I did not envision myself to be such a woman who is reviewing rehabilitation clinics. I am Czech. And these are not talked about in public. You stick it inside the family you smile at the neighbours and you pretend that everything is alright because this is how it is done and so it was done by your mother before you. Now, however, I am sitting in our Kyiv apartment, on a Tuesday evening and writing this, because, in the case only one of you read it, and then realizes that he needs help, every single word will be worth it.

Therefore, I will start with the beginning. Not from the clinic from him. From the man I chose.

THE MAN I CHOSE

His name is Martin. I met him when he was above twenty-four years old in celebrating the birthday of a mutual friend in Prague. He arrived late, and with that nonchalance of some men, which is natural as it is free to him. He was funny. Not that kind of funny that tries to be too much the funny that sneaks up on you, and leaves you laughing without knowing what has happened to you. He was sociable, curious of everyone, the sort of a man that remembered what you said three conversations ago, and mentioned at the correct moment. I fell in love, and I fell in love hard and I have no shame of that.

Our dating lasted two years and we got married during a small party outside Prague. In the very near future, an opportunity was given to him because of his profession that he was engaged in the logistics management and the decision to relocate to Kyiv was mutual. I had always wanted to live in a new location, and to live in a world that was not similar to the one I was raised in. Ukraine sounded like an adventure. And the early days it used to be, to tell the truth.

We built a life there. I labored, we got acquainted, we were roaming the city, we were spending good years. Martin had been doing well in his line of work. He was extroverted, self-driven, innovative. I loved our life.

WHEN THINGS STARTED TO SHIFT

To-day I can see the foreshadowings, which existed long before I was prepared to name them after their names. Nevertheless, at that moment I explained all the things, the way you do it when you love somebody and you do not want to see what is in front of your eyes.

It started with wine in dinner being wine before dinner. Then it was bigger, something that he had in his office back at home. He became insomniac, there were those nights when he managed to sleep a little bit, there were those nights when he could not be awakened at all. He became forgetful in a way that he made me concerned but he had a very good reason to justify. A stressful project. Not enough sleep. Too much on his mind.

The arguments came next. Small ones in the beginning more than nothing more than things that mattered. He would get irritated over things I said and yet they were not meant to be critical and an hour later he would be very relaxed and I could not know why we quarrelled at all. I started being more attentive to the selection of words. I started thinking first then talking. I started to self-censor, which I have never had to do at home, with my own husband.

And then I started to defend him step by step, I never made a conscious decision of it. My reply would be texting an excuse when he could not receive a call on the part of his workmates. When he was not in the right state to handle something, I used to handle something. In the situation he had to be somewhere, and could not make himself get out of the apartment, I would smooth it over with whoever was waiting. I told myself that it is what a good partner did. This was loyalty. This was love.

It was not love. At least it was not pure love. I understand that now.

THE NIGHT I Dropped Faking.

One day I could not justify Martin because he was in a condition that I found at home one evening after work at a late time. Something was amiss in a fashion, which was far too much to do with what I had ever been permitted to admit. I stood in the doorway of our apartment and I had never felt so much alone as I felt then. Not angry. Not even scared, not yet. Just alone.

I sat there in the passage way that I do not know as to why the floor, but there was my sitting place and stood long there. And now at that silence I finally permitted my thoughts to ponder that which I had been refusing myself to think over a year and a half.

This is not going to correct itself.

I did not sleep that night. I was visiting the Internet hours, reading, struggling to get an idea of what I was dealing with and what real help was. I feared this, as most people do, that I would be abandoning him, in case I should be minded to seek outward help. It was somehow as though I were putting it in stone so that it would be something we would never get out of. I needed to get rid of that fear and then take action.

THE DECISION TO GO TO ODESSA

I would like to tell the truth: the decision where to go to Odessa was not very easy one. We were in Kyiv. We had our usual, our jobs, our apartment. It was, in a way, an enormous step to make the steps to pick up and travel to the other city to get treatment. And now I was well enough prepared to understand that distance is at times a constituent part of its possibility. Between what you know, between what you are accustomed to and what lies within the walls of your own home, everything to make you so easy to fall back into the same modes.

