- Alcohol
- Drugs
My name is Jeff, and I’m an alcoholic and a drug addict in recovery. I haven’t had to use or drink in 5.5 years. I sit here on January 1, 2014, in a warm house with my wife, some of my kids and my dogs, and I feel like the luckiest person on the planet. I was a lifelong loser in my battle with addiction but am now a two-time winner in recovery because of my own sobriety and my oldest daughter’s nearly fatal heroin overdose and miraculous recovery.
I grew up in a suburb of Boston with brothers and sisters, my mom and lots of friends. I was blessed with an amazing family and was fortunate in that I was pretty good looking, smart, outgoing, witty and a great athlete. I had it all despite my parents’ nasty divorce and my dad being a bit of a drunk. I swore I’d never be like him.
Until I started drinking and using, I was happy, healthy and could have done anything I wanted in life. I was extremely lucky and blessed, but then I started drinking in eighth grade and partying with my friends in the woods, after basketball practice and at house parties. After my first night of partying, I knew I was in trouble. Nothing after that night was good enough unless it involved drinking.
I started using drugs, and my allergy to alcohol made me crave harder and harder drugs. By the time I graduated, I was drinking every day, I had quit the basketball team and I was doing drugs every chance I got. I got arrested and in fights, and no one knew what to do with me. I remember being miserable and always wanting more of everything and anything that got me wasted.
The next 25 years were a gradual progression into hell. I moved around and got in the same trouble everywhere I went. Between booze, drugs, jails, court, blown opportunities and lost friends, I was a functioning addict/alcoholic on a downward spiral.
I met my daughter’s mom, and in a crystal meth-induced stupor, we got married after knowing each other for about a month or two. A month after we were married, she was pregnant and out of my life forever. I tried to get clean and even went to my first treatment center for 30 days so I could be a dad and a family man. I couldn’t do it and didn’t follow through with my recovery or my responsibilities as a father. For the next 12 years, I saw my daughter once a year at most and not by my doing.
Every year I told myself, “This will be the year I clean up and be a dad.” During this time I also had three other kids with another woman and continued to drink, drug and barely hold it all together. I felt guilt, shame and remorse all the time. I thought the only thing making my life bearable was alcohol and drugs when, in fact, they were causing all my problems.
Five and a half years ago it all came crashing down around me. It got worse than ever before. Three out of my four children were living with my mom, and my first daughter still didn’t know me at all. I thought I would simply cut back, get it together, go get my kids from mom, get a nice place with a picket fence and live happily ever after. I could not do it. I was supposed to go see the kids every day and spend weekends at my mom’s taking care of them, but I couldn’t do that either. By now I was strung out on heroin, shooting cocaine and drinking every waking hour. I stole beer and scammed drug dealers. I neglected my kids. I left them at my mom’s for a year and a half and stopped visiting them. My two boys were on the same little league team, and I never went to one game or practice after promising to be there every night.
I hated myself, I saw what I was doing to my children and I knew I was going to lose them. I went to yet another detox program and stayed in their transitional housing for 37 days. I started to feel better for the first time in a quite a while. I got out and, for once in my life, did what I was told. I chased my recovery like I used to chase drugs and booze. I was reunited with my kids and saw the looks of relief and pride in their eyes.
Within a few months, I was on a plane to go get to know my daughter. I was able to be a dad to her, and it was great. The guilt went away as we all spent time together. Being a dad, a good dad, to all my kids is the greatest gift of sobriety. I have everything I could possibly want and a life that is second to none.
The second part of me being a double winner happened over the last six months. Addiction is a family disease so I was not shocked when a few years ago, my daughter started experimenting with drugs. Her disease took hold fast and hard, and her drugs of choice at 15 years old were meth and heroin. Her mother was out of the picture fighting her own demons, so her grandmother was raising her in Portland, Oregon. We flew her to Boston for Christmas and summer, and we all took her to meetings. She was in and out of treatment centers. She was running away and getting in big trouble.
We thought her rock bottom occurred was she stole her grandmother’s credit cards and got caught in possession of heroin. She went to juvenile detention until space in a serious long-term treatment center became available. This was great news to us, and we were happy to see her starting to thrive and become one of the leaders of her group in treatment. She said she wanted it, and I could tell she meant it. However she earned a weekend pass for Mother’s Day and went home for the weekend. Sometime that Saturday night she decided to get high “one more time.”
That one time, that $20 worth of heroin, caused cardiac arrest sometime during the early morning hours of May 12th. Her grandmother found her blue, unresponsive and with no heartbeat. She did CPR until the ambulance got there. We got the phone call that every parent dreads. We were on a plane within a few hours, and the six-hour flight was torture. We didn’t know if she was alive or dead, and when we got there, the prognosis was terrible. She wasn’t supposed to live through the night. If she made it, they said she’d be a vegetable from all the brain damage she experienced. They said we should consider taking her off life support, and to be honest I thought that might the kinder and more humane thing to do for her.
The next three months were horrible. We flew back and forth between Boston and Portland and had weekly conference calls with her medical team. We held on to a glimmer of hope and asked everyone who would listen to pray for our girl. The beginning of August saw her take a turn for the worse. She had respiratory failure, got pneumonia and ended up back in the ICU. At this point we decided that this was no life, and she’d be better off going peacefully. She’d be so unhappy living the way she was and being kept alive by machines.
The very next day, I got phone call from my daughter’s grandmother saying that, out of the blue, she had started responding! At first I was skeptical, but she improved a little bit each day, and the doctors told us it was literally a miracle. Since that day my daughter has made amazing strides in her recovery. We were out in Portland in October to help her move back home after almost six months in the hospital. She’s learning to walk and talk, and her spirit is strong. She knows what she did and is dedicated to getting better, staying sober and using her story to help others. I couldn’t be prouder of her, and we’ve gotten much closer as a family and as father and daughter. The support we’ve received from all over the country is awe inspiring and gives me more hope and faith than I’ve ever had.
Miracles do happen! Don’t ever give up as a sober life is a million times better. I’m a two-time winner against all odds, and this can happen to you if it can happen to me.