Stories

“Drink this,” she said, handing me a small plastic cup with red syrup. “It’s 30 ml, our starting dose.” That’s how my road to recovery began.

Aaron
The biggest thing I want to say to anyone is just don’t give up if you’ve got a loved one you’re trying to get into recovery. Just don’t give up. Love them. You may have to love them from a distance, but love them. And don’t be afraid to give them a little tough love.

Brian H.
It’s what I advise a lot of parents to do: it’s just the hardest thing that you can ever do—but if you want to save their lives it’s what you’ve got to do: it’s tough love.

Lori Meadows
I strongly feel that people in recovery are heroes, and Greg was my hero.

Denise Hanson
I think my place is in the meeting rooms. To hear somebody talk, to me, is to know that I'm not alone in this.

Kelly
We do a lot of writing in recovery. But it serves a very, very positive purpose. The power of the pen is unmatched, okay? There's just no way around that.

Ryan Elkins
God had healed me from this, and everything I’d tried, nothing amounted to that, and I was overwhelmed with the love and the grace that I had found in forgiveness.

Cory Sargent
I never even imagined being married, but now I’m able to be a mom and be a wife and be a productive member of society and it’s because I was able to connect with people. I was able to build love for myself and experience things in a completely different reality than what I was before.

Hayley
Being involved in peer support groups—with people who knew exactly what it was like to work in a setting with access to medications—was the key for me to be able to get solid in my recovery.

Mitzi Averette
And that treatment center showed me compassion and love, which in then turn I was able to show compassion and love. And from that point there was peace in my heart.

Drew O'Connell
Each year, I've shared my story with my students and will continue to do so. It's a sad reality, but many of them personally know someone in active addiction. When I disclose my experience to them, they now know someone in recovery.

Nick Roberts
I had the resilience and strength to care and to try to work on myself, no matter how awful life is and how many times I've had a setback. It just really made me feel like getting sober wasn't a one-stop type of thing. You can try as many times as you have the strength to.

Ongeli
Learn about addiction and alcoholism. Learn about the history of it, and the approaches that our society have made over the centuries. See what failed, why it failed, and learn why the many pathways to recovery can work for you.

Greg
But if there has been anything that’s saved me in the last few years and kept me clean, it’s been the perpetual process of being supplanted from a place, supplanted from a way of thinking, supplanted from a way of being and then being deposited into something or someplace new. A place full of the potential a person needs to have a real experience.

P. G. McNabb
You have to put the footwork in, and some days you’re just putting one foot in front of the other and praying. It is possible, we do recover, and we are worth it, every single body is worth it.

Christene
For me to truly understand in my heart and know that recovery is real I think is more of a personal recognition of a difference in myself. And just to be surrounded by guys, their eyes open up, the light comes on, and they’re able to come up out of that same gutter that I was in.

Jason
Through my journey the most important lesson I can teach is that addicts are people too, we don’t need your pity, we don’t need you condolences, all we need is the love and support to help us get through our journey.

ANON 3
If I see one difference in the community I think the biggest difference I see is that we’re talking recovery.

Terry
I think the recovery community helped me a lot. And I think that going to 12-step meetings helped me a lot. But then I think there came a point where I needed more than that, and so I sought psychiatric help.

Garrett
He wasn’t perfect – neither am I, but he was a genuinely good man and I grew to love him.

Cynthia

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“Drink this,” she said, handing me a small plastic cup with red syrup. “It’s 30 ml, our starting dose.” That’s how my road to recovery began.

The biggest thing I want to say to anyone is just don’t give up if you’ve got a loved one you’re trying to get into recovery. Just don’t give up. Love them. You may have to love them from a distance, but love them. And don’t be afraid to give them a little tough love.

It’s what I advise a lot of parents to do: it’s just the hardest thing that you can ever do—but if you want to save their lives it’s what you’ve got to do: it’s tough love.

I strongly feel that people in recovery are heroes, and Greg was my hero.

I think my place is in the meeting rooms. To hear somebody talk, to me, is to know that I'm not alone in this.

We do a lot of writing in recovery. But it serves a very, very positive purpose. The power of the pen is unmatched, okay? There's just no way around that.

God had healed me from this, and everything I’d tried, nothing amounted to that, and I was overwhelmed with the love and the grace that I had found in forgiveness.

I never even imagined being married, but now I’m able to be a mom and be a wife and be a productive member of society and it’s because I was able to connect with people. I was able to build love for myself and experience things in a completely different reality than what I was before.

Being involved in peer support groups—with people who knew exactly what it was like to work in a setting with access to medications—was the key for me to be able to get solid in my recovery.

And that treatment center showed me compassion and love, which in then turn I was able to show compassion and love. And from that point there was peace in my heart.

Each year, I've shared my story with my students and will continue to do so. It's a sad reality, but many of them personally know someone in active addiction. When I disclose my experience to them, they now know someone in recovery.

I had the resilience and strength to care and to try to work on myself, no matter how awful life is and how many times I've had a setback. It just really made me feel like getting sober wasn't a one-stop type of thing. You can try as many times as you have the strength to.

Learn about addiction and alcoholism. Learn about the history of it, and the approaches that our society have made over the centuries. See what failed, why it failed, and learn why the many pathways to recovery can work for you.

You have to put the footwork in, and some days you’re just putting one foot in front of the other and praying. It is possible, we do recover, and we are worth it, every single body is worth it.

For me to truly understand in my heart and know that recovery is real I think is more of a personal recognition of a difference in myself. And just to be surrounded by guys, their eyes open up, the light comes on, and they’re able to come up out of that same gutter that I was in.

Through my journey the most important lesson I can teach is that addicts are people too, we don’t need your pity, we don’t need you condolences, all we need is the love and support to help us get through our journey.

If I see one difference in the community I think the biggest difference I see is that we’re talking recovery.

I think the recovery community helped me a lot. And I think that going to 12-step meetings helped me a lot. But then I think there came a point where I needed more than that, and so I sought psychiatric help.

He wasn’t perfect – neither am I, but he was a genuinely good man and I grew to love him.

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