{"id":10607,"date":"2015-02-01T13:36:03","date_gmt":"2015-02-01T21:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.godammit.com\/?p=10607"},"modified":"2015-02-03T11:15:32","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T19:15:32","slug":"bad-therapist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/bad-therapist\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Therapist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/bad-therapist.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-10632\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/bad-therapist.jpg?resize=380%2C374\" alt=\"bad therapist\" width=\"380\" height=\"374\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/bad-therapist.jpg?w=380&amp;ssl=1 380w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/bad-therapist.jpg?resize=300%2C295&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 380px) 100vw, 380px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Once upon a time, Max went to a residential rehab where we hoped he would finally be saved from his addiction. There, he was assigned a therapist who was working toward his MFT license.<\/p>\n<p>Lawrence was a nice guy who genuinely liked Max very much. Who wouldn&#8217;t? Max liked Lawrence too, especially because he didn&#8217;t preach about god. In rehab, Max relapsed several times. It wasn&#8217;t going to be the magic ticket, I came to realize.<\/p>\n<p>I visited often and soon became friends with R, a &#8216;spiritual adviser&#8217; there. She was single and wondering if she&#8217;d ever meet someone nice. I suggested Lawrence, who she barely knew. R and Lawrence went out and fell in love, bam. They were soul-mates.<\/p>\n<p>Lawrence left the rehab after falling out with the administration. He offered to see Max on the sly, a breach of the rules.<\/p>\n<p>Max left rehab and got a job. But he was pretty shaky. Lawrence was seeing Max alone, and with us, his parents, for family therapy. We wanted to support Max any way we could, but I had my doubts about Lawrence. He didn&#8217;t seem to know what he was doing.<\/p>\n<p>Max started using dope again and Lawrence kept his secret. One night a friend called to say that Max was in her living room, fucked up. We raced over to get him, our darling baby, and got him admitted to a rehab where he could detox.<\/p>\n<p>That rehab was a bad mistake. They discharged him early, suffering from insomnia and withdrawal. Max called Lawrence that night but Lawrence didn&#8217;t call him back. In the early morning, Max jumped onto a busy highway.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the thing. For the next nine months that Max was alive, Lawrence offered to resume counseling him but didn&#8217;t try to direct him to a real doctor who knew how to treat depression. Lawrence was still trying to get his MFT.<\/p>\n<p>At Max&#8217;s burial,\u00a0 I hugged Lawrence and said, &#8216;I&#8217;m not mad at you.&#8217; He replied, &#8216;I&#8217;m not mad at you either.&#8217; He offered his business card to someone.<\/p>\n<p>Time passed and R was one of my dearest friends. I could talk to her about anything, but not about Lawrence, who was now her husband.\u00a0 I accepted this as the price of our friendship.<\/p>\n<p>One night at my computer, I read something scary about the drug Neurontin. I knew that Lawrence took Neurontin and that he had suggested Max try it, too.<\/p>\n<p>So I emailed Lawrence for the first time. I sent him a link to the study and wrote these words.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I came across an article about Neurontin in my email tonight. You should probably not be taking this drug, nor should you have urged Max to take it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In the morning, I received an email from R:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>you just sent an email that crushed Lawrence to the core. it was cruel. it was unnecessary.you also betrayed my trust.<\/p>\n<div>i dont understand. You crossed the line with me. i ca&#8217;t trust you. what was the point of that? He does not deserve this.<\/div>\n<div>Weve had this conversation before. what you set out to\u00a0do you accomplished. You really hurt him and me by proxy.<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0What ever he did he was only trying to help Max.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\u00a0Lawrence can never see or look at you again. That was just so cruel. I really wish you had not done that because it means we can not be friends. You are too dangerous.<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0My husband is lying here tortutred. Good job.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>R never spoke to me again, and blocked me from contacting her again. But before blocking me, she wrote this:<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Max walked in the [rehab] broken very very broken,\u00a0already.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>Last week on the TV series <em>Web Therapy<\/em>, the worthless therapist character told someone defensively that her patients were &#8216;already damaged when they come to me.&#8217; It was a funny line because no one would ever say such an awful stupid thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once upon a time, Max went to a residential rehab where we hoped he would finally be saved from his addiction. There, he was assigned a therapist who was working toward his MFT license. Lawrence was a nice guy who &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/godammit.com\/bad-therapist\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[376],"tags":[360,986],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7t44M-2L5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10607"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}