Hi, I’m Brad, and I am an addict. My sobriety date is March 16th, 2019. (That was also, purely coincidentally, my 23rd birthday.) I grew up feeling like a misfit and out of place. The things that I liked and things that interested me weren’t the same things that interested everyone else. I was insecure in my uniqueness.
I found something that alleviated this feeling, though! I began smoking weed in high school, and finally had a group that I felt comfortable being in. When I got to college, all of a sudden, I realized that I had a newfound freedom and little to no accountability. I very quickly found the “party” crowd and fit right in. As soon as I started drinking, the social discomfort and anxiety evaporated. I felt like I could finally be unapologetically me and not have to put up a front.
That sense of relief I experienced when drinking? I wanted to experience that ALL the time – not just on the weekend or at social gatherings. I began finding excuses to drink at every time of day to calm my nerves. The amount of alcohol it took to get me to a basic level of comfort increased daily. It didn’t take long before I was drinking pretty much from the moment I woke up, to the moment I passed out. Yes, passed out – not “went to bed.”
At the end of the summer between my sophomore & junior year, I was hospitalized and spent several days in the ICU. The final diagnosis was Alcoholic Ketoacidosis. That wasn’t enough to even put the thought of quitting alcohol into my head. I returned to college and ramped right back up to where I had been before, drinking all day to keep a buzz on so I didn’t have to feel. After that next semester, I was politely not invited back for the following semester due to “poor academic performance”.
I was able to keep up the illusion that things were OK, but internally, I knew that my alcohol use was a serious problem. I also knew that I could never again live my life in the uncomfortable and cringey way I had before discovering alcohol.
After leaving college, I got a job and quickly made friends with someone who was a bad influence. I soon discovered heroin and was instantly addicted. I spent several months lying in bed like a bump on a log watching Netflix, snorting heroin and drinking vodka out of a water bottle.
I ended up in a detox in October of 2018. I spent 4 days there, lied to everyone and pretended that I knew what I was dealing with and how bad it was. I left that detox with a script for 16 mg of Suboxone a day, never having taken it before or even having heard the name. That certainly didn’t “fix” me the way the doctors told me it would. I ended up back in detox in December of 2018, 5 days before Christmas. I agreed to stay the 3 weeks and make dramatic changes - the typical spin-dry shpiel.
January 4th, 2019, I ended up at Avenues in Concord. Originally assuming it was a 30-day program where I could keep my phone and have a few other freedoms, I reluctantly agreed to give it a shot. I quickly learned that the program structure was very different than what I originally thought: It was a 4-month program. I used my safe call to tell my mom that I really didn't want to be here. She showed me some tough love and said “Ok, then leave. But you can’t come back to our house, and no one will come get you.” I was miserable and made sure everyone around me knew it - at least for the first two weeks of my treatment.
After a while, the thought occurred to me “What’s the worst that can happen? I take the suggestions and end up living a long happy life, like they’re telling me? If I give it a try, and they’re wrong, I can just go get more alcohol. It’s not going anywhere.” I gave in to that thought and decided to take the suggestions seriously. I began embracing the groups and the work. Things were going well! Then I stopped taking the work seriously and adopted the “I got this; I’m good” mentality. I relapsed. I was given an ultimatum and told “Either sign the discharge paperwork and take your stuff and go, or turn in your car keys, phone, wallet, quit your job etc. and start the program from scratch." My birthday was coming up in a couple of days and I would be in Maine at court until the night before my birthday. My thought process was this: “Might as well sign the discharge paperwork, just party for the weekend, and come back on Monday!”
I ran this idea by Jessie, my temporary sponsor I had at the time. His response was “So you're telling me that you want to die?” I was taken aback. I was like, woah man…no…? I am just trying to have one last hurrah. He replied “If that’s your mentality, you are going to end up dead. You need to go to ANY LENGTHS for a better way of life.” That hit me hard. I didn’t want to die! I emailed my therapist right then and there and told her “There’s no chance I’m throwing in the towel. I’m doing this till I get it right. Let’s go.”
