I’m Happy Now

You first shared your story with Heroes in Recovery back in January of 2014, when you were five-and-a-half years clean and sober. Now, a little more than a year later, you’re a little over six-and-a-half years clean and sober. Talk to me a bit about what the last year and two months have been like.

Every year, a lot of things happen. When I stay sober, all these things happen. The big thing in my life is Morgan, my daughter. She overdosed on heroin, it’ll be two years in March, and she’s severely handicapped from that, with brain damage and whatnot. So that’s an ongoing thing. We’ve been out to Oregon, where she lives with her grandparents, either two or three times in the last year. So we do that a lot and the last couple of months we’ve been preparing to put a huge addition on our house. That’s been taking up a lot of time. The other three kids, they live in Oregon, too. They’re all teenagers. I have twins who are 16, and a son who’s 17, and Morgan. So it’s a lot of stress. You know, the teenagers don’t want to hear it, and I of course worry constantly as a guy who was a reckless teenager and who already has one kid who has had just about the worst thing possible happen to her. So it’s a constant…I wouldn’t say a battle, but it takes up a lot of my headspace. I’m worried about the kids calling, I’m trying to get them to answer my calls, and I text them. It’s a balance of trying to be a cool dad and also trying to know what they’re up to, and trying to steer them in the right direction from 3,000 miles away.

The other I have been doing a lot of in the last year is exercising and going to the gym, and trying to eat right and be healthier than ever before in my life. So that’s a big change, too. My routine also includes a couple meetings a week and a couple commitments, which is me going to tell my story to people in rehab or in other groups.

Your story is incredible all by itself, but you also have your daughter’s story, which is nothing short of a miracle. Can you give us a brief recap of her story and an update on how she’s doing?

Whenever I share my story, I always say this is one of the reasons why I try to do it a lot. I really want to contribute, because of the kids who are dying and overdosing. I always point out that when I was Morgan’s age, in my teens, I certainly didn’t think that drinking beer in the woods and smoking weed, and then eventually moving up the chain with drugs, would lead to 25 years later having my first born in a wheelchair from a drug overdose. It’s the consequences. As an addict and an alcoholic, I just didn’t believe that it would have that much of an effect on other people. And I wonder if I could’ve gotten sober and possibly avoided it. Maybe if I’m sober 10 years sooner, when Morgan’s 2 years old instead of when she’s 12 years old, maybe she doesn’t feel the need to feel better through heroin and meth, which is what she got into. But that’s kind of how I preface the story.

The next thing is that I was not Father of the Year when she was young. In fact, I saw her very infrequently. I was with my other three kids. She was my first born, me and her mother broke up, and then basically I moved on. They weren’t saying, “Hey, Jeff! Come on over!” Because I was a complete drug addict. I was kind of a functioning addict because I worked, but I was a crazy person, too, because I was drinking and doing meth all the time. So I wasn’t encouraged to come over for Sunday dinner. Other people, like my mother and Morgan’s grandmother, they would make it a point for me to see her once a year, twice a year maybe, at a family gathering. To be honest I felt horrible about it. It was tremendous guilt, but at the same time I was trying to manage three other kids, and a toxic relationship, and my progressing disease. So to be clear on that, I wasn’t part of Morgan’s life until I got sober, which was when she was 12.

I was about two months sober, and the guilt was unbelievable. I felt like I was deadbeat dad, and that she deserved a father. Before that, it was like she deserves a father, but not me because I was a mess. But when I was sober I felt like I had something to give her, so I went out to Oregon pretty early on in my sobriety, and just started the process. I said, “I’m sorry,” but it was tough to say—you don’t just say, “I’m sorry for the last 12 years.” It really was a process. She would come to Boston for about a month in the summer, and she would get with the other kids. And she would come for Christmas for two or three weeks. That was the routine and we did that for the next three or four years.

Like I said, it was a process. We started to get to know each other. She was a teenager and she wasn’t exactly welcoming me back with open arms, saying “Oh, dad, I love you, thank God you’re back!” There was work involved, and I totally understood that. And it was getting better and better. Then she went to high school and got in with the wrong kids, and some of her friends who were from middle school went down the wrong path, too. In Portland, Oregon, meth and heroin are pretty prevalent. Those are the two big drugs in Portland.

