- Alcohol
- Drugs
Joe C is a registered addiction specialist, licensed independent substance abuse counselor and registered interventionist. His passion for recovery, helping addicts find help and life is remarkable. Every conversation with Joe is an uplifting pleasure, and he explained why when he agreed to be interviewed for Heroes in Recovery.
How did you get involved with recovery? My first taste of recovery was when my family intervened on me in 1986, but I didn’t stay clean. In 1989 I was, in a sense, intervened on again. My wife and children left me, and I had no money. I made the decision to go into residential treatment to save my marriage and get assistance in paying my bills, not because I thought I had a drug or an alcohol problem. It was more a marriage and financial problem.
What was the difference between how you responded to being in treatment in 1989 versus 1986? The only difference was this time my wife and kids left. I went into treatment and knew I had a slight problem with drugs and alcohol, but I didn’t think it was too severe. Once I got into treatment, it became perfectly clear that my marriage and financial problems were a direct cause of my drug and alcohol use. My life was completely unmanageable.
Once you finally turned that corner, what helped you most in staying on the right side of the road? Prior to going into treatment I was trustee of my children’s savings accounts. While I was using, I would borrow money from those accounts. I would justify it to myself, because I was the one that put it there, and I would pay it back when I won the lottery. Prior to going into treatment I sat my two daughters, who were 5 and 8, down and explained to them that I was going away to get some help. I explained I had used some of their money. My five year old looked me in the eyes and said, “Daddy, how could you do that to me?” She had no concept of addiction, the disease or any of that. She just knew that her dad took her money. When I presented that in my first step in treatment, it hit home with me. My thoughts were, “How could I do that?” Early in recovery that helped me stay clean and sober. Another thing was when my wife came for family day and told me she was filing for divorce. That prompted me to decide to leave treatment against medical advice. As I was getting ready to leave, I said “goodbye” to my peers. A good friend of mine, a cocaine addict from Texas that I met in treatment, looked me in the eyes and said, “When are you effing going to surrender? When are you going to give up?” I ended up staying in treatment, because that hit home with me.
How would you compare life today versus life when you were in your addiction? Life in my addiction was insanity. It was basically getting up every day and figuring out how I was going to hustle someone or something to get money to do what I was going to do for that day. Today it’s a 180. If somebody told me, when I was early in recovery, where my life would be today, there’s no way I would believe them. I remember my first sponsor saying, “If you just stay clean a year, you will not believe the gift this program will give you.” My first three months of recovery were rough. My wife at the time, filed for divorce, my roommate that I went through treatment with overdosed and died a week after he got out of treatment, my mother-in-law died from a brain tumor, and I had to look at bankruptcy. And here my sponsor is telling me to stay clean a year, and you won’t believe the gift this program will give you. I’m thinking, “It’s not looking really good so far.” I stayed clean that first year, I walked through all of that stuff with the help of people in recovery, and he was absolutely right!
How would you describe an average day in your life now that you’re in recovery? Today life is truly another day in paradise. I remember saying that to my mom a few years ago:
“How are you doing today?” She asked.
“Just another day in paradise.”
“Every day is another day in paradise for you.”
“Because I take paradise with me.”
I get up in the morning, and I have two choices. I can have a good day or a bad day, and I’m going to choose a good day. That’s not to say every day is a slice of heaven, because life is life. Even the bad days aren’t as bad as they used to be, that’s for sure. So it is another day in paradise.
I am so grateful today for my sobriety, my relationship with the God of my understanding, my wife who has traveled this journey with me for the last 24+ years, my daughters and now my new grandson who will have a clean and sober grandpa, and my family and friends. Thank you to all, for being there.