- Drugs
- Friends & Family
My name is Eddie W. I am 29 years old. I’m a person in long-term recovery. I have been in recovery since July 9, 2009. I recently celebrated eight years of sobriety. I’m originally from Philadelphia and now I live in the nation’s capital.
I remember reaching out to my dad about a year before I got clean and sober. I dropped to my knees in my dad’s bedroom and said, “I need help.”
He asked, “From what?”
I replied, “I’m sick.”
He knew I was using, but his response was, “Go for a run, you’ll feel better.” That moment was my desperate cry for help, and I don’t fault him for his response; he just was uneducated. He had no idea. He did not know that I was incapable of going for a run. He didn’t know I was incapable of helping myself.
I was in and out of my parents’ house. I grew up in a good home as the youngest of four kids; my parents stayed together. I didn’t come from a broken home or anything like that. I was captain of the football team, captain of the wrestling team, vice president of my high school, yet I continued to use throughout high school into college. Once I gave up sports (once I gave up everything), the disease of addiction and the disease of alcoholism became more apparent, but the true depth of this disease settled in long before substance use became an obvious symptom.
I graduated high school when I was 17 years old. I went to Temple University, but I dropped out of school. Despite that, I’m still young, even as a junior in college. I’ve tried every geographical change you can imagine. I tried different maintenance programs: just alcohol, just opiates, just alcohol and opiates, just marijuana– you name it.
I moved down to the Jersey Shore at one point, and my parents thought that that was going to work. I was able to obtain some clean time, like a month. Soon, I was right back to the races, so then I returned back home. I remember trying to detox myself in my parents’ house, in my bedroom. We turned the lock around on my door so I was locked in the bedroom, just to sweat it out. It didn’t work.
I continued to couch surf, and then my parents let me stay at their house, but I didn’t see them. I might have seen my dad one time. He couldn’t look at me anymore. He didn’t know what to do with me. I worked as a bartender, so I would go to work, he would come home from work, and then by the time I got in at 3:00 a.m., he would be asleep. He stopped coming into my room in the morning, because he didn’t know how he would find me. If he did come into my room, I’m sure he did it just to see if I was breathing.
On Father’s Day of 2009, I walked in the house at 8:00 a.m. I walked into a family intervention. At that moment, my mom finally said to me, “Eddie, for the past two and half years, your friends have stopped by the house and said that you needed help, When I asked them what you needed help with, they didn’t want to rat you out, and they would just say, ‘He just needs help,’ but they wouldn’t say that you were using drugs. They wouldn’t say that you were addicted, anything. They just kept telling us that you need help, but when we’d say, ‘From what?’ They were just doing what friends thought that friends should do, and at least tell that you need help, but they wouldn’t get into detail about it.”
Then my sister Megan was there, and Megan said, “Eddie, it wasn’t until Justin came to me and said to me, ‘Megan, if Eddie says that he’s been hanging out with me, I haven’t talked to him for the last nine months. I want to tell you guys that he needs help. He’s addicted to drugs and alcohol. He needs help.”
It was that moment when friends realized what friends are supposed to do, right? These are not people in recovery. These are people that just I grew up with, that have the ability to stop, that don’t suffer from the disease of addiction like I do, that can go out on weekends. Everybody has to understand that some people can do it, and some people cannot. At some point my friends noticed that I was one who couldn’t stop.
I didn’t want to go. I kept saying, “I’m not going. I’m not going.” Finally, I said, “Okay. I’ll go. I’ll go to treatment. I’ll go to detox.”
My mom handed me a manila folder. There were three treatment programs in that folder. I don’t even know what the bottom two were, and I just called the first one. I spoke to this lady, and I started to cry when I spoke to her. I don’t know why I started crying. Maybe I was finally able to have a sigh of relief for the first time. I was so tired but I couldn’t admit how tired I was to anybody, even myself. I was stubborn. Everyone else knew that I was tired, except for me. I was the last one to find out.
The only reason I stayed was because a program funded my stay. I got clean and sober before the Affordable Care Act, before you could be 26 years or younger and still have insurance under your parents, so I didn’t have insurance when I got clean and sober. My parents helped me with detox. Honestly, I only did it so I wouldn’t have to go home for 30 days. I didn’t have to go back to work for 30 days. I didn’t do it because I thought I needed more treatment.
I believe that people sometimes get confused. They say, “You have to want it to go in.” I don’t believe that. I believe that you need to want it in order to stay, because you have to have that ambition. You have to have that work ethic, because this process does take work. It’s a daily process. Today, I truly believe that if you’re put into a situation for recovery, you can create the opportunity to experience the want. You might not want it immediately, but if you stick around long enough, we’re going to show you that you probably will. The want is for the ‘long-term’, the ongoing recovery. Whatever gets you to the beginning gets you there.
I only made that decision to stay so I wouldn’t have to go home. I didn’t have to do anything. Although I continued to use for three weeks in treatment, July 8, 2009 became the last day I used. I never want to go back to the way that I felt that day. I was not using my substance of choice. I actually don’t even really like the term “substance of choice,” because that implies that we had some choice whether or not we wanted to use it before we went in. I was using stuff that I normally didn’t use. It didn’t matter. The only reason I stayed clean and sober on July 9 is because the two people that I was using with discharged, and I stayed in treatment for another 11 days.