Morgan went to high school, and at this point I’m actually parenting a little bit. Long distance parenting, and summer and Christmas break parenting. I’m pretty close—very close now—with her grandmother, Ann, who I always point out has done all of the work. She’s done all of the sacrificing and has just been great. She’s 28 years sober and was a drug and alcohol counselor for most of that time, so she knows the whole deal. That’s who Morgan was living with. It was a perfect situation for that, but no matter what you do—you could be the drug czar of the United States and your kid could still be a heroin addict, you know what I mean?

So how Morgan got started with drugs…She was just partying at high school and got caught smoking pot. They tested her blood and found heroin in her system. And it was like, “Oh, my God.” We knew she was messing around a little bit, but we didn’t think it was that. It just started the whole cycle. Get her out of that school, put her in another school, she runs away for a few days, she gets a drug test, she fails the drug test, then she would go to treatment. She’d say all the right things, and then she’d get in trouble. And I did the same thing when I was her age. A lot of us have done the same thing. It was that cycle of get-in-trouble-then-try-to-get-help.

She had half-assed treatment most of the time. When I would talk to her she would be like, “Whatever.” She wasn’t in treatment to get sober, she was in treatment because she was forced into it. Obviously, it doesn’t usually work in that situation. Then—I think she was 15—she came to Boston for Christmas. It was like a normal Christmas visit, but things were escalating a bit. At this point, we’re trying to get her to move here with us, because I’m in the recovery community here, and have lots of friends, and the culture is not as bad. There’s no meth here for one thing. The whole environment here would’ve been better for her. Everybody knew that.

So when she came to visit that Christmas, I picked her up at the airport. She was 15, but she looked like a 23-year-old, beat up—and this is going to sound bad—but like a stripper or a drug addict. She looked rough. She normally would look like a cheerleader or the class president. But she looked real bad.

She basically came clean on the way home from the airport. I’m like, “Oh, my God. You’re dope sick, aren’t you?” And she said, “Yeah.” She was forthright about it. I think she was starting to feel it, like how it’s not so great, and it’s no picnic to be dope sick every other day.

So she stayed here. She was supposed to stay for like 11 or 12 days. Then the day before she thought she was going home, we decided to keep her. Ann and I decided to just leave her here for a while. And it was crazy, because three weeks later, the girl I picked up at the airport, who looked like a groupie or a roadie from a band, looked beautiful again. And she was happy and saying, “Hey, you know what? This is pretty good.” Morgan loves my wife, Karen, and she was actually helping me work a few days a week and doing some online school. She was just blossoming really fast. And then she decided she had it. She said, “I got this. I’m gonna go home. I miss my family.” And the cycle started again.

Going back to that environment, it started again real soon, and of course it gets worse. Shooting up, more running away. Then finally she got caught. She had stolen a credit card from Ann, and Ann called me. She was frantic and said, “What do I do?” And to be honest with you, I know it’s not always the right tactic, but I said, “You’ve got to call the police. She has to have consequences, or else she might die.” A 16-year-old girl shooting heroin could die at any time. So they called the police on her and she ended up getting arrested for the theft of the credit card, plus she had heroin on her.

When this all happened, during phone court, I actually said to the judge, “Your honor, I’m her father, and I’m sober and have a strong tie to the recovery community here.” Because when Morgan was here, she would go to meetings with me and all my recovery friends knew her. So I told the judge, “Your honor, it’s such a better place here. She blossomed here, etc., etc.” And he just said, “Well, you know how they are, these addicts. Wherever they are, they’re going to get their drugs. So we’re not going to send her there. She’d probably just do the same thing there.” That was literally what he said to me.

Long story short, he ended up putting her in a long-term, serious rehab for kids who have been in trouble. It didn’t have bars on the windows, but it was a lockdown facility. First she got scared at juvenile hall, then she was remorseful, then she went to treatment. We were sending her care packages and I was able to talk to her on the phone and talk to her counselors. She started to take it seriously. She started to talk to us kind of like she was when she was here and had gotten cleared up a little bit. She said, “This is pretty good, actually. I’m pretty sure this is what I want to do.”

