- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Friends & Family
submitted by: Susanne Johnson
Evan’s Sobriety date is December 21, 2012, and he was later told this was the day the world was supposed to end according to some resources. His world, as he knew it, came to an end that day and a brand new life started. His bottom was different as a lot of people experience it. He had just reached a point in his life where he didn’t want to live anymore. He didn’t want to die or kill himself either. His solution at this time for this awful emotional dilemma was trying to maintain as a blackout drunk or to get as high as he could. It did the job for a little bit and made him unable to remember anything from previous days until it stopped working and he was facing the same problem again.
At the age of seven, he had his first drink. His parents moved from the east coast to the Western U.S. to live on what used to be a hippy commune. There, his parents found their spiritual way of living. His father owned a construction company and had his crew over for some festivities some day and Evan remembers seeing his father’s friends having a drink in their hands, laughing and having a great time. He felt very intrigued by that and thought that it looks really like a lot of fun. It looked just awesome to him and he wanted that, not knowing what this even was. Evan and a buddy ended up drinking together a six-pack of beer, he couldn’t even stand the taste of it and really questioned why those guys do that. Shortly after his first sips, he started to feel the effect and he knew what it was all about and drinking started to make sense in his brain. He passed out and as he was waking up he saw his parents hovering above him asking “What did you do?”
“I don’t know, but it was fun”, was his answer.
Drugs came into play for Evan in high school. He was not yet doing any hard drugs, just smoked pot and experimented with psychedelics. In college, he graduated to cocaine, crack and alcohol as a cocktail of destruction. He hadn’t even put enough credits together to become a sophomore in a few years, and his friends were starting to move on to new places and he was alone again. He maintained a good job to secure his lifestyle, but that feeling of being alone made him engage even more in alcohol.
His sister did not have the same exact problem. At some point in her life she did drink too much and got a DUI, learned out of her mistake and slowed down drinking. Evan could not understand this process, but he gets it now, that most alcoholics really want to drink like normal persons.
His father, who was so far always the one with a good influence on him, had a stroke one day. He survived it, but he wasn’t the same man that Evan knew. He couldn’t even remember Evan’s name anymore, and Evan started to drink really heavily about that.
Evan had a daughter and she saw him getting arrested and it broke his heart. She was only 2 1/2 years old at that time, but she still remembers this event taking place. He was not drinking for 3 years, but he got an opioid addiction and was dope sick a lot with her around him. His daughter also saw him overdosing and the cops were again in their home as she was four and she saw him being taking away.
Back then, he and his fiancé separated, as Evan was hitting his first bottom, but they have contact today, even right now he does not see his eight year old daughter. They live in a different state and Evan knows that with every right her mother does not trust him still until today. His daughter once lived with him as he was sober for a while and he ended up relapsing, so he absolutely understands the reservations there are today in seeing his daughter on a regular basis. It pains him to admit it, but he knows that he did not give a good early childhood to his daughter.
The first time Evan recognized that he has a problem with alcohol and other substances was at the age of nineteen, where he was introduced for the first time to the 12 steps, he got finally clean and sober at age 28. One of the troubles he had in those years in between were that he accepted the fact that he was an addict, but not that he was an alcoholic as well. He was not willing to give up the alcohol at the same time. He also just did the steps half measures and then decided in his head, “That doesn’t work for me, maybe I’m hopeless.”
Nine years later and five different treatment centers later within a 2-year-span and an experience with prescription drug addiction, he finally made it into recovery. He couldn’t stand it anymore to wake up every morning with a hand full of pills that he didn’t want to take, but had to take in order to function.
At that time, the relationship to his family was difficult. As long he was talking to them, he felt connected. His mom was happy to hear from him and know what is going on in his life but at the same time he could hear the pain in her voice, if he told her honestly how bad it was. So he began to believe that if he don’t tell them anything, things will be better. He found out later that this was even more harmful as his parents were suffering more by not knowing what was going on and they were even not sure if he was still alive. Like this his relationships during his active addiction went through phases and he only understood the full process later on during family program.
Today Evan works at a treatment facility for young men in recovery and goes to 3-4 meetings a week himself. He worked himself up from being a house manager to working in the admissions and marketing. He loves to be the first contact for people wanting help or just generally being interesting in the facility. Due to his own experience he can relate to the person on the other end of the phone line, who is in need of help, just as he was years ago.
He can also send a message of hope: “There is help. There is hope. Things can change.” He considers it an amazing experience when he is lucky to get on one of the adventure trips the facility does offer to his clients, like white water rafting down the Grand Canyon.
“Reach out for help,” is Evan’s advice to those still struggling. He remembers all the countless nights praying for an intervention. He was praying that somebody would step in and give him the help that he was not able to ask for. This never happened. No one came to recognize how bad his life was and to turn it around for him.
“Get as much courage out as possible, even if it’s only a little sliver, and make a phone call, go to a meeting or reach out for help somehow,” he says. Evan remembers the call he made clearly: He was on the way to the liquor store one morning and something made him dial that number that he had saved in his phone of this treatment place. He used to get these numbers at night being drunk and then discard everything in the morning again when sober. Not this morning. He dialed on the way, fell down to his knees on the sidewalk and started crying saying “I need help.” A couple hours later he was picked up at his home and brought to treatment for the fifth and hopefully final time.