Cracked
Putting Broken Lives Together Again
Chapter One
It's the second week of a warm August. Early morning. The first one in my family to rise from bed, I shuffle into the kitchen, start the coffee, and get the newspaper at the end of the driveway. We live in a ranch-style home perched on the edge of a canyon in the hills above Pasadena, with deer and coyotes on the prowl, and it's so lovely and quiet at this hour I might as well be five hundred miles from the harshness of the city.
The headlines snap me back to reality. I read the Los Angeles Times sports section, sip coffee between box scores, and enjoy the quiet. Soon my wife, Susan, joins me, followed by the triplets, age ten, who gobble down breakfast, give us kisses, and go off to summer camp.
Outside, the sun begins its climb into a clear blue sky, and I know it's going to be, in the words of Randy Newman, "another perfect day" in L.A.
Perfect for some, perhaps. But not for my patients in the chemical dependency unit at Las Encinas Hospital, a no-frills, twenty-two–bed facility popularly known as "rehab." The truth? For many who occupy those beds, it's their last chance before death. To me, it encompasses
everything from desperation to the miracle of gi ... read full excerpt from: Cracked ebook
