I feel really sad right now, after watching this episode of the A&E tv program Intervention. The first guy mentioned, Mike--he was our chiropractor for almost two years. When you see someone two or three times a week for that long, they get to be a friend. Then, when you find out he has a drug problem--as we did a few months ago--you realize there's a fundamental part of them that is tied up in addiction, and it means you really didn't know them the way you thought you did. He even went to one of Rob's art openings, and was a really kind person, not to mention a talented chiropractor.
You'd never know he was taking speedballs every two or three hours.
I realize I'm talking about him in the past tense. It's because, after watching the show, even with the intervention and rehab we weren't left feeling encouraged about his condition. Apparently he was arrested for basically drunk and disorderly behavior three months after entering rehab, and went back in. They said he's been sober since July 16...that isn't very long.
I can't help feeling an echo of the way I felt when my cousin killed herself, about nine or ten years ago now: you can't help feeling some kind of complicity, wondering if there's something you could or should have done differently; also knowing it's too late.
3 comments:
Are you required to watch this for Nielsen? Who even knew such a show existed, much less went into a second season!?
It sucks when the people you know... you don't. It makes the world far more confusing and full of frightening angles than it needs to be.
Wow, aquafortis. Wow. Amazing post. Did you know that he was going to be on the program or did you just accidentally run across it?
I don't think it will surprise you to hear, tadmack, that I watched pretty much the whole first season of this show. (Is there anything on TV I will NOT watch? Um, let me think -- stuff that's not subtitled in English. Yeah, that about covers it.) It is kind of amazing stuff, though grim, indeed.
I'm afraid that we'll see our chiropractor hawking crystals at the farmer's market ... which is, in a way, better and worse.
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