If someone ever asked me what the most forgettable place on earth was, I wouldn't hesitate for a second.
A drug rehabilitation center.
But if that same smart-ass followed up with another question — then what's the most unforgettable place on earth? — I would probably pause for a moment… and give exactly the same answer.
A drug rehabilitation center.
At least, that's how I used to define it.
To me, a rehab center was the most ridiculous invention mankind had ever come up with. Even the name itself didn't match its actual purpose. Out of ten addicts who walked in, nine walked out and got high again. The tenth probably ended up in a psychiatric ward because his brain was already fried beyond repair.
So in my humble opinion, rehab centers only served one real purpose:
to help addicts regain their strength so they could go home and continue getting high.
There was another thing equally ridiculous about them.
They had absolutely no sense of right or wrong.
A perfectly healthy young man — tall, handsome, with a body like a model — walked through the gates, and they still admitted him without hesitation.
That young man, unfortunately, was me.
The doctor glanced at me once, his face cold as a marble statue.
"How much do you spend a day?" he asked.
I answered with an equally cold expression.
"Twenty pesos."
His eyes widened instantly.
"Are you messing with an officer?"
Jesus.
My very first day inside and I was already being grilled like a criminal. If I pushed him any further, I was pretty sure the guy might shove a syringe straight down my throat.
So I scratched my head awkwardly and explained,
"Well, you asked how much I spend a day. Outside, the only thing I really play is video games. Electricity probably costs around twenty pesos a day."
His face darkened immediately.
The pen in his hand scratched furiously across the notebook.
Please don't write "addicted to gaming" in my medical record, I prayed silently.
I wasn't some skinny kid glued to a computer screen twenty-four hours a day.
After scribbling a few more lines, the doctor barked at a uniformed guard to escort me inside. Then he tossed one last irritated remark in my direction.
"Keep joking around like that. Later when the withdrawal hits, you won't get any medicine."
I sighed.
The guy was the one who needed medication.
Still, I couldn't really blame him. Who would believe a man sent to rehab by his own family wasn't actually doing drugs?
But the truth was…
The only reason I ended up in this hellhole was something far more ridiculous.
Filial piety.
***
I was twenty-four that year.
An age when people still believed they understood the world.
I had quit my job after arguing with my idiot boss. With all that free time suddenly on my hands, my routine became painfully simple: coffee in the morning, drinking at night, sometimes hanging out at bars with a few friends.
They weren't bad people. Just the kind who liked to show off.
Once in a while they would pop a little ecstasy pill for fun.
But that stuff never had anything to do with me.
First, I simply had no interest in it.
Second, I had an older brother who had made it very clear that if I ever got addicted to anything, he would personally twist my neck off.
And honestly, I liked being alive.
So drugs were never really my thing.
Unfortunately, fate had a twisted sense of humor.
One night the bar got raided.
The entire place was rounded up and hauled to the police station for urine tests.
Mine came back clean.
But that didn't mean my life wouldn't change.
***
When I got home, my mother greeted me with tears streaming down her face.
You would think I had just returned from a war zone in the Middle East.
"Oh my god, what's wrong with you?" she cried.
"Why are you hanging around those terrible people? Don't you care about your parents at all?"
I sighed.
There was nothing I could say that would calm her down.
My brother Carlos Rivera stood nearby, staring at me with eyes that looked less like a brother's and more like a prison guard's.
"You didn't touch hard drugs," he said slowly.
"But they said you smoke weed. Is that true?"
Jesus.
That nonsense?
Who the hell doesn't try it once or twice?
I was about to say exactly that, but when I saw the expression on his face, the words died in my throat.
Truth was, I had taken a few puffs here and there. Just to change the mood a little. In other countries they sold that stuff everywhere. Why was everyone acting like it belonged in the same category as heroin?
I scratched my head again.
"Come on, you know weed doesn't make people addicted. Overseas they sell it everywhere. Even the police don't care."
My carefully reasoned argument was answered with another dramatic wave of crying from my mother.
Honestly, that security newspaper she loved reading was probably the most toxic piece of literature on earth. According to those articles, even seasoning powder could become a Class-A poison if they wanted it to.
Of course she trusted that magazine more than her own son.
I was completely powerless in that argument.
And even more powerless when my father delivered his final verdict with the authority of a supreme court judge.
"That's enough talking. Carlos — take him to rehab tomorrow."
The words hit me like lightning.
Of all the people in the world, only I could smoke maybe ten puffs of weed in my entire life and end up being sent to rehab for it.
I looked at my brother's stone-cold face.
Then at my father's heroic expression.
Then at the hopeful glimmer in my mother's eyes.
Inside my head, a single sentence echoed:
Fuck this ridiculous life.
***
The idea of a rehabilitation center had always sounded terrifying to me.
Some of my old friends had spent years in places like that — labor camps hidden deep in forests or remote farmland. To them, those places were real prisons where addicts worked like slaves during the day and dreamed about freedom at night.
"A living hell," one friend had called it.
That was the phrase that stuck in my head as the car drove toward the center.
Normally I considered myself pretty brave.
But at that moment, my voice still came out trembling.
"Carlos… are you really sending me away for years?"
He grunted softly.
Then he let my heart race for a while before finally answering.
"It's just weed. I know that. But you need to experience something like this once. Otherwise you'll keep drifting into the wrong crowd."
My mind went blank.
If my brother understood drugs well enough, why didn't he just explain things to our parents?
As if reading my thoughts, he continued,
"You're wondering why I didn't defend you, right?"
He looked straight ahead while driving.
"Just because weed isn't serious doesn't mean you should keep hanging around those people. First you try one thing, then you get curious about another. Even people ten times stronger than you have fallen that way."
Seeing the irritation rising in his voice, I stayed quiet.
A moment later, his tone softened.
"You'll only stay five months."
Five months.
I barely heard the rest of his lecture about life and mistakes.
Five months.
Compared to the several years I had imagined earlier, that sounded almost… merciful.
Five months wouldn't kill anyone.
Besides, part of me was curious about this so-called living hell my friends had described.
***
When we finally arrived, however, I felt strangely disappointed.
Because the "living hell" looked nothing like what I had imagined.
A large compound surrounded by high walls stood before me. A massive iron gate guarded the entrance. Several security guards in uniform stood outside, while inside I could hear shouting and laughter — like people playing some kind of game.
This was supposed to be hell?
It didn't look like hell at all.
Not yet.