- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Friends & Family
Submitted by: Susanne Johnson
Andrew likes to refer to himself as a person in long-term recovery. For him, the drugs he used are less relevant than the recovery process he entered and the life he is living now. Though his use of drugs and its progression was pretty common, he started with smoking pot at ages twelve and thirteen and progressing into harder drugs around the age of 14 or 15.
The first time he entered a treatment facility was entirely against his wishes. He overdosed at age 17 and was send to a place in Western Samoa, which he describes as a children’s prison camp. Samoa is about 500 miles east of New Zealand and he was one of about 300 kids that were staying there, being held under horrible circumstances, locked at times in wooden boxes and more. Being there for an entire year he was not only sober against all his wishes and willingness, but returned home traumatized from the way he was treated there. He never went to a meeting, never saw a therapist, he was just locked up for a year in a nature paradise under some of the harshest conditions in a prison camp atmosphere.
Needless to say, he relapsed right away– it only took him three hours after he left that facility to search for relief through substances. He was sent to Montana to another facility and right as he turned 18 and was able to leave, he bought himself a bus ticket, left the facility and got high on the bus drive home. He adds that the place was finally shut down a while ago. This experience lead to a huge resentment, which increased Andrew’s present wish to help young people to find recovery in a totally different and safe environment.
Back when he a teenager, his parents were not too thrilled about having him come home already high again. They had appropriate boundaries in place though and his mother took him straight to a homeless shelter, where he stayed for a night before he could find some other people.
Just like most parents, his mom and dad were unprepared for all those things to happen. They were uninformed and overwhelmed by the facts that brought so much turmoil to their life. They really did not know how to handle the situation and what would be the best way to go. “Unfortunately you don’t get a child and this wonderful baby boy comes with a manual telling you what to do with him and how to react in certain situation if they occur a decade from now,” Andrew says. “This myth that kids with substance use disorders come from broken homes etc., is not helping the problem either. My parents are outstanding human beings, my mom never even smoked a cigarette. My mom is a doctor, went to Harvard and my dad is an economist. They are extremely educated people and they got hit by it and had to admit that they had no idea what to do.”
Andrew is the oldest of three brothers– the other two are doing great and never did struggle with the disease. Nobody had an idea why Andrew was affected and just like other parents, they asked themselves “what did we do wrong here?
Once he turned nineteen, he was sent to his third major treatment program. That time, he was sent to an old-fashioned therapeutic community model rehab center. “The front looked like a mansion, while the side looked like a warehouse,” he says. “People were running around through the building, trying to gather special privileges that needed months to accumulate and there were people were overseeing each other. And, again, I was not exposed to any 12-step meetings or a support fellowship.”
He stayed there for a nine month duration and he just walked off and probably was high before they knew he was gone.
Soon after his 21st birthday, he was arrested and placed in jail. His parents came to visit him and suggested that he should go to go to another treatment. “Absolutely not!” was his reply, “I will stay in jail.” And he stayed in jail on his own volition for four months. “Bad treatment is– in a lot of cases– worse than no treatment.” Andrew states. He had the impression that treatment would not work and held on to his bad experiences. But the fact is, that not all treatment centers are equal and therefore it is so important to quickly find the perfect matching place for each person.
Four months in jail were hard on Andrew. At first, it sounded easier than it was. After four months, he came up with the thought that treatment really actually sounded good compared to jail. For the final time, he entered a new rehab treatment program. This time he found his place. He stayed for a month at a residential facility in Utah, after which he was sent to their extended care facility in Washington. He really liked it there, but was kicked out there after a roman candle fun fight with another client. But they kept him within the system and transferred him to another facility in Florida.
Andrew finally stayed sober and celebrates 14 years of continuous sobriety today. After a terrifying start, he found the right place and the right approach to get help. He now acknowledges how frustrating this time was for his parents and that it took a toll on their marriage and their life. Parents expect a miracle and this seldom occurs. His father had negative thoughts about treatment and believed Andrew would never get sober, while his mother was the “never give up” type of person. Andrew knows today how hard it was for them to make decisions and be of support.
Now he is in early recovery. He is sober but without any education. In between all his treatment episodes, he was able to get his GED, but that is all for now. A step-down program he attended in Florida required that he find a job. He remembers making kettle corn in Florida. He worked in the Florida heat, over a hot kettle, mismatching oven mitts, experiencing hot oil, sugar and exploding corn splatting over him, hot caramel sugar burning in his hands. He also worked at a coffee shop, jingling his way back to the halfway house with the cargo pants full of quarters, which was essentially his salary. He did not last very long in those kind of jobs and quickly became a behavioral health tech and began running half-way houses for a while.
He hit a ceiling without an education and it made him feel like a failure be limited in his career, watching his younger brothers surpassing him. This soon lead into a depression. He went back to school, finished his bachelor degree in 2 1/2 years, took positions as case manager and therapist during grad school.
Today, Andrew, along with his business partners, owns a gorgeous facility in Boca Raton, Florida where they specialize in helping young people to achieve sobriety and get back into college at the same time. It offers a combination of monitoring their clinical and academic progress along with leading them through extended care into a fruitful life in recovery.
“If you get arrested today as a 17-year-old, you might go to jail with the grown-ups, which is not good for you. If you ask for help, you might get help together with 13-14 year olds, which is not good for you either and not good for them,” he points out. Today, he holds a license to treat adolescents at the treatment center he owns, and works to help this population that is stuck between childhood and adult life.
Andrew loves the efforts of Heroes in Recovery to break the stigma and empower families to get help. Andrew’s recovery was marked by ups and downs, but finally he found his way. He is a very happy person today, energetic and inspiring for so many. He does not want to change his sobriety for anything anymore and takes good care of maintaining a healthy balance in his life.