I got sober over 22 years ago. I am a one and done. That means the first time I tried to get sober, I managed to stay sober. It wasn’t easy and I have been a tremendous dick throughout parts of my recovery. I am still human and am constantly working on just being a better human and own my own shit. I have waged an internal war to break patterns passed to me. I didn’t choose this industry at first, although I am naturally drawn to helping others since childhood. Part of my own trauma but that isn’t what this is about, that’s for my therapist. Often when people get sober they start working in treatment and I wanted to be sure that was something that I wanted to do. So, for a decade, I tried just about everything else but helping people has always been it. So I started as a tech and worked my way up through different programs and went to school, and became a Case Management Supervisor.

This is why I hold people who work in this industry to a higher standard. We are walking with people who are trying to get better. If they aren’t trying to get better, it is possible it is their only option because the other option is back on the street. People have learned to work the system because the system is broken. People become institutionalized and grasp at frail straws.

Please don’t misunderstand me. There are places out there that do things the right way. That uplift their staff and see the human. It is not only one person that keeps a business running. And when that business stops seeing what they are doing as helping the individual and they become a policy number? That is when I have a problem. Over my years of working in treatment I have heard and seen almost all of it. This isn’t specific to one company or corporation but to a larger issues. A systemic issue that needs to be changed from within. I have seen what happens when you use your voice and call out a system of opression and hushed whispers. While people are abused, fraud, human trafficking, domestic violence, client on client violence, client on staff violence, the list goes on.

If the higher ups have nicer homes and cares then most of the staff, something is wrong. If a place has staff that have to be on food stamps, something is wrong. If staff are sleeping with clients and it becomes a running joke the clients know about? IT’S A FUCKING PROBLEM!

So welcome to The Land of Misfit Children where we talk in allegedly because mama didn’t raise a fucking idiot.