Crested Butte Abuse Center Shut

(Crested Butte, CO  —  From Tales of Paradise Lost  —  January 25, 2015)

The Gothic Substance Abuse Clinic at Totem Pole Park has been closed until further notice according to on-premise physicians here. The facility, opened in 1984, had hoped to attract wealthy drug and alcohol abusers to the town to beef up the off-season economy. The concept failed.

Instead a slew of needy addicts show up between December and March and again in July and August.

“We are far too busy with the unbalanced tourist and the whacky transient to deal with the demand during peak times,” said Melanie Mercury, a psychiatric nurse specializing in substance abuse who, according to co-workers, makes “a knockdown martini when the spirit moves her.”

Mercury holds down 14 other part-time jobs when the tourists are here and says that besides that most addicts are poor tippers.

The Board of Directors at GSACTPP plan a media blitz of major markets in an attempt to educate the populace as to the best times to visit the town. No one was available for further comment since they were all in meetings with themselves.

“We have had complete recoveries in just a few short months,” beamed Mercury.

Other patients don’t do so well despite behavior modification and time spent in stark, spartan cells that they call home. Opportunity for simulated life experience as well as on-the-job training exists on every corner.”

– Tommy Middlefinger