Morgan wrote my other daughter, her sister, Kali, a letter. I actually just recently got a copy of it. In the letter she was talking about how she really wants to do this, and how she’s going to move to Boston and get the hell out of Portland. That was a letter she wrote from the treatment place.

At this point she’d been clean for about two-and-a-half months, with the little stay at the juvenile place and then the time at the treatment facility. Then she got out for Mother’s Day on a pass. She had earned it because she was really doing well. But that night she decided she wanted to get high one more time, which is exactly what she said to her cousin, who was trying to talk her out of it. She just made basically one phone call, and her and a friend of the family, another heroin addict, split a 40 bag of heroin. She apparently tried to get some needles, but no one would give her a needle. They said, “It’s better to smoke it or snort it.” So Morgan was smoking it and everybody went to bed. She was just doing laundry, getting ready to go back to treatment the next day. Everybody was asleep. And when they went to wake her up the next day for church, she was blue.

It was like a scene from a bad movie, the story that I got. Basically she had no heartbeat and was cold. Ann revived her with CPR a little bit, then called 911, and they basically brought her back to life. I don’t know exactly how.

We got a call that day, and it came up on the phone as “Ann.” So I said, “Oh, it’s Mother’s Day, that’s Ann, cool!” And I answered the phone, “Hi, Ann! Happy Mother’s Day!” And all I hear is hysterical crying, and I couldn’t understand anything she was saying. I knew right then that something was wrong with Morgan. Ann said, “She OD’d, it’s really bad, she’s probably not going to make it.” At that point I’m like, “What do you mean she OD’d?! She’s in treatment!” I was in shock. But Ann told me Morgan was out on a pass, and that she got her hands on a little bit of heroin and her tolerance was down.

We flew out there like an hour later, in shock, me and Karen. And we were basically at the hospital for the next month. It was a horror show. To see any pretty young girl in that bed, with the machines and the tubes and a lifeless body, it would freak me out. I would feel just incredibly bad. But it was Morgan. I thought, “We have unfinished business.” We had just started to get to know each other.

Three months after that, Morgan still had never responded. The brain scans showed massive damage and dead areas of the brain. They called them holes in the brain. We were having meetings every other day with the whole medical team and it was just brutal. Everyone was kind of implying that we’d be better off just pulling the plug, per se. To be honest with you, I almost agreed with them just because seeing her like that was just horrible. And Ann, she’s pretty religious. She was kind of like hoping for a miracle. She wasn’t going to give up. And I certainly wasn’t about to say, “I think we should do this or that.” I just felt bad for Morgan and it seemed like no way to live. They were telling us that she would be a vegetable, in a diaper, unresponsive, kind of catatonic, if she even lived. That’s what they were predicting she would be like. So that was pretty bleak.

Nothing changed with that, except we just kind of kept hoping for the best, and Ann wouldn’t give up. And thank God she didn’t.

About three months later Morgan was moved to what they called a home for fragile children, and that was a horror show. The conditions there were so bad. At that point I felt like it would be so much more humane if she passed away. This young, popular girl…She’d be horrified if she knew how she was living.

A couple months after that, Morgan had respiratory failure, and she got pneumonia and MRSA at the home for fragile children. She went back to the hospital, to the ICU, and Ann called and said, “Okay, I think it’s time.” And I told her I had kind of felt it was time all along, because I didn’t want to see her like that. And she wouldn’t want to live like that. So Ann, said, “Okay, I’m with the doctor and I’m going to tell him it’s time.” It kind of hit me real hard right then. Like oh, my God…Morgan’s probably going to die in the next day or two. It was pretty bad.

The next day, I get another call, and Ann says, “Jeff, you’re not going to believe this, but Morgan actually started to respond last night.” She told me that another neurologist took a look at her and didn’t necessarily want to unplug everything yet, and that Morgan was actually starting to respond to commands. It was like you’d ask her, “If you can hear me, tap your finger,” and she did. It was the first time in five months that she had done any of that.

