MY EXPERIENCE AT CC
After 20 years of drifting and going through different centres and therapies, I arrived at the place that made something click.

On the first day I arrived at the centre, I was accompanied by my mother and sister, without being clear about what my present would be, and even less my future. I was welcomed with warmth and trust by the centre’s staff, where I finally felt they understood my language and everything I and my family were feeling.

I was moved to a room where I remained isolated for three days, during which I cried more than I ever have in my life—both in those 3 days and in the many more that followed afterwards.

Beginnings, as always, are difficult. On the one hand, I was ‘overmedicated and in a terrifying mental state’ that left me dazed and emotionally numb, unable to be aware of much of what was happening—and perhaps it had to be that way. I do not want to think what it would have been like otherwise.

On the other hand, understanding and accepting my new situation and my challenge, and also, of course, ‘adapting to my new life’: schedules, rules, and above all my way of being—my behaviour and my way of expressing myself with my peers, integration in the centre, essentially.

Although not from the beginning, in a short time you sense that it seemed to be something more than a small process—that it would be a turning point, a clear break between your life before and what you do not know what it is, but to which you do not want to return.

Recognising the ‘this is who I am’ would take me a long journey. If it had not been for the mediation, the 24-hour nurses, the psychiatrist, therapists to speak with daily, and the staff with us, constantly accompanying us, I would have ended up leaving, because you often come close to it, and think about giving up and leaving it all behind.

Among the first impressions I received that caught my attention powerfully—and still do—is that I felt as if I were in a miniature version of society. People from all walks of life and very diverse circumstances come there for treatment, and everyone is accepted without distinctions of any kind. After an initial welcome, a dynamic begins to develop to address each person’s particular needs.

There were people with no education, unemployed workers, businesspeople, highly trained people, ex-prisoners, mothers, abused women, students, people with a stable or very exposed socioeconomic situation, people with no ties to their family, divorced people, with children or without them—an enormous variety from all social strata, with their own problems and limitations, coming from certainly different worlds. Sometimes it seemed like a human achievement in itself just to be able to sit down and eat together day after day. And the differences did not stop there; there were also each person’s particularities in how they understood treatment: their honesty, their attitude, and their commitment. Some people seemed like they were at camp or on a picnic, while others stayed super serious and involved from start to finish, with their story and with the rest of the community.

I saw people leave after two hours, after two months… but also those who left with medical discharge and came back with a different light, just to say hello. The latter inspired me because they embodied and attested to the beneficial effects of the treatment, and they also gave a certain sense of security that I could take in as: ‘those who stick it out, make it’.

I have etched in my memory the words, patience, and constant understanding of the centre’s staff, who, by persistently keeping a good attitude with messages of hope, joy, and energy—at all risks—in that authentic, pure, down-to-earth way, seemed to change the atmosphere when they appeared. Their advice and gestures carried a strength of great simplicity. There was no reason to worry too much or get tangled up, because the truth is there was so much to do, and to keep doing, every day to feel well that it was already a lot (sport every day, self-care, therapy morning and afternoon, activities to quiet the mind, habits and routine).

The reinforcement and the continuous, constant work they did helped me grow and pulled me back from my recklessness.

From all of that emerged my enjoyment of—and need for—nature in all its expressions.

I started making calls to reconnect and rebuild contact and a relationship with my mother and sister (I had nothing when I arrived), sharing hopes and receiving a lot of support from my sister. My mother, until then, decided to give me tough love until she saw changes and signs of commitment in me.

Sometimes that voice on the other end of the phone was enough to reconnect me to life and regain strength to continue with a clear head.

It took time for me to receive the first visit. My sister lives outside Spain and could not come, and my mother needed to heal her pain and want to see me again after so much suffering on my part. That wretched illness that sweeps away everything you put in its path, without distinguishing between people, values, etc.

But there are so many other things, so basic and so important, that I will start by saying that I became a human being. I have learned a lot about myself: my tendencies, my shortcomings, and my communicative and behavioural profile through group and individual therapies. About what I have to work on, what impulses I must contain, and what emotions and thoughts to set in motion. I had many ups and downs, stumbles with myself, with other peers, with the team—very hard moments that we had to face together to continue. I learned to apologise, to recognise and ask for help, to accept it, and to submit. I had to learn what to recognise, what to face, or what to avoid so as not to relapse—neither into use nor behaviourally. I learned values, to be aware of and manage my states thanks, among other things, to mindfulness or body and mind control, and the meticulousness of day-to-day work.

My behaviour, my attitude, and my opinions began to change.

We were able—and I say we were able (without my therapists I would not have achieved it)—to begin, after putting out the first fires and healing, to reconfigure and lay down the first foundations.

After my admission to the clinic for 3 months, I moved to the flats where I stayed for three months (a completely necessary stage to continue treatment and begin to have contact with reality as an intermediate step before returning home). There we lived and coexisted with other peers and began to learn how to create and manage (with our emotions and feelings, the most difficult part of treatment) our new day-to-day life.

Although the difficult and truly hard part begins when you leave there, return to your ground zero, and it is you, your decisions, your head (with no one to guide you and hold you up), and your ghosts from the past that come back from time to time.

Patience, tolerance, discipline, humility, assertiveness, empathy, temperance, solidarity—all of it took on a more vivid, more real meaning; they became verbs. Education in values was something incredible; you lose them and you are lost.

I found it difficult to relate to others, in the interest and knowledge of all the rules and limits within treatment and also in a normalised life. This was a constant during treatment and still is today. Incorporating the social skills that would allow me to become a little more open and understandable to others, to learn to understand, to listen, to be someone normal. Sport, being organised and busy, my own limits, well-organised leisure, my work, and the weekly group therapy sessions to this day, after five years, help me in the ongoing learning of life.