- Alcohol
- Drugs
My name is Nate and I am an alcoholic.
I spent the first year and a half of my sober life living in a halfway house a thousand miles from home. Somebody told me at the time that eventually I would be grateful for the misery I had gone through. Of all of the emotions that I felt then, gratitude was not one of them. Instead, my thoughts were consumed with confusion, anger, fear, and resentment. However, I would soon come to understand what true gratitude felt like.
My life started in the best of circumstances. My parents were happily married and madly in love for my entire childhood (and are still to this day!) and both of them were physically and emotionally present in my life. Our household was filled with morals, education and love. We were taught about hard work, keeping our word, and treating others like we would like to be treated. We traveled the country and abroad as a family and usually enjoyed every minute of it.
I do not look back at my childhood with any delusion or wonder about what may have gone wrong. The answer is simply nothing.
During my freshman year in high school I began experimenting with alcohol and marijuana. At first and as much as it pains me to prove the D.A.R.E. cops right, I experimented to fit in, to feel a part of the group that I viewed as cool. I can name the three “cool” people who inspired my first use of cigarettes, marijuana and alcohol.
Through high school I excelled on the soccer team and was elected captain my freshman and sophomore years. My senior year I started for our team that went undefeated and won a state championship. I was outgoing, gregarious, playfully mischievous, and lovable.
Most people didn’t know it at the time, but as early as my freshman year I had become a daily marijuana smoker. My weekend nights soon became filled with the perpetual chase of obtaining alcohol. By my senior year my grades were so poor that I was too ashamed to apply to even modestly competitive colleges. Though my play on the soccer field may have merited it, I didn’t even try to continue playing into my college years. Instead, I convinced myself that I would fit i
n better at a large state university, a party school.
Out from under the watchful eye of my parents, I promptly became an almost daily drinker. Through a series of hangovers, blackouts, and lost days, I spent a year and a half squandering my parent’s money and my time in college. I moved back to my parent’s house ashamed but resolved to start fresh.
Little did I know, I was already in the grips of a power far greater than myself, a power that would soon lead me to a new drug which would bring me to my knees: cocaine.
One week after my first use of cocaine, I had a mini mental breakdown. For every moment of that week, no matter where I was or what I was doing, my brain was obsessed with getting high again. From that point on, and for the next year and a half, there was hardly an hour that went by that I didn’t think about using cocaine again.
I could walk you down every dark corridor that I walked in that year and a half but I will spare you the gory details. Suffice it to say that by the end of that journey I found myself looking in the mirror and wondering where I went. I felt hopeless and helpless. There seemed no way out yet no real way of going forward.
Then grace intervened. Grace in the form of supportive parents, a knowing therapist and a professional inpatient treatment center.
After 30 days in treatment I agreed to go to a halfway house where the manager told me that I would soon be grateful for the misery that I had gone through. I remember waking up for the first couple of weeks wondering how in the world I ended up in this place. There I was, 21 years old, a thousand miles from home, living in a halfway house, sober.
And there it was, in that halfway house, confused, angry, afraid and resentful, that I began to find myself again. I had a fundamental shift in my perception of the world and the people in it. I had a fundamental shift in my perception of my role in that world.
Recovery gave me the tools of self-discovery and self-evaluation. The people in recovery taught me that I wasn’t all powerful in all things—that it was ok to ask for help and receive it.
What I soon came to realize was that because of my addiction, a whole new world of self-improvement had opened up to me. All of the sudden I found myself surrounded by strangers who were willing to do anything to help me in my life. They asked nothing in return but suggested that I make myself available to help others when they needed it. Without effort on my part, a fellowship of friends and support sprung up around me.
Out of the misery and hopelessness I had felt just months before sprung gratitude. I became grateful for every step that I took into the darkness of addiction because each one got me closer to the light of sobriety.
The manager at the halfway house was right. I am grateful for the misery that I went through. That misery was the catalyst for a new kind of hope: a hope that, if I can recover, so can anyone else. Please don’t give up hope. Just when you least expect it, a miracle can happen. It did for me.