- Alcohol
- Drugs
I’m 40 years old and was once heavily addicted to methamphetamine and alcohol. I have now been sober since October 31, 2010, and let me tell you: it feels so good to be able to say that.
I drank since the age of about 15 and got really heavily into drinking at approximately 20 years old. I was introduced to methamphetamine at about the age of 25. The methamphetamine addiction got really, really bad; so bad that I alienated myself from my wife and kids and ended up practically living in the hills above the local park.
I would steal from anyone, including my wife. I remember coming in at night once and I noticed she was sleeping with her purse as a pillow, because she knew that I would steal her money. Would you believe that I took a razor blade and cut open her purse as she slept and took her money anyway? Pretty pathetic, huh?
As you can imagine, I frequented the county jail many times, and in the process I managed to get myself registered as a drug offender. Another place I frequented was the emergency room. On two occasions I was put on life support.
On February 15, 2005, at 8:30 in the morning, the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles probation department, LAPD gang unit, and the SWAT team felt it was necessary to come to my home and rescue me. Thank God! Because I’ll be honest with you—if they had not rescued me that day I would have died soon after. That day marked the twelfth consecutive day that I was using daily, nonstop, without sleeping and without eating anything.
I relapsed in 2008 with methamphetamine, and until that point I never really felt that my drinking was a problem. But I woke up with a hangover in late October, 2010, and thought to myself, “I can cure this with some crystal meth.” That scared me to action and I decided on that day, Halloween of 2010, that I would never poison my body again.
I have been clean and sober since then and I am able to be the father that my children deserve. Now granted, I am not that great of a husband; but I’m not the person I was in the past. I was once a monster; a menace to society. I was that guy that if you saw me walking toward you, you would cross the street to avoid me.
I freed myself from all that negative stuff: the drugs, the alcohol, and—most importantly—the gang life. Life is good now because I’m sober. Life is great because God gave me another chance to redeem myself.