I had my evaluation appointment at the suboxone treatment place that I selected for my backup plan. I am sick with a sore throat and I’m feeling exhausted. Drained. And confused.

In order to get my insurance to pay for suboxone, I have to be in addiction treatment/counseling. This is something I don’t want to do. I want to stay off the opiates, and I want to work on being a healthy person, but I don’t want to sit in drug therapy group three times a week for 2 hours plus additional counseling etc.

My other option is to go to 12 step meetings. I have mixed feelings about that. I suppose that I could learn something at AA or NA, but I have been to meetings before and I don’t like them. I don’t like the language – clean/dirty, character defects – and I don’t like the way “the program” is framed as the one and only way to get sober. I don’t even like the idea of sobriety. Or powerlessness. I am not addicted to alcohol, or cigarettes, for instance.

At the study, I have been treated with so much respect. Part of that, I’m sure, has to do with the fact that the study needs me as a participant. The counseling center is another story. I am not needed there – I need them, I need the treatment, and therefore I will jump through hoops. I should not be there just to “check in and get my suboxone scrip.” I should be really invested in my recovery. I should be working toward eventual abstinence. If I miss group there will be consequences, here is a page of rules to sign, here is the plan they’ve made for me with my first three “treatment goals” outlined in little boxes.

This shit is triggering for me. My parents institutionalized me when I was 14 because of behavioral and emotional problems. I quickly noticed in the hospital that the kids who were assigned to the “green team” got out a LOT quicker than the kids on the “blue team”, my team. How do you get on the green team? Oh, you have to be a druggie! Presto, I invented a drug habit.

I got out much faster than I would have otherwise, but I had to agree to go to NA meetings. I went for a year. At the end of the year, I got my coin and kissed that shit goodbye. But the attitudes and the language still haunts me. Especially the remark of one old crusty dude: No one is to dumb to get the program, but a lot of people are too smart to get it.”

I feel about 12 steppers the way I feel about all fundamentalists. People who are reformed, or born again. True believers. I don’t know if I want to surround myself with that again. Maybe it’s different here, maybe I’m much different now, all I have to go one are memories from 20 years ago. Well, that and my utter annoyance whenever I come into contact with anyone who is “in recovery.” Fucking lingo. I hate that shit.

I have to figure out now, if it’s worth it to me, to get the suboxone. How many hoops will I jump through? How much of a problem do I really think I have? Is there a way to go to meetings and take what I find useful and leave the bullshit behind? I seem to remember that – according to members at least – success is predicated on swallowing the whole enchilada.

The one thing that makes me think that I might possibly have the slightest chance of finding something good in a 12 step program is reading how much good The Junky’s Wife has found in her group. Seriously. That’s it.

Maybe it’s enough.