offices surrounding a courtyard – where most hang out and smoke in between “groups,” the group therapy sessions in small classrooms. Unlike the strictly segregated residential houses, there were men and women at the clinic; though they went to classes separately and weren’t supposed to mix …
The manager of the place told me and another new Tech that we had to go around cleaning the place, the kitchens and the bathrooms especially, and log what we did every half hour. It quickly became apparent that this would be impossible, with all the running around for various errands we had to do – with the unstated expectation that we just lie and initial off on the checklist.
My main station was the kitchen, where the recovery folks kept their lunches in the fridges and came for endless cups of coffee. I soon discovered there weren’t any paper/styrofoam coffee cups. Denying addicts coffee is cruel and unusual punishment, in my book, so II brought it to the manager’s attention; he didn’t respond. Then I made the rounds of the bathrooms and supply rooms, and realized there were no paper towels – zero. I told the manager about this; he gave a creepy smile and said, “Yeah, I know.”
I reminded him of the cup and paper towel situation a few times; another new Tech volunteered to go out and buy paper towels, the manager told him not to worry about it.
Meanwhile, about 15 percent of the clients (aka “CT’s”) were almost constantly clowning around, ditching out of group therapy meetings to hang out in the courtyard, constant “smoke breaks.” Three young ladies about 22 always seemed to be out in the courtyard, one spunky little cute one liked to grind-dance up against her female friend and flirt with guys; there weren’t supposed to be guys and girls out in the courtyard at the same time, about which we Techs were constantly reminding the CT’s, with approximately the same results as Sisyphus telling the boulder to stay at the top of the hill …
I asked a few CT’s how they liked the groups. They said some were good, most of them boring and repetitive.
Meanwhile, I got urgently called away from the kitchen where I was half-heartedly cleaning stuff to the front desk area, where I had to do a bunch of UA’s. Fill out the label on a little plastic cup, put on some disposable blue gloves, go with whichever guy’s turn it is to the restroom, stand beside him while he (hopefully) pees in the cup to make sure he’s not slipping someone else’s urine in for his own. “Make sure you see the pee go in the cup,” the manager told me.
I nodded but I never did this, I gave the guys a little space, as much as possible in a one-toilet men’s room.
CN, who I knew from RR, couldn’t go. This didn’t surprise me, as I did his intake at RR and he had trouble. At RR, it was no luck in the small, staff bathroom where we usually did the UA’s – so I let him try later in his room’s bathroom – a huge, swanky deal. With me standing what seemed like 100 yards away, he was able to get about a fifth of the cup filled. But now, at the little bathroom at the Clinic, no way. I told him he could try again later, after looking up ways to help you overcome bladder shyness on my phone – thinking positive thoughts, don’t be stressed out, hold your breath for as long as you can, etc.
At the end of the day, the guys in my group hustled for the van, eager to get the hell out of there. But one of them, the young guy, LT, asked me to make sure the house phone was in the red, lunchbox-like thing the houses used to transport medications and personal items. No phone in there. I went back in the center and asked around, a staff person named E was supposed to know about it, I found her and she said it was broken, which the manager, who was standing there, seconded; they both seemed to have a weird smile.
There was much anger about this when I went back to the van and reported this to the guys, they said she was lying, it worked fine last night … I told them maybe the clinic staff was talking about a different phone, I didn’t notice a phone in the red lunchpail thing earlier, maybe it was still at the house. No way, when I got there the Tech replacing me at the end of my shift and I looked all over, it wasn’t there.
Two days later, I was back at the 83rd Street house, and asked the house manager if the phone had showed up? He got a pissed off look and tone and said that asshole D – the Clinic manager – had it the whole time. He firmly said I had to make sure the Tech who replaced me when I clock out gets the phone from D.
Notes from the Shitshow 