I was not drug tested in that treatment facility. I participated because I was feeling nice, but my counselor did know something was up. He’s said, “You’re in relapse mode. If you haven’t already relapsed, I give you 90 days. At 90 days, you’re going to question what you’re going to do.” He was right, because it was a lot of work, so I ended up discharging that day and I didn’t tell my parents I had been using. I told everybody that my sobriety date was June 20, 2009, and I continued to tell everybody that for two years.
It wasn’t because I had some crazy legal battle going on, I didn’t want anybody to know I was had been using. It was because Mom and Dad were letting me come back home.
I went home. I went to a fellowship of my choice, and I went that day. I had about 11 days clean and sober. My dad dropped me off at a meeting. I told everybody that I was gung-ho, that I was going to do what I was supposed to do, but I sat in the last seat next to the door at that meeting. The people in that fellowship were the ones that came in and gripped me up and actually saw me sitting in the last seat.
I believe that God plays a role in my life and puts people in my life when I’m not expecting it, often when I need them the most. When I was in that first meeting, I was sitting in the first seat next to the door, head down, and this kid came walking in. He looked at me, and I looked at him.
He asked, “You’re Eddie, right?”
I replied, “Yeah, Sean, right?”
That kid was visiting his girlfriend in the treatment facility I was in on my last day, when I was sitting on the stoop waiting to get picked up by my dad. We had talked while I waited for my dad. He had not told me he was in recovery one time during our whole conversation that day. He just told me he was visiting his girlfriend. On that day, he asked me how I was doing, so I told him I was discharging. He told me, “You should probably go to a meeting.” He hadn’t told me where he lived; he didn’t tell me anything.
So, I went to that first meeting later the same day, and I sat in the first seat next to the door, and this kid comes walking in. He’s like, “You just left treatment today.”
I said, “Yeah, you’re the kid that I met earlier, right? I didn’t know you were in recovery.”
He said, “Yeah, I didn’t tell you. What are you doing sitting in the last row; why don’t you go to the front row and get your hand up, tell everybody you’re new, and you need help?”
So, I did. And then I went the next day, and I went the next day, and I started to experience the want.
My life began when I was 21 years old. I’ll never forget being at that facility, and my parents having a family meeting with my therapist (who I still call every year). That therapist saved my life. My mom and dad asked, “Well, what’s his problem?”
He said, “Everything.”
I was like, “What? Dude. Who the… what are you talking about? What do you mean everything?”
That’s when it started. I was 21 years old. I thought my life was completely over. It was the people in the rooms of the fellowships. It was also my friends Justin and John– the friends I had grown up with that were not in recovery, but knew that I was using and stopped hanging out with me. When I came home from treatment, things got better. They didn’t trust me right away, but you know what? My birthday is July 30, so I turned 22 on July 30. The first thing I wanted to do (because I was out of treatment) was shoot pool at the pub.
At that point, I really don’t have any friends in recovery, just because I was brand new, and Justin and John and my friend Jimmy and Mikey wouldn’t go with me. They said, “No.” It was a Friday night, and they couldn’t. They said, “No, dude. We’re going to hang out with you at home, and we’re going to show you that we love you, and we’re friends with you, and just because we can do it, and you can’t, doesn’t mean we can’t hang. We want to be here to support you, too.” It was the people outside of the rooms that supported me just as much as the ones inside.
There’s too many deaths out there. There’s too many things that are occurring. I’m here to help in any fashion. I’m here to show you that there’s a meeting at Foggy Bottom on Thursday nights. I’m here to show you that there’s a meeting at the Westside Club over on Wisconsin in Georgetown. I’m here to let you know that if you need a medical detox, there’s different avenues within this area and across the entire country. You can get introduced to this, but first and foremost, I’m also a big believer in prevention at the high school and adolescent level and the fraternal level.
You hear things like “Recovery is beyond my wildest dreams.” The fact is that I can now actually be in the same room as my father for about an hour, or even a whole weekend and not argue one time, and smile and laugh and call him now for life advice, for girlfriend advice, for all the unconditional love that I had been searching for my entire life. That was all because of my recovery. I used to keep people at arms’ length, and since I’ve been in recovery I’ve been able to put my arm down a little bit and allow people to come in and allow my family to be there, and to allow my family to love me.
There’s one thing that I always say, too: I can ask for help, but I have to be willing to accept the help. I can ask for love, but I have to be willing to accept the love, right? We can’t just want these things, we have to be willing to put an action into it, to accept it, and reciprocate it, like being a part of a healthy relationship, platonically or romantically.
These are things that I’ve been able to experience since I’ve been in recovery: commitment, continuing with an employer, continuing with a friendship, continuing with school, like finishing and completing things. Those are things that sometimes are not always discussed, because people want to think about their property, or their prestige, but life is not about those things.
Now, if we all engage in healthy relationships, if we love one another, if we share, if we help the next person, if we share our story, if we’re just there to listen, then that positive action goes longer than you’ll ever know. We have to let people out there know that we continue to struggle, but that it’s okay. We’re here for you. We’re here like the people who were here before us.