- Alcohol
- Drugs
My name is Scot M. My sobriety date is September 14, 2010. I am 43 years old and I struggled with alcohol and chemical dependency from the time I was 21 years old. This is my story of what it was like, what happened, and what it is like now.
The first time I drank alcohol, I got drunk and blacked out. The next day and every day until September 13, 2010, I would drink until I passed out and used some type of chemical along with the alcohol. I did this every day, and over the next 20 years I would only be clean and sober for 180 days out of those 20 years. That 180 days was ONLY because I was in six 30-day treatment centers during that time. Life had no meaning for me and I had pushed away anything or anyone who loved or cared about me. My life was beyond unmanageable, and toward the end of my addiction, I could not even keep a job where I was paid minimum wage bagging corn. Freshly self-bonded out of jail from a DUI and homeless, I headed west on Interstate 40 toward my parents’ farm in Northwest Tennessee. I stopped at a gas station in Jackson, TN, to call my parents and use the last $5.00 I had in my pocket for alcohol. I was desperate, and I received word from home that coming back to live with my parents would not be an option. Frustrated, hopeless, and just a few hours away from drug and alcohol withdrawal, God intervened. I was listening to sports talk radio station 92.9 out of Memphis, TN, when I heard a familiar voice. The voice was coming from the radio and it was an advertisement for an intensive outpatient treatment center in Southaven, MS. I knew the voice of the person talking on the ad, and at the end of the advertisement, the voice said, “My name is Clark C., and there is always hope in recovery!”
I knew Clark from an earlier time in both our lives, and here he was, just a few years into recovery and advertising on the radio about his treatment center. For the first time in many, many years, I felt a ray of hope. I called Clark immediately and asked for help. That was September 13, 2010, and the next day, Clark helped me get into a detox facility and then straight into his IOP for 12 weeks, followed by six months of aftercare.
Now my life has meaning, and I am engaged to the girl of my dreams and my friends and family are all back in my everyday life. I am employable and I am living clean and sober! I drop to my knees every morning to thank God for saving me and to ask Him to guide me throughout the day. I am living the most blessed life I could ever imagine, and it’s all due to recovery. There is always hope in recovery!!