When I returned from court on Saturday, March 16th, 2019 (as I mentioned above, coincidentally my 23rd birthday) I turned over all of my belongings and started the program from ground zero. I had experienced how quickly and ferociously this disease can creep back in and take me out. That power was something to fear; I realized that this was a matter of life and death. I took every suggestion and did what I was told, fully and completely – to the best of my ability.
I rank 9th in the “longest client stays” at Avenues Recovery Center at New England. It took 221 days of rigorous work and self-improvement for me to feel capable of moving on. I spent the next 11 months in a sober house. I asked a girl that I NEVER could have imagined being with to marry me in March of 2022. We got married in February of 2023 and our son was born in April of 2023.
It hasn’t been an easy road to or through recovery – but no one said it would be. I was only ever told “it’s worth it” and I can attest to the fact that it most certainly is. I live a life second to none today and I may struggle and feel my feelings, but I can handle them. I can sit with myself today and appreciate all the little lessons that life has to offer. I use discomfort as an opportunity to grow instead of an excuse to self-medicate & escape from reality.
I have worked at Avenues, the program that I completed in August of 2019, since April of 2020. I have held a few different positions as an employee here, each an increase in responsibility from the last. I get to put my time, energy, and effort into supporting a program that gave me my life back. I am so grateful to be able to be part of a community that does such good work. I show up to work each and every day knowing that something I do or say might motivate someone to get or stay sober, and that is a miracle. I try to give back what was so freely given to me, as the AA program dictates. I work with an incredible team to make sure we provide clients with legendary care. It got me sober, so I know it will work for others too.
When I first started my sobriety journey, I remember thinking “I’m 22 years old, there is absolutely no way that I have had my last drink.” If your substance of choice isn’t alcohol, replace “drink” with whatever is an appropriate 1 time use descriptor. With so much life left ahead of me, how could I be done? I thought the whole point of rehab & AA was to teach me how to drink in moderation, not to quit altogether! At all the AA/peer support meetings I attended in early sobriety, I also distinctly remember thinking “these people are all liars. There is NO WAY that all these people haven’t had a drink in x time (whatever they said or got a coin for).”
I wanted to figure out the secret. I wanted to figure out how those people were so aggravatingly happy and chipper. Come to find out, it’s the gift of sobriety – you just must get there. Sobriety really is a better way of life. It really is possible and the initial “no way I’ve taken my last shot” thought fades into “wow, I can’t imagine what my life would look like if I was still controlled by a bottle/drug.” I feel gratitude and relief when I encounter turbulence in my day-to-day life and my instinctive response is NOT to pick up a drink or a drug. I stop and let myself be overwhelmed with feelings of confidence and success, that I can get through the issue at hand without using.
There are so many things that seem overwhelming in early recovery, especially upon your first exposure to AA/treatment. Everyone wants to explain everything all at once. In my experience, the best way to go about it is just to worry about the next 24 hours in front of you – nothing further. Then tomorrow, just worry about the next 24 hours. You don’t need to worry about not using/drinking etc. for the rest of your life right at the jump. Just keep telling yourself “Just for the next 24 hours!” Repeating that mantra for days, weeks, even months – is how people get their feet firmly planted in sobriety. Along the way, you pick up on what to do and what not to do. You listen to the people around you, take suggestions (EVEN WHEN THEY MAKE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE), and most importantly – find someone that has been where you are, that you want what they have, and ask them to guide you on your journey.
I was the guy that came into sobriety thinking I could drink in safety, life would be super boring without substances, that point in my life wasn’t the “right time” to get sober, and many other thoughts. I had the sensation that I was “terminally unique.” That MY situation didn’t look like anyone else’s and that if YOU had been through what I had, you would drink/drug the way I did. Come to find out, everyone else’s story was incredibly similar to mine. The details were different, but the suffering & pain were mirror images. Once I came to the realization that I wasn’t alone, I was able to open my mind to the concept of sobriety and living a sober life.
If I can do it, so can you.