The End of My Addiction

better about staying.
    I had a very difficult time calming down and settling in, however, much more so than at my previous rehabs, because Lenox Hill had tapered my Valium to zero before discharging me. The Marworth staff said they did not want to give me Valium, because “it’s a mood-altering drug and will keep you in addiction mode.” The result was that for the first ten days I felt panicky and confused, so much so that I even briefly insisted that I was not an alcoholic but the victim of mistaken identity.
    The placid mask I habitually showed the world did not help me here. I told the staff how I was feeling, and they said, “You look calm. Your symptoms seem mild.” They probably thought I was a con artist, when in fact I had insomnia and was so stressed day and night that I thought I was going to have a heart attack.
    The day after I arrived, a counselor told me, “CPH wants you to sign a five-year contract agreeing to be monitored by them for abstinence from alcohol and other drugs.”
    The mention of “other drugs” went in one ear and out the other. I said, “But I’m not practicing medicine now. I stopped practicing a year ago.”
    The counselor said that did not matter to CPH. If I did not sign the contract, CPH would report me to New York State’s Office of Professional Medical Conduct (OPMC), which would then investigate me. Colleagues had told me horror stories of OPMC investigations, saying they made an IRS audit look like a walk in the park, and the counselor agreed with that comparison. Part of me wanted to say, “Fine, let OPMC investigate, and they will discover I have done nothing wrong as a physician.”
    Like the residents at Lenox Hill Hospital, the counselor at Marworth was astonished that I did not care about the threat of losing my New York State medical license. I said, “The license is a complete nonissue to me. I did not want to come here, but now that I am here, my only concern is my health. I am trying to save my life from alcoholism. They told me in AA that anything I put ahead of my recovery, I will lose, and as far as I’m concerned that includes my license to practice medicine in New York.”
    The counselor told me I could take a few days to think about the CPH contract. Speaking with other physician rehab patients, all of whom were at Marworth in compliance with CPH or counterpart organizations in other states, I asked, “Why do I have to sign this thing?”
    One said, “They hold you by the balls. There is no choice.”
    Another said, “When CPH tells me to jump, I don’t ask why. I ask how high.”
    That made me feel like I was sinking down to the bottom of the barrel. The feeling grew stronger when I found that the other physician patients had all been caught practicing medicine or driving under the influence of alcohol or another drug of abuse, or committing some other crime, such as stealing painkillers from a hospital pharmacy. I was the only one who had voluntarily stopped practicing medicine as soon as I realized my drinking was out of control; I had never been anything but completely sober when I saw patients in my office or at the hospital; I had never driven drunk or broken any other laws; and I was already going to AA daily and had voluntarily spent three of the previous nine months in rehab when a pack of well-intentioned lies brought me into CPH’s orbit. Yet I was treated like a criminal, subjected to the same penalties as the physicians who were guilty of misconduct.
    In the end I decided it was better to sign the CPH contract and avoid a state investigation, but not because of the threat of losing my license. What was far worse in my mind was that even though I had done nothing wrong, the investigation might still ruin my reputation. Investigators would interview my neighbors, as well as colleagues, and ask questions like “Does Dr. Ameisen’s behavior seem normal?” or “Have you ever seen him walking unsteadily?” It was redolent to me of people informing on their neighbors during the Holocaust and in Vichy France, or in America during the McCarthy era.
     
    Marworth had all the patients who were physicians, nurses, and pharmacists room together. It also kept them in a group for all organized activities. This struck me as ridiculous. Doctors are okay, but I generally socialized with people outside the medical profession.
    “I was born with a first and last name, not with a title of M.D.” I said. “Put me with the real people. Just put