If I Just Save You

He had spent weeks arguing it, telling him he didn’t need it. Did that make a difference in their eyes? Not really.

“You’re going, and that’s final.”

They sounded like his parents. That just pissed him off even more. He tried to submerge himself in the one thing they tried to get him away from, but eventually it all disappeared and they wouldn’t leave his side long enough for him to get more.

When the day came, he fought the hardest to not go. Eventually, he gave up. He knew he had a problem, but he liked his problem. But they didn’t.

When he was finally in the chair, surrounded by people looking just as messed up and sketchy as he was, he asked himself “Is that really how I look?”

He watched her as she told them exactly what to do. And one by one, they did. And it came to him.

He had doubts, but he had to make his friends happy.

“Uh, my name is Alex and I’m..an alcoholic.”

“Thank you Alex,” She spoke, and the next person went. When it finally got done going around, she stood up.

“My name is Alisse Garner. Please call me Alisse” She told everyone, looking each one of us in the eyes, “You are all here for a reason. And that reason is because you all suffer from alcohol abuse.”

There were noises of protest from the few who still wanted to deny it, even though they had just admitted it. Even Alex couldn’t deny it, he abused his right to drink alcohol.

“Stop right there. You are here, and as such you will accept your fate” Alex thought sounded more like she was reading from a book.

From then on, she broke down our problems. In two hours, she managed to make multiple people cry and whine about how they wanted to stop so badly. Alex wasn’t one of those people. He continued to hold strong to his problem.

As it ended, the ones that admitted wanting to help themselves were given one-on-one sessions with other therapists to actually stop their problem. The ones that were not were given another date to come back and see Alisse again.

Alex was one the latter.

“I don’t want to come back” He told her, making his annoyance obvious, “I told my friends I would come once and that’s what I did.”

Alisse wasn’t one to beg and plead, nor had she ever really been. And she wasn’t planning on starting now.

“Look, if your friends made you come, they obviously care about you. Now, I won’t get on my knees and grovel. I will give you a one-on-one appointment with myself, because I don’t see group therapy working. If you don’t show up for said appointment, I will call your friends and tell them that you are too far gone for therapy and suggest the only path left is rehab, and I will have them drag you there and I will admit you myself. It’s your choice” She spoke quietly, ending her sentence with a bright smile and a piece of paper with a date set a week from then. She then moved onto the next person, making much less to say to them.

Alex groaned. He didn’t want to go into rehab and be treated like an insane person. That was the last thing he wanted. And he’d admit, this Alisse actually scared him. He knew she was dead serious, and he knew his friends would, in fact, take her advice and drag him to a rehabilitation center.

With a sigh, he got up and walked out the door he knew he’d be coming back through very soon.