- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Friends & Family
Tell me a little about your life prior to recovery and what brought you to recovery.
Well, my life growing up was really good. I grew up in an upper-middle class family with my mom, dad, older brother and older sister. It was really stable; we never wanted or needed for anything. It was a pretty average childhood.
When I was 15, my mother passed away suddenly. It was at that point that I began dabbling with alcohol and drugs. And what I learned by doing that was that I could control and manipulate my emotions. It became a very useful tool for me to deal with the grief of the passing of my mother. My brother was in the Navy at that point, my sister was off at college and my dad became a workaholic. So I was a 15/16 year old with a lot of raw emotions, access to money and access to drugs. It just became kind of perfect petri dish for the growth of an addict. My use sort of exploded at that point. It went from weekends to daily to all day use.
My first experience of treatment was when I was 16. My dad and my new step-mother discovered that I had been drinking and smoking pot and decided that I needed to go to an adolescent program, so I did. I stayed chemical-free for a year (mainly just to live in their house and not get into any trouble), but as soon as I graduated high school and was out on my own, I had every intention of going back. What I found was that what used to satisfy me wasn’t enough anymore. So my use went from pot and alcohol to my discovery of opiates and benzos, and very quickly escalated in drug use.
I was introduced to IV opiate use with Dilaudid and got really bad for about a year. Then at age 20, through my dad’s intervention, I went to treatment again…and then again at 21. I kind of had a cycle of allowing myself to get so badly off that I would ask or reach out for help with every intention of just cleaning up a little bit and getting back into the family’s good graces….usually around the holidays so I could be home for Thanksgiving, Christmas and my birthday so I could get all of the gifts, then go back out. That cycle persisted for several years.
When I was in my mid-20s, I was living in Auburn (after living in several different places in the country), and I fell for a girl. At that point, I discovered that I could moderate my use as long as I had something else in my life. Because of that relationship, I went back to just alcohol and pot for the time. We ended up getting married, but eventually, it wasn’t enough and the use began to worsen again. The marriage began to struggle.
Then my best friend passed away, and I was the one that found him. All of the grief that I had never dealt with from the passing of my mom returned exponentially and my use exploded in a very short period of time. I was back to the IV use, back to heavy benzo use and contemplating suicide (as well as a lot of other dark things). My wife ended up kicking me out and I bounced around friends’ houses for a while.
Finally, I got to the point where I knew I needed something different. I knew I needed to stop, and I didn’t know how. So I called my father. My stepmother (who is actually in the recovery field) knew of a treatment center in Baton Rouge that she felt would be appropriate for me. On October 26, 2003, at 27 years old, I was put on a bus to Baton Rouge to go to treatment. I was willing, but not thrilled. I was a very stubborn patient, very entitled. I was “treatment savvy” and educated enough to know what to say and how to say it. My counselor always said that I was a constant chameleon in group. I could act and behave however I needed to act and behave in any situation. It has taken a long time to break down a lot of those walls. I ended up spending 60 days at the primary level as opposed to the usual 30. But then once I decided that I truly needed to do it and I had the second part of my spiritual awakening, everything changed and I ended up going through the long term program very quickly and graduating on June 1, 2004. I came back to work at that same treatment center of December 2004 and have been able to maintain continuous sobriety since.
What is your relationship like with your family now?
My relationship with my family now is wonderful. I will say that my relationship with my now ex-wife is much better. We do have a son together, but got divorced after I had been sober for about a year and a half or two years. What we realized was that the person I was sober was not the same as the person I was when we got married and I was using. We decided that we weren’t meant to be together, but very amicably for the most part. Part of the reason was that we decided it would be better to raise our son in two happy homes rather that one dysfunctional home. And he was young enough at that point to where it wasn’t really going to affect him. He doesn’t know any different. I have a great relationship with him and a very good relationship with her.
My father, brother and sister all actually answer the phone now when I call. Unfortunately, my father has a very rare type of cancer that he’s dealing with right now. He’s actually had it for the past eight years, but it is progressively getting to the point where the chemo and radiation aren’t working as well and they are taking their toll on him physically, causing other issues. He is luckily going to be able to be home from his cancer treatment this Christmas, so we are all getting together in Birmingham. I talk to him at least twice a week as well as my brother and sister. I have been able to be a part of the lives of my nieces and nephew, who I wasn’t able to see for several years prior to getting sober. They love my son. We all live in different areas, so when we get together it is really special. But it is absolutely something I would not have if I didn’t have this program.
How old is your son?
He just turned 10. He’s very emotional and very sweet. He’s like me…when he’s in a good mood, he’s in a good mood. When he’s in a bad mood, he gets kind of crabby. But he’s very considerate of others. Even his mom is just blown away by the way that he is always nice to the other kids in class. He’s not one of those kids that picks on others and I’m really proud of him for that. His grades are good and his behavior is good, but it is emotional temperament and compassion that I am really impressed with.
What would you say is something that you’re proud of as you have gone through this process?
Aside from the relationships with my family, it would have to be that I am able to be a positive influence in my son’s life. I have the best father in the world and if I can be one tenth of the man that he is to me to my son, then to me that’s the point of life. We can’t take anything with us. All we can do is pass on the legacy we leave to our children. The man that I was–I wasn’t even a man–the BOY that I was couldn’t have had anything to leave anybody. Just the thought that I have an opportunity to leave a positive legacy for him, and that when he talks about me to his children, he will hopefully have the same type of reverence….that means more to me than absolutely anything.