My Time At The Oasis

Nestled in the center of a small New England town stands a three-story nondescript brick building. Once home to a community hospital, it now serves as a Mental Health/Rehab/Medical Detox Facility. Privately owned and appropriately licensed.

New vinyl floors line the halls, adorned with Wayfair furniture and obligatory generic slogans of: Resilience, Mind Over Matter, and Endless Possibilities Start Here, found in modernized rustic frames on the walls. Advertised as Low Patient Ratio, Medically Assisted Detox, Patient Centered Care with Inner Focused Work to help those struggling get through dark days. A consistently rated Five-Star establishment.

I never met the woman who started it all, but I could see her vision right away. Daily needs are amply met with unlimited catered food, drinks, and sustenance. A sense of community with close-knit therapy and groups. Skills-based learning opportunities through various classes. A sense of belonging and purpose. A place to withdraw from the world, to get back to baseline, and then advance into a productive life from there.

Unfortunately, she was, allegedly, ousted from the company. Then her model was torn down and replaced with a diametrically opposed structural framework of zero rules, no policies, and a "make it like the Hilton" type of enabling behavior that all but cements perpetual addiction struggles.

When I think about my time at the Oasis, I am more than halfway convinced that it was all fake. I scribbled my name on a 13-week contract, but I lasted only 7 shifts before I got cut.

The workplace was interesting. The patients are always the same, anywhere you go, and at The Oasis, it was no different. Addiction touches everyone. Every walk of life, every color, creed, and belief across the board.

But at the Oasis, it was unlike any other place I had worked, and it wasn't the patients who were somehow different; it was the staff, the operations, the nonexistent chain of command. It was as if a bunch of people took a weekend to watch some Hollywood-produced documentaries and tried to duplicate what they thought addiction services should look like. Minor details were missing. There were no privacy screens on the computers, no plexiglass protection for the nurses' station, none of the nurses ever thought to have their own pulse oxs and there was no employee break room (and with that, no employee rights bulletin board).

When I say 'no policies,' I mean literally NO policies. Some staff members said if they find drugs, they flush them down the toilets, while others claim they save the drugs for the patients to have on discharge. Honestly, not sure which of those two opposite answers is the correct facility protocol, since no one could ever show me the policy manual.

None of the staff had ever been trained in Narcan, but were expected to use it if needed. If a patient were having a seizure, the only answer staff would have is "get the nurse!". For techs/therapists/admin, CPR/BLS certification was not required, and no de-escalation training was provided. It was literally just a bunch of random people thrown together with no directions or guides on what to do or what to expect when working at a rehab. Everyone "just wingin' it!". Setting people up for eventual failure.

It got even weirder when a newly designated "Weapon of Mass Destruction" was found on the unit, and nothing happened. At all. No room searches or administrative discharges were completed; instead, continued use of 24/7 personal cell phones, "GrubHub"/"DoorDash" BLIND deliveries NOT INSPECTED by staff, and continued allowance of attendance to outside groups and peer outings, i.e., bowling alley trips and movie theater nights. It was weird, in a very bad way.

It was so strange that it remains difficult to put into words just how bizarre the whole experience was. There were a couple of moments that I felt as if I was in some sort of psychological boot camp where textbook manipulation and intelligence pressure tactics were deployed by the administrators. As if to systematically break down and rebuild staff from nothing. Standard emotional abuse cycles. Constantly. Daily.

They did it all. Old classics like love bombing, public shaming, triangulation, and guilt-ridden pressures to conform, and more brazenly, offers of occasional cash payments for good work. There were incredible social dynamics built on and fueled by artificially inserted conflicts pitting techs against nurses and nurses against therapists. All the while, the administrators watched through cameras and appeared, seemingly, solely to play weird mental games with anyone who happened to be in front of them at any given moment. It was so odd.

There were Milgrim-esque voices of authority, spoken over the phone, testing stress limits and choke points. So far as providing clear, cut-and-dry illegal orders framed as "recommendations" to ease the workload... just fill out the paperwork, don't actually do the assessments.

One could make the argument that it very well could be a field operations site for a clandestine program, testing the ethical frameworks and moral ambiguities of healthcare workers in the field of Addiction Services, while simultaneously drugging the unsuspecting substance use patient population. Much like I imagine happened at the notorious Haight Ashbury Free Clinic. I would love to know if the nurses there actually knew what was going on or if they were too busy melting the methadone to notice or care.

Crazy thing to say, I know. But what's crazier, the fact that something like the Haight Ashbury clinic actually existed, or the fact that it was fully operational for decades and just recently closed down in 2019?

To make this whole thing even weirder, I never applied for the job. I had never heard of the place, and the opportunity came out of nowhere. I was hounded by the administrators trying to get me there at all costs. Almost as if I was handpicked for something I never asked to participate in.

All jokes aside and as fun as the thought experiment of being targeted by a covert operations team is, the truth is much simpler. The Oasis is not, and has never been, a government testing site. It is, and always will be, just a failed experiment in Addiction/Rehab services.

I know this to be true from the end of what became my last shift at The Oasis. It was New Year's Day, and the shift was almost over when I found myself on the receiving end of the Riot Act after I broke the one rule I never knew existed. I did the unthinkable. I didn't lie, cheat, or steal; instead, I provided a copy of a handbook to a new admit.

At the time, during, and in the moments immediately after the beratement session, I was under the impression that the problem of providing a handbook was that clear rules, patient rights, and unit expectations could be found and outlined in the documents. It wasn't until a few days ago that it really hit me.

Within the pages of the Handbook are costs for services. Details on pricing tiers, ranging from about $5,000 to almost $8,000/patient/day, depending on tiered treatments. In hindsight, it makes a little more sense why, after providing the handbook to one patient, I then got a few questions from other patients about yoga, massages, gym policies, spiritual classes, and everything else they are apparently paying for but aren't at all receiving. Makes me sort of proud that the word spread amongst the patients about what they are actually entitled to. I hope, perhaps in vain, that they will be able to get what they are paying for.

The uncomfortable part for the administration, I'm sure, is that if such a revelation- of payments rendered for services not provided- could be so easily noticed by some agency nurse with no investigative or auditing knowledge, just imagine what can be found by someone who is looking in the right places for the right information when they know exactly what they are looking for.

In all honesty, I have never had any interest in committing fraud, and I really have no interest in starting now. I'm glad I wasn't a good fit for The Oasis. I might have lost over $20,000 in guaranteed contracted income, but it's sort of okay. This isn't what I signed up for anyway.

Here's to 2026 with the hopes that once the Day Care fraud bubble pops, Rehab services can be the next industry under the microscope.