Breaking Good by Nikki Mammano

Author:Nikki Mammano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regalo Press
Published: 2025-11-11T17:08:08+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Treatment

I’d been so exhausted with my addiction, so eager to be done with it, I didn’t put up a fight about going to rehab. I actually wanted to go when I boarded the plane, but by the time I was cruising at thirty-five thousand feet, I was already over it and planning how to score my next high.

I needed to escape, but I couldn’t exactly get off the plane mid-flight, so I’d just have to find someone at the airport I could ride all the way to my next fix. Fuck Rockland. Maybe it was just time for a new start, and why not Arizona? I tanned well. I could simply go missing…just like that. If I could find a hookup on the plane, all the better, and you know I tried.

But of course, none of those half-baked plans panned out. I was picked up at the gate, herded into a van with a handful of other lost souls who didn’t want to be there any more than I did, and shuttled off to rehab.

Whoever thought of building a rehab in the middle of the desert, right in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains, knew what they were doing. It wasn’t until I had detoxed that I was fully able to appreciate just how Zen the environment was, with its adobe-style buildings, clear, open skies, and total isolation from the city beyond.

After a few days in detox, I was moved to one of the four haciendas, each with its own fire pit, hot tub, and a little outdoor nook set aside for the smokers. I would often take my morning coffee out to the smoking nook and let my mind wander as I stared out into the tranquility of the Arizona desert, surrounded by sand and cacti. I’d even hear the occasional rattlesnake, which was an oddly soothing sound from far enough away. I’d return several times a day to keep myself centered, and the sight of the desert sky at twilight, painted in hues of amber and violet, did as much to calm my nerves as the nicotine fix. I felt bad sometimes for the non-smokers, who had no such crutch to lean on in their recovery, but not bad enough to forfeit mine. I needed it too much.

In the beginning, I would have done anything to escape. “Don’t take away my drugs and leave me in my pain” was my constant prayer. I was wishing for the impossible, for a way to make my problems go away without ever having to actually deal with them, never realizing that’s not how it works.

Without anything in my system to take the edge off or any friends around to distract me, I was sober and alone with my thoughts for the first time in years, and I had nothing but time to reflect on the road that had taken me from sweet little girl to hardened junkie. I was feeling things, really feeling them, for the first time since childhood, and I didn’t like it.

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