Back breaking work saved me
3/31/2008 8:53:12 AM
Jankowski
22 Posts
Last fall, I was pretty much living out of my car, blowing my entire software engineer income on crack and bourbon binges. At 27, I was nearly a skeleton. I walked hunched over, while at nights, layed scrunched up in my Suzuki hatchback playing havoc with the nerves in my right leg.
Nowadays, I spend my mornings caring for 260 dairy cows and their offspring at a rehabilitation farm. It's the only thing that worked for me. After a few moments of meditation with my co-workers, followed by a brisk round of calisthenics, I spend my days spreading hay, shoveling menure, and hauling heavy buckets of fresh milk... And getting well, both physically and emotionally.
I'm one of 40 addicts who spend 6 months in a farm based drug and alcohol rehabiliation center. It's a place to strive as a sort of rural redemption. Most of the men here have never worked a day in their lives. Healing comes from helping to birth calves, feeling their fluttering hearts. It comes from the satisfaction of performing back-breaking chores, working so hard you drop into bed at night fom exhaustion. It comes from being part of something that's bigger than yourself and from putting the needs of others first.
But not everyone stays. Some poeple get here and they can't get used to the silence, or they think they're above it all. You wake up in the morning and they're gone.
But the real work is undergoing long hours of counseling and self-evaluation. But change comes too, in subtle ways. You learn fast that you can't scream and yell at these animals. Things don't happen on your time, but on their time. That's the first lesson.