It was one of those late night research meetings that had familiarized me with Vector Plus the narcological clinic in Odessa. The emphasis on complete anonymity was the initial element that drew my attention. That was a big thing to me. We are not Ukrainians. I had no idea of how these things were done here, records were kept and who had access to which. It was clarified to the clinic that the information does not reach the third parties or even the state facilities, the list of contacts to which the doctors can contact is controlled only by the patient or his/her confident. In our case, being foreigners in the country, such privacy protection was not a trifle, which enabled such a decision.

The other observation that I made was that the team was an international one. In Germany, Israel and Ukraine, more than twenty physicians merged. I am a European and I will tell you that I was sure with regards to that detail. It is not the case that Ukrainian doctors are incompetent and, on the contrary, they are the most qualified, but it was what made me feel that we are in our cup of tea.

One day, I had called the number later in the evening. Someone replied immediately, they are open 24 hours and this is even more than someone would think when he is in a crisis situation and he finally decides to make a call. The person on the other side was easy going and professional and never made me feel that I was discussing something embarrassing. My opinion had already been made before I replaced the phone.

ARRIVING IN ODESSA

We took the train from Kyiv. There was a silence on the part of Martin most of the way. I did not push him to talk. It is a kind of silence which prevails between two persons in case of something when something serious is about to happen, and you both know that it is not absolute silence. I was looking out of the window and the country was fleeting by, and I thought how strange it was to be doing so, to be two Czechs riding through Ukraine to a clinic in Odessa because the course of our lives had led us to this very crossroad.

The https://vector-plus.org/ clinic is located on Nedelina 111 street. I was ready to receive such a thing as we arrived at, something steril, and chilly, the institutional smell which only makes all the more. It was not like that. Calm. It was something about it that I can only say was premeditated as though some one had cogitated about what it would be like to first step into that door when you are scared and weary and not altogether certain that you have not made a mistake.

The attitude of the employees towards the first consultation was professional which, in some sense, was also human. Martin was also investigated, and his background was considered. Nothing was rushed. We were interviewed by Vadim Natsynets the doctor. He was quite direct and I liked his manner because he did not dwell down upon the situation that Martin had to go through but did not exaggerate it. He knew what alcohol implant process would involve, what to expect, what happened. 

THE process and the post procurement days.

At the clinic, Martin had undergone the disulfiram impant. I, personally, shall not say a single word about the medical side of it, as I am not a physician, and in either particular instance, every particular instance is a particular instance, and I take that to be among the positive values of the clinic. I cannot tell you anything but that it was a fast process. It was not merely the process as such, but consultations before it, following it, the psychological element that was at work simultaneously with the medical one.

The clinic is the whole person and that is the practice which I feel is the best one and makes the clinic the best in my opinion. The dependency as well as the psychological processes enclosed within it, the social and emotional situation of it. Martin met with a psychologist. Also, the introduction of the conversations, which I had not expected but which turned to be one of the most important parts of the entire process to me, was initiated. As this is the thing that I needed to know, the bad way this is how it has happened during the last year, and I was not only the person standing next to the problem. I already had been a member of the system that was surrounding it. My care about him, my manipulation, my endless straightening of things, had all their share. Not to making him addicted to it, but to making it easier to do it.

That it was identified and addressed at full-range, in a business sense, by someone who knew how the game of work functions, was something that I never knew I needed, until I obtained one.

We spent some days at Odessa. I also had a problem with being out of Kyiv, work, logistics. However, at some point, I concluded that it all did not matter to me as I had envisioned. Whether we did or did not do the thing that had to be done did not matter, but we were there doing it.

WHERE WE ARE NOW

I will not tell you that everything was properly received and the time we reached home. I understand that is not how this is done, and I would not be injuring your intelligence to propose the contrary. Recovery is not an isolated process but is a process that is in progress. It is not hard but a good day and there are things we are still going through and everything between us and ourselves and between us.

But Martin is sober. And even better, he is there in that same way he had not been long been. The one that came in our door at night is my Prague bride. Funny, warm, curious. There.

I am also different. At this point, I am more open with myself about my patterns, how I tried to have things the way I wanted that they did not have authority over. I mixed up attending to somebody and owning somebody. That is ongoing work. But I am doing it.

We are doing it.

Suppose you happen to be reading this and you are where I was that is, lying awake at three in the morning and of the opinion you were missing something, that a few more efforts or the utterance of a word or two, that everything will be all right, I would tell you that, you are not dealing with trying harder.

The employees of the Vector Plus at Odessa had been treated with respect and with the actual capability of assisting us. They gave Martin what he would never have found out on his own. Of that I am as grateful as I can be.