Work, a late first.

Some how I until this summer, if you don't count the 3 depressing Saturdays I distributed newspapers before giving up and a few evenings babysitting, managed to never have a job. But this summer I decided it was time to get my act together and get a job. So for the past 3 weeks I've been working at an addiction center. It may be seen as an odd place for a high school student to work, and may be it is. Anyhow it's been a very interesting and enjoyable experience.

For those of you that are not aware of what an addiction center is. It's a place where heroin addicts who belong to the methadone program come to receive a medicine called Methadone (which is used as a replacement for heroin) that they drink out of small plastic bottles. And alcoholics come to receive medicine such as Antabus (it makes you sick if you drink alcohol after taking it). A condition for this treatment is (of course) that they don't drink or do drugs. To prove this they must leave supervised urine samples and/or alcohol tests. The longer you are clean the less frequent the tests become. They also receive counseling and certain other medical care.

Although I did not administer any tests or distribute medication, part of my job was to sit and chat with the patients as they wait for their turn. Most of these individuals have lived extremely harsh lives on the very outskirts of society and for some of them this daily or weekly chat is vital social training on there way back into society.

Speaking to these people and reading about them in their files is so extremely interesting. Their lives have been so harsh and extreme that it is almost ungraspable.

But tomorrow is my last day so I think I might just bring muffins!