My stay at TCI Village was not exactly to my liking, I was involuntarily brought there by my parents for what started as excessive drinking that developed to the unmanageable use of hard drugs.
Like many addiction stories, mine rapidly escalated to full-blown addiction that started when I was 14 years old, male, a high school student. You just get into it when you develop a habit, unknowingly, especially when you are a troubled teenager dealing with deep emotional resentment to brewing family issues at home.
My mind and heart was torn with my parents on the verge breaking up with daily incessant fighting focused on marital disagreements deeply rooted initially on my father's infidelity.
We would seldom get peace and quiet in the house, there was tension all the time, and as an only child, the parental guidance attention I was supposed to getting at a healthy dose went kaput.
Without supervision, I was left to my own device triggering my association with classmates who were taking their studies lightheartedly, and a bunch labeled as bad boys in school.
This became my clique, influencing me to drink, smoke, take drugs, and steal to support our binges. My behavior quickly escalated from bad to worse, at 17 years old i got to experience rehabilitation the TCI Village way.
I stayed a total of 12 months, 8 of those inside the facility, and the last 4 months on I got to leave the facility first on an 8-hour pass, with each week the hours would gradually increase until I am finally released to society with the following;
1.Free of my addiction
2. Equipped with recovery skills
3. Connected to my brothers and sisters in recovery
4. Armed with relapse prevention tools.
5. Changed and improved behavior
6. Treatment of my diagnosed co-occurring bipolar disorder
7. Resolved family issues
I learned and gained so much in rehab, life skills you would not even learn from school, things you would only get through the shared experience of the people I have recovered with, and the guided experience of the recovery specialist, program staff, and volunteers. It was a great learning experience of great value to me as I go through my adult life. I made friends and associates in rehab, established vital lifelong connections with my guidance and recovery counselors.
What left an impressive imprint on me was the supervised and structured family dialogues which proved to be very helpful in healing the pain, hate, and distrust that existed between me and my parents. As part of the TCI program, as early as the 5th or 6th month of your stay in the facility, they would schedule family dialogues especially for those with deep hurtful family issues such as my case. They would let me write my issues, get to the bottom cause my feelings and emotion that would somehow contribute to the reasons for my destructive behavior. My parents are requested to enumerate the problems they have with me that they feel is needed to be discussed and resolved.
Both my parents would attend these sessions, and with healing dialogues, we get to address difficult conversations that covered touchy affairs of my family. Those dialogues would go on, with some degree of awkwardness at first which my counsellors admonished to initially happen. I would say such healing dialogues were of great blessing to my family. TCI took care of the potentially explosive situation at home that could push me to a depressive state, a trigger to my alcohol and drug use.
Let me end this sharing by saying my Grace.
I am thankful to the Lord, my parents, my family at TCI village. My counselors with whom a have great respect, Kuya Ian Ty and Kuya Fitz baking for guiding me, Kuya Patrick Tan for his strict and watchful presence, to my beloved Ate Daisy as my counselor, to the clinicians who help diagnose my bipolar condition, to Kuya Jun Tan, TCI founder, for running TCI professionally, and to the other founders Joel Chavez and Joey Ibanez for dreaming of a facility to help lost souls find themselves again. Thank you so much.