The people at the hospital were videotaping it, and people were coming from all over the hospital to see it. They were celebrating and hugging, and saying it was a miracle. I believe in some stuff, but this was kind of like proof that if you don’t give up, and if you ask for help—all the things that I had learned in recovery, really. Because I told everybody what happened. I went to meetings every day so that people would hear the story and maybe educate themselves a little bit, and educate their kids if they had them. Whatever. And it was therapy for myself, too. A friend of mine made a video of Morgan, too. All this led to people all across the country getting involved. There were prayer vigils in Texas, and there were candlelight vigils everywhere. People were lighting candles in their windows all over the country and it just spread. It was really a miracle, and the power of people getting together and thinking positively and praying.

After that happened, Morgan spent another two or three months in the hospital. Then she moved home, which was another scary proposition, because she was in a wheelchair and couldn’t go to the bathroom, and we were wondering how we—mostly Ann—were going to take care of her. That was scary. Me and Karen went out to Oregon for about 10 days when Morgan went home, and I built a ramp for the wheelchair and we cleaned the house.

So she got home and it was real scary. But they’ve adapted, you know. They’ve just adapted. She’s in a wheelchair, she has massive brain damage, and needs 24/7 care. She’s living at her grandparents’ house, with Ann and Larry, who are retired, and her cousin, Hannah, who’s like 16, is basically her caregiver.

Recently Morgan started to go to school. The high school is right down the street from her house. She started with a tutor. The problem with Morgan is the damage is nerve damage, too. So she can’t walk, and she doesn’t have a lot of control over her arms. So they’ll kind of shoot up in the air a lot. So she can’t really hold a fork or go to the bathroom. And she can’t really speak very well. It’s really difficult for her to get words out. But underneath all that is Morgan. Inside, underneath all these problems, is the same personality. She’ll say, “Loser!” to me, because she’s a teenager and she picks on her father. They’ve done some testing as far as IQ and reading and math levels, and she’s not at high school senior levels, but she’s not at the first grade level either. She’s like seventh or eighth grade in reading, which for what happened is kind of amazing. They were swearing up and down that she would not have anything close to a normal life. And it’s not normal now, but she’s got a good spirit. What she wants to do now, and we’ll probably do it together, is spread the word and tell her story. But she has to work on getting it out, as far as actually being able to speak it.

Now the next development is, in the last month or so we’ve been talking a lot, and Morgan’s probably going to end up relocating to Boston, to live with me and Karen. Her grandparents are older, and it’s just run them down. For two years Ann and Larry have been doing nothing but taking care of Morgan. So yeah, it’s scary as hell. I don’t know how to take care of a disabled person, but I’m going to learn. I have a little bit of practice, and I’m not squeamish or anything like that. So we’re going to do a handicapped bathroom and she has a room here already. Hannah will be coming with her, too. So we’re going to go from just me and Karen and the dogs, to me, Karen, Hannah, Morgan, the dogs, and probably Kali’s going to move here, too. So it’s going to be me and the girls. And I’m psyched! All her life I wanted to be Morgan’s father and live with her, and do whatever a father’s supposed to do. So it’ll be a little bit different, but I’ll get my chance to do that.

The first time you shared with us, you talked about making promises to your kids while you were in active addiction and not keeping them. Like telling your boys you’d be at their Little League games every night, but then not going to a single game or practice. As a father, I know that had to eat you up inside at some point. How has recovery made you a better dad and how are your relationships with your children now?

That’s a great question. That was my rock bottom. Whenever I tell my story, I say that was my rock bottom. Promising my boys, you know? My boys. I was very, very close with them. Despite the addiction and all that, we were very, very close. And we still are. But that was my rock bottom.

A better father? There’s not one thing that I’m not better at through sobriety, as far as parenting. I remember as an active alcoholic-addict, I thought I was a great dad because I went to work most of the time, and I made okay money most of the time, and I went home after work and hung out with the family. I mean, yeah, I had a beer open 24/7, I was in my bedroom smoking meth, and then running back to the living room to play video games with the kids. I thought that was pretty good. A lot of these other guys are at the strip club after work, or they don’t come see their kids, and they don’t buy them toys on payday. But I realize now that that wasn’t okay. Along with that, me and their mother would literally fist fight in front of them at times. It was toxic. And I’ll tell you, my boys, Kasey and Timmy, have brought it up recently. Especially Timmy. He said, “Dad, I saw things as a kid that nobody should see.” And I’m like, “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” And all I can really do about that is stay sober and be responsible now, and own what I did. It’s another consequence thing. Those things follow you around. They don’t go away the day you get sober, I’ll tell you that.

