“Stinking Thinking” – Short Tale of A Woman On Drugs
Image by: Angelina Litvin
Women and drugs are a lethal combination when it comes to thinking with any clarity. We have all heard the phrase “stinking thinking” as it pertains to an alcoholic or addict essentially going off the rails in order to use again. Her brain just starts telling her things in order to get what it wants – more alcohol or drugs.
But we recently ran into another version of that and it was with a young woman who contacted us through our website. This young woman had been using heroin for a few years. She first started doing it to help with her meth addiction and then became addicted to the heroin to the point where it had destroyed her relationships with her family and was now threatening her job. She was using more and more which was also costing her more and more which became another problem. She contacted Dee’s House because she finally felt she needed treatment.
So, where does the “stinking thinking” come in?
Here is where: when we spoke to her (through emails only, she refused to call even though we gave our founder’s personal cell number) she told us all about the problems heroin was causing her; but when we asked her whether she was ready to come into treatment, she explained she could not unless Dee’s House could also take her dog – a small.
Our staff asked if she had someone who could look after the dog and she replied, “No, there is no one.” Since she was not on good terms with her family, they would not take her dog and she did not have friends whom she could trust.
First, what does not being able to trust her friends tell you? However, we digress, that is another story. How much did she really want treatment? We understand that she loved her dog, half our staff have dogs! But if you have a life threatening disease and need treatment, you get treatment and you do not let your dog stand in the way. Ultimately, it is not that she could not live without the dog, or that the dog would have missed her, it was an excuse not to get into treatment. She created a roadblock to treatment, a barrier; and a bogus one at that. Dee’s House does not allow dogs because we only have a maximum of six people in our program at any time. It is small and intimate, so the women here can focus on recovery and themselves.
They need to be their focus, themselves, not a dog. It is also unfair to the other women.
We could hear how she was going over it in her head, telling herself what a good person she is. How she loved this little doggy and can not simply abandon it. However, finding someone to look after your dog for a few weeks is not abandoning it. If she needed an operation and were going to a hospital, what would she have done then? You can not take the dog there. This is also treatment.
So, you see, there the stinking thinking that helps you use, then there is the stinking thinking that keeps you from getting help.
Of course, we knew she was not serious about getting treatment anyway. One reason was she just would not call us no matter how many times we asked her to. We told her she can not bring the dog, we explained why. She has not emailed us since.