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On February 19th, 2020, I was admitted into the rehabilitation center. It was a big change and a lot to take in. The first day was mainly just me getting settled into my room, and being given a tour of the facility. Luckily most of the staff spoke passable English, as this rehab center played host to troubled youth of some of the wealthiest people in the world. With such a multicultural patient base translators were employed by the facility, but English being one of the most used languages in the world was pretty common among the staff.
The first week I was confined to the medical center, as I became sick from withdrawal symptoms. I was carefully monitored by the medical staff to make sure everything went smoothly. I experienced aches, pains, and nausea as the drugs were purged from my body. I barely ate, it was hard to keep anything down. Finally eight days later on February 27th, I completed my detox and the withdrawal symptoms subsided.
As I woke up in the medical center on the eighth day, I was greeted with a tray loaded with breakfast foods. The tray contained generous portions of steamed rice, grilled fish, Tsukemono, Natto, Miso soup, and Tamagoyaki. Above this tray was the pale smiling face of a gorgeous Japanese girl who looked to be about my age.
The way she was dressed, it seemed like she would be more at home in a morgue or funeral home than in a rehabilitation clinic. She wore a full-length black dress, with sheer long sleeves. She wore a black belt just below her chest to accentuate her figure and large heavy black boots. Her dark black hair, which fell below her shoulders, framed her pale face perfectly and was accentuated with a dark rouge lipstick thickly applied.
She introduced herself as Yuki Ito. When I started to ask about her last name, she confirmed that she was indeed related to Dr. Ito, being her youngest daughter at 16 years of age. She sat the tray on my lap, having loaded up on food in the hopes that my appetite had come back now that I was out of withdrawal. As I smelled all of the delicious food in front of me, my stomach indeed began to rumble. The issue however was that the only utensil available was chopsticks, and I was very bad with chopsticks, usually just switching to a fork within five minutes.
I looked to Yuki asking if any other cutlery was available. She seemed surprised that I didn't know how to use chopsticks effectively, but offered to teach me. She gently placed the chopsticks in my hand and instructed me where to place my fingers. She gently grabbed my hands as she guided me toward the fish. The moment she touched my hand, I felt a tingling almost like I had been shocked. I looked into her eyes as she guided my hand, and felt butterflies in my stomach. For the first time, I had a crush on someone. After a few guided bites, I started to get the hang of using chopsticks and removed her hand to allow me to feed myself. I was hungry, but there was way too much food for me to finish by myself, so I offered the rest to Yuki.
As we ate, we began chatting, learning a little bit about each other. She of course recognized me from my movies, and asked a ton of questions about what it was like to be a famous actress, what was it like being rich? I answered these questions as diplomatically as I could, not wanting to trauma dump on her first thing. I just told her it was interesting getting to play characters and meet new people. We continued chatting for another hour before I was summoned to my first one-on-one therapy session. I had only ever seen therapy sessions as portrayed in movies, so I wasn't sure what to expect.
The therapist's office was nice and inviting, with neutral-colored walls. She had a couch for patients to sit on, but not the stereotypical leather couch where you lie on your back as the therapist sits in a chair and takes notes. It was just a regular cloth couch with a blanket draped on top. There were also tatami floor mats for people who preferred not to sit on the couch. My therapist introduced herself as Dr. Himari Soto. I think she could tell I was nervous, or maybe everyone was nervous during their first therapy session, so she's used to it. She briefly explained the purpose of our sessions and their part in my recovery. As it was our first session, we didn't get too deep but established a good baseline for how I was feeling about everything.
After my session was art, art is a good catharsis for stress and a window into how people are feeling. The rest of my schedule included lunch, group therapy, free time, dinner, and then bed. I quickly settled into the routine of the center, and it felt good to be in a routine again, to have structure. I had decided on day one that I was going to embrace this chance to get clean, so I went into each day intending to get better.
I spent my sixteenth birthday in rehab, not exactly how I had pictured my sweet sixteen when I was growing up. The staff and the residents threw me a small party, with a store bough cake and candles. It may not have been fancy, but it felt nice. I was so high on my birthday last year, that I don't even remember it. I just remember the headlines the next day, featuring a picture of me vomiting into a sewer grate, a bottle of vodka in my hand.
The memory of how I spent my previous birthday was a motivator for me to complete the program on time, and not linger any longer than I had to. The program was a ninety-day program, after completion, I would be assigned a Sponsor to ensure that I remained clean and sober. At least that was how it was supposed to happen.
As anyone reading this likely knows, the world was caught in the grip of a Pandemic in 2020. COVID-19 spread rapidly throughout the world, causing chaos as people tried to understand this new virus and its effects. Masks were already commonplace in Japan, so the adjustment to mask-wearing was negligible. Even in the rehab center, staff all wore masks, and patients frequently wore masks as well whenever they felt unwell.
Quickly shelter-in-place orders followed, which again being in an isolated rehab center wasn't a big shift for us. Then on April 3rd, Japan enacted a travel ban for fifty countries including the United States, so this meant I was essentially stuck in Japan. I was told that my parents had returned to the United States right before the travel bans went into effect, as the shooting had shut down. They hadn't left in an attempt to abandon me, they just didn't properly anticipate the travel ban, thinking Ann would bring me home once treatment was through.
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Hollywood Princess
General FictionThe child of two of the worlds most well known and respected actors, Julie was born in the limelight. Basically raised on film sets and red carpets, it was no surprise that Julie became an Actor herself at a young age. Follow Julie as she deals with...
