Continued from The Beginning of My Drug Detox Days
As it was New England, winter just beginning, at least on the calendar, the snow was falling. It was mostly a dusting, but it was enough to cover the ice and filthy dirt from a plowing just four days past. I’d only been to the detox facility once. I’d gone there with my friend Tom. We never went in, as we only drove past while out for a drive one sunny Saturday afternoon.
I parked across the street and felt the snip of cold, dry air bite at my cheeks when I opened the car’s door. My nerves, quivered as fear and anticipation swirled with in like the snowflakes around me; tossing, spinning, up and down.
Yesterday, Tom prepared me, so I knew there were a lot of homeless people in this facility, at least in the detox wing. It was a time before anyone experienced a Suboxone detox, and from what I understood, methadone was used mostly for detoxing patients. Tom also explained that I’d only be doing intakes for the first couple months. A drug intake is a screening process, an assessment of the patient’s usage, and it can only be performed with the patient. Most programs use the standard ASI (Assessment Severity Index), and it contains a list of questions. It’s very clinical, and my instruction was to only engage the patient with the questionnaire. I wasn’t certified as of yet to answer other questions, so sticking to the thirty of so questions was fine with me.
It seemed like a good plan until I met my first patient.