As far as better parenting, I’d say that I’m less of a friend and more of a parent now. Sometimes I was always their best friend, laughing and joking, you know what I mean? And now, it’s hard, but it’s necessary to tell them stuff. For example, Timmy’s graduating high school in a couple of months, and we’re telling him he’s got to do something, and he has to make a plan, and if he wants to come here and work for me, that’s great, but…Just advice, and not just enabling, not just saying what a cool dad would say, but saying things that would help them.

My relationships with my kids are really good. They respect me and they love me, and it’s a good relationship, but it’s hard. Because they’re here for a certain period of time during the year and I sometimes feel like I have to make up for lost time and enforce all the things I want to teach them, and lead by example in a condensed period of time. So it’s hard, but we’re getting through it.

What’s the biggest positive change in your life since you’ve been in recovery?

I guess the biggest, in a general sense, is that I’m happy now. And so, if I’m happy, and positive, and upbeat, I can kind of spread that around a little bit to the people who I’m with. Karen and I have a great marriage and relationship. We’re best friends. It’s not always unicorns and rainbows, but in general recovery has made me a happy, positive person.

What’s the one thing that has surprised you the most since you started your recovery journey?

Well, you know what? I’m not really sure. When I first got into it, everything was surprising. And that’s another reason why I do this; why I try to talk to people about it. I was convinced for my whole life that getting sober meant a boring life and giving in. “Oh, screw it. I’m beat. I’m finished.” And it’s the opposite of that. Sometimes it is still surprising when something that I would normally think would suck ends up being really cool. That happens a lot. There are things I thought when I was using and was a party animal and addict that just aren’t true. Like, one big example, when Karen and I got married. I thought, “Oh, my God. This is gonna be stupid. This wedding. We’re gonna be in suits, we’re gonna go to this stuffy restaurant, there’s gonna be all these people I don’t know, and I’m gonna have to be polite and shake hands.” I thought, “This isn’t gonna be so good.” So I invited like 25 AA friends and I’ll tell you, it was literally probably the best night of my life. So that’s one example.

Another thing, I guess, is work and my general disposition. As far as getting up in the morning with motivation and going to work and wanting to do the best job I can. And wanting to just relate to people, whether it’s at work or not. And that’s a big one, because for years and years, work or my day-to-day things were boring and just a chore, where now they’re kind of interesting and real satisfying.

Do you have any ongoing struggles in your recovery and, if so, how do you deal with and overcome them?

I wouldn’t say I have a lot of struggles. I would say that the whole thing with having teenagers and with having Morgan. That has been challenging. But you know what it is? I have a support system like you wouldn’t believe. It’s amazing the people that I have in my life. And that’s definitely through recovery. You go from junkies and tweakers, who will literally wait ‘til you pass out to steal from you, then you get sober and meet people who want you to succeed and be happy. It’s like night and day. So my support group is amazing, through 12-step and through the community here, and through online stuff, too, I’ve met a lot of good people. So basically, whatever life throws at me I have a lot of people who help me through it, and, like I said, sobriety gives me kind of a positive outlook on most things—or pretty much everything—and I ask for help. One example: I owe the IRS money from 2003. And I was freaking out about it. But just in the last couple of months, I’m dealing with it. I got one of those tax lawyers and I’m dealing with it. Whatever it is, I guess the important thing is to ask for help.

As a father who’s seen addiction from both perspectives, what advice do you have for parents in general, whether their child has had issues with drugs or not?

