OPINION – New York Times –
March 23, 2018 – I live in Florida, where I have been in treatment for drug addiction for the last year, through periods of recovery and occasions of relapse. People have long traveled to Florida to get lost — to convalesce by the beach and get well, or to die. And I have known quite a few people who have died here since I deplaned in Tampa for rehab at the lovely River Oaks in February 2017.
Since then I have logged many months in detox wards and treatment centers: mornings spent over coffee and cigarettes with Suboxone dissolving under my tongue, waiting for group therapy to start, and nights over yet more coffee in the back rooms of churches, listening to someone share at a 12-step meeting.
I finished with treatment about six months ago, and now I live in a sober house for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts in South Florida, an area that has some of the nation’s most popular locales for addiction treatment. Diners stand next door to detox centers here — wellness pressed up against squalor.
