- Drugs
- Friends & Family
submitted by: Susanne Johnson
Jacob went to a treatment program for 26 days before he came to a sober living house near Nashville, TN, where he is helping out. At the Heroes 6k Leiper’s Fork, he has four months of sobriety. He started to use drugs at the age of sixteen. It’s not his first time in recovery. He was clean and sober for 15 months once in 2011, but he stopped doing the work or going to any meetings and it caused him to relapse and return to his old addiction.
He has three girls: 19, 17 and 14 years old, all of whom have seen their father during his worst moments in life. They are all very proud that today he is back to sobriety. They reside with their mother in Florida, but he is happy to have a good relationship with them, at least by phone. He said that they could always tell which state he was in just by his voice. Every summer he spends time with them together. This year he went to treatment instead, but it was well worth it, although he misses his daughters a lot.
“It doesn’t get better out there,” Jacob says. He tried to be different as he relapsed and just drank, or when he did not do drugs, or when he tried to do different drugs and not return to his drug of choice. But anything he tried was not working and he ended up exactly where he left and even worse.
Eventually he ended up in jail for 16 days and that gave him the chance to detox from anything he was on and think about his life. Today he knows it was God doing what he could not do for himself. He asked his parents for help and they became big part of his recovery and supported him all the way. Jacob went straight from jail to treatment. He knew what he had to do, but he needed some help to get started again. His mother went to a support group as well and learned a lot on how to deal with her son. As he called her to bail him out for a $250 bond, she refused to do so. It was hard for her, but she has learned how to say “no” in order to help her son.
Jacob is very proud of the great relationship with his parents and the help he received from them, especially since he and his sister are adopted by them. Their biological parents were both drug addicts and gave them up for adoption, because they were unable to raise them.
His parents never had it easy with him. He didn’t finish school, couldn’t hold a job for more than two months and had a year where he had a dozen jobs in a single year. His life was completely unmanageable. Today he feels peace and sanity in his life. He wakes up in the morning with a smile and is keen to see what the day has to offer.
He is working at his old sober living house today and helping others to find the right way. They have in-house meetings all the time, but he sees the need to separate his work from his own recovery and attend his own meetings outside work. This was actually the mistake he made last time and it lead him to relapse. He worked at a treatment center and made that the source for his own recovery. As he quit working there because of a move, he lost his complete source and anchors for his recovery and relapsed. Knowing this today, he has learned from this mistake and makes sure not to do the same thing again.
“Show up, get involved, stay busy, get a service commitment, get a sponsor and work the program” is what he likes to tell newcomers to the 12-step group program. Jacob goes to the gym two to three times a week to get in shape. Looking back, he said he was sitting in the recliner all day while using. Those days are over and he want to live active and healthy. He states, “I was not living, I was existing.”
Jacob is 39 years old now and his personal goal is to finish his GED in order to get a better job in the future. He is talking about it and well aware, that he needs to put actions behind his words to do this. He wants it for himself, but he would like to do it also in gratitude for the support he received from his parents. “They were always very proud of me, but it was never for anything that I’ve done,” Jacob says.
There are still things he is struggling with some days, but then he steps back for a moment and prays. He prays also when he wakes up in the morning and his belief plays a big role in his recovery today. Jacob is very grateful today, especially about the great relationships he has and the good friends he has today.