Recovery Looked Really Good Today
Yesterday I took one of our students to a medical appointment two hours away from the center where I work. It was really nice to just be out with him and get to know him a bit better. The last time we’d been alone together was when we did his intervention and got him started in treatment over five weeks ago.
After we covered the pleasantries of weather, traffic and my car, he turned to me and said. “I’m really sorry about all that crazy stuff I did when you guys came to pick me up. I wasn’t myself. I was way messed up. I think I must have wanted a great intervention story to tell someday!” There was no apologies, it was the addict who did those things, not the sincere, young man who was sitting next to me now.
In only 5 weeks’ time, this young man was already such a different person from that angry, psychotic package of nerves and excuses that we picked up at his family’s home. He is calm, has gained over 30 pounds and tells anyone who asks how he feels better than when he was a teen.
No one knows his teenage-self better than his parents, who lived with him through the simple bicycle accident some 12 years ago, that shattered his leg in 10 places, led to 8 surgeries, opiates and his first unsuccessful round of pain management. Years passed, but the pain did not, nor did the endless cycle of self-medication followed by more accidents and a new addiction, followed by detoxes and 28 day rehabs, meetings to help stay sober followed by the next slip to the dark side. The reversions had gotten to the point where he and his family lost hope of ever fixing his life. His father had even resigned himself to the fact that he would have to leave the family farm to a cousin, when his only child eventually lost this constant struggle between life and death.
Yesterday was a different day. His parents witnessed that the cycle of addiction had been broken. Thirty-five days into his ninety-day Narconon Suncoast program, his Mom can’t believe the difference in him. As they meet, she hugs him with a short linger, long enough to examine his bright eyes up-close. She passes her hand lightly over his arm and the brow of his clear face. Her comments about his beautiful skin push him to the point of blushing in front of his girlfriend, who smiles ear to ear as he lifts her into a hug.
The lunch conversation is animated as he tells of his adventures in rehab and recounts how his mind feels so clear and his body feels stronger and healthier each day. He is on day 25 of the unique sauna detoxification program and has their full attention when he recounts sweating out various, identifiable drug-residues and other toxic chemicals that seemed to have been stored in his fat cells for years. No one could have imagined his recovery stories; that he is sleeping through the night unclouded by drug dreams, the restored feeling in his right hand that had been numb for years or disappearance of the cravings and compulsive thoughts about drugs or alcohol that had nearly destroyed himself and the entire family.
As I watch him with them, I think he is a new man. But they talk with him like they’ve known him forever. They know he is back to being himself. He is back to the young man they struggled to continue to love and forgive while he was being an addict. They did not lose sight of him and he is back in their sight now.
He jokes about having a near-death experience while addicted and how no one will ever have to experience that again. Then he shares how grateful he is to have this chance to clean up his life and end this “near-life” experience he was leading while he was on drugs.
A “near-life” experience, I love that phrase. It is what each addict and family member is living while battling addiction. It is a “sort-of OK existence” that gets worse and worse, sprinkled with intermittent moments of hope, only to be followed by more of the downward spiral of addiction.
Our family visit and lunch were over. I turned away as the family said good-bye. I was so happy for them, but it made me think of all the families who are still midst their “near-life” experiences of addiction, or even worse, the ones whose lives had moved from near-death experiences to no-more-hugs to not even one last good-bye. Just as I’m about to go to that place where no Mom or addiction counselor wants to dwell, a hardy hug and a heart-felt thank- you, reminds me that this son, this family, was back on the right track with a bright new future in sight.
I had the unfair advantage of knowing that the chain was broken. Their son had already started to unravel the secrets of his addicted “near-life” and that he was well on his way to learning how to create a beautiful new, drug-free life for good.
Recovery looked really good today.
If you know someone struggling with an addiction, please reach out to me today. It is never too late to end an addiction and start fresh again!
Yvonne R. - Narconon Suncoast Staff Member
