ADVANCING HEALTH-CARE PRACTICE

3.3     Susan's Story

He choked me one time until I went unconscious. I was taken to hospital, but I was too far gone, and too doped up to even know the difference. I would never have gone to the hospital, or told anyone about it even, because I knew the revenge was far more severe. But I ended up in detox.

I went to detox and then from there I went to another city to do 30 day treatment. Then I came back here to a support recovery house. When I was in the city, I was linked to a women-only treatment program. I was hoping to get more information from them about the abusive relationship. But they didn't really give me much, either. They went into "boundaries", which was okay but they just didn’t seem to get it. Even though I told them 'I just came out of an abusive relationship', they didn't seem to get it. They just touched on boundaries all the time, and that's not it.

And then when I did finally go for women’s residential treatment they didn't really give me any support in this issue either, it was just more of the drugs trip, they barely touched on the abuse. So, after all of that I was still like 'What am I going to do', still really upset and scared about a lot of things. When I asked my social worker, she told me there were support groups out there, but she didn't tell me where or how to access them.