I would say be really, really open about it. I know you talk about the stigma a lot. But there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Your kids are going to go to a party in eighth or ninth grade, and they’re going to be offered these drugs and alcohol. It’s gonna happen. So I guess the advice would be to start educating yourself, and your kids, really early on. Really young. Have it be like a running dialogue, and don’t be afraid to show them what can happen. That’s one of the things I try to do. Like I said, who could predict that a couple of joints and a six-pack when I was in eighth grade would lead to me being 45-years-old with a child who’s handicapped from a heroin overdose? I really believe it’s all tied in, and I just don’t think it’s anything to hide. There’s no reason to have it be all hush-hush the way it is. It should be like, “This is what you’re going to face, and this is what can happen, and you need to be able to know that you can come to me, or whoever. We’ll get you help if you need it.”

If you were talking to someone who was at the very beginning of his or her recovery journey, and they were having doubts about whether or not they could do it, what would you say to them?

Oh, that’s a great question. Because you know what? That’s what pushes a lot of people out. It took me 12 years to get sober, and several rehabs. I went to rehab every couple years. And it’s another reason why I try to talk to as many people as possible. I would be in treatment thinking about, “What am I gonna do in three months when it’s Thanksgiving? I always drink on Thanksgiving.” I’d be future-tripping and worrying about things like that. One thing I always say is if I can do it, anybody can do it because I was bottom of the barrel. I would say, for the most part, to ask for as much help as you can. Talk to as many people as you can who have been through what you’re going through. However you do that, whether it’s at meetings…however you do it, surround yourself with as many people who have been through it as possible. And try to just do it one day at a time in the beginning. I know that’s a very well known phrase, but one minute, one hour, one day at a time in the beginning.

The other thing that helped me was me wanting to not go back and feel that misery I felt while I was active. You know, try to play the tape through. Try to remember how down and out you were a couple weeks ago, or whenever it was when things were looking bad. And also know that, even after almost seven years, it still gets better for me pretty regularly. Every couple days, or weeks, or months, or whatever, I can feel it still improving.

Who’s the one person has helped you the most during your 6+ years of sobriety?

That’s hard to narrow down. In the beginning I did it for my kids because I didn’t like myself very much anyway, but I didn’t want to leave them. I guess I owe most of it to them. Not wanting to let them down, not wanting to leave them without a father.

As far as real life help, I got that from the groups. AA is where I got sober. I lucked out with that. I would say my kids and my family, and then the groups. They took me right in. They took me under their wing. I went to meetings every day for the first couple of years. People gave me their numbers and shook my hand and said they were happy for me and they wanted to help. And I did that. I called them, I asked for rides, I went to meetings with them. In the beginning, things were a little bit haywire. I mean, I didn’t know how to do anything. I didn’t have a bank account, I didn’t have a driver’s license, I had probation, I had time hanging over my head. I had every problem you could imagine and I had no idea how to deal with any of it, because I was just deep, deep in the addiction. So anytime I had a question, or the ex pissed me off, and I didn’t know how to deal with it in a normal way, I just called people in the program.

Last question: I’ve never met you in person, but I feel like I know you through Facebook, and you seem to have a pretty wicked sense of humor. Does laughter help you better cope with life?

Oh, yeah, it totally does. I’ll tell you, when we got to the hospital when Morgan was on life support, we cried and cried, and we held each other, and we all did that, and then we would laugh. Honest to God, in every situation. It’s always been a thing of mine. I’ve always wanted to make people laugh. It’s one of the reasons I got into alcohol and drugs. As a kid you get drunk, you’re the funny guy. You put the lampshade on your head. It’s craziness. It’s like Animal House or something. Eventually, it wasn’t funny anymore. But then when I got sober, I still wanted to laugh. And yeah, it totally helps. It helps every day.

I remember in the hospital, almost feeling guilty, but we’d tease each other and we’d laugh, and if something happened and it was funny, it lightened the mood. It made us feel like we were still alive. We’re gonna just stay ourselves, and we’re gonna try to be positive, and we’re gonna hope for the best, and we’re gonna live no matter what happens. A big thing for most of my life, and one of the reasons I drank and used drugs, was when something bad happened, I didn’t know how to handle it. It was like, “I’ve gotta get messed up right now because I don’t like how I feel.” And that’s just not how it is anymore. I mean I don’t always like how I feel and life’s difficult, but if you stay upbeat you can pretty much laugh your way through a lot of it. And it’s very healing.

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