One hundred and ninety-two hours (I keep count, obsessively) pass in a haze of rosary, meetings, woodwork, work assignments, rosary, meetings, woodwork, work assignments – and appalling headaches that affect my vision and my balance. My fingertips are needling, the skin on the soles of my feet prickling. I’m not allowed anything for these, not even a Panadol, nothing that will interfere with the natural detoxification process of the body, now I’m out of the detox unit. Seems kind of draconian and ridiculous, this puritanical abstinence after years of pouring God knows what chemical in.

My work duty is to feed the chickens and clean the coop, which is both brilliant and horrifying. Part of my job is to collect their eggs, which doesn’t seem to cause them too much consternation, and which means they are not killed for food, right? They really stink, but it’s better than being around people. The clucking cartoon chickens become my sanctuary.

Woodwork class is a revelation, another sort of balm. I find I enjoy the act of whittling, paring, honing. The teacher – a middle-aged woman with a shrunken, balled jumper, which presses her body into fleshy folds (her antidote to stirring any kind of arousal in all these sex-starved men; she does it very well, I think) – stands too close, breathes her tuna-and-onion breath on me and tells me I’m naturally talented. I am that, alright, that was never in question. It’s the other stuff that’s difficult.

The rain outside continues. It hasn’t stopped since the moment I arrived. The Man Above’s out to drown us all.

I wasn’t expecting to feel such guilt, but then I guess I didn’t exactly have any expectations, not having made the choice myself to be here. I was cajoled – no, coerced, no, let’s get real: threatened. Over and over in my mind – how is this the best for Tommy? How is he surviving without me?

I concoct a plan: submission, dedication to the cause, discipline. As soon as I’m allowed my first phone call I’ll convince my father that it’s in all our best interests for me to go home early and continue my recovery there. Mrs O’Malley is probably overwhelmed with the responsibility of a toddler and a dog. How much better for Tommy to have his mother around. Yes yes yes. Two weeks of this is all I can manage. Father wouldn’t last a night in here: all this emotion, all these people, with their smells, their vulnerability, their damage, their desire for connection, their stories, their pain, their sharing, their dissembling, their laughing, their crying, their dumping, their need, their need, their need.

My breathing is shallow and sharp and concentrating on it in meditation just makes it worse. I don’t share in the meetings. Everyone else seems to find a connection, but this place makes me lonelier than I have ever been. Or perhaps I am facing that loneliness for the first time. It’s strange to think I really might have been addicted. My body tells me I was; my mind tells me I was not, I am not, I am not the same as the people in here. I just drank too much because I missed my former life of excitement and colour and attention. No one could possibly understand that high. And the ferocious comedown in its absence.