People get sober in all sorts of ways. Sometimes they just quit on their own. Sometimes they go to rehab. They show up in 12-step rooms, ashrams, churches and their parents’ basements. There is no one right way—something we’ve aimed to show in our collection of How I Got Sober stories. While we initially published these as either first person essays by our contributors or as interviews with anonymous sober folks, we eventually began to realize that there were other stories to tell: yours. This is our reader spotlight and this, more specifically, is Brad.
Click here to see all of our How I Got Sober stories
I started using on and off from the age of 13. Essentially all four years of college, I was managing my addiction along with schoolwork and I was productive enough to get by. I kept two separate crowds—regular college kids who drank on the weekends and the people I was obligated to be associated with…you could call the second group more like business relationships because they were the people I hung out with doing heroin. Sometimes I’d dry out because dealers would come and go, but I was usually doing about a gram a day.
When I graduated, I didn’t have a task in front of me to convince myself that the way I was living was all right. I tried to study for the LSATs but couldn’t keep it together. It was the typical trajectory: I would steal and do whatever I could to get drugs. I had a good system in place for getting drugs in college but it crumbled quickly when I moved back to the Bay Area and in with my parents. Now that they could see me every day so they saw how I was living.
I was intervened on not by an interventionist but by an educational consultant. Honestly, I’m good at verbalizing—that’s how I manipulate. I was combative and when they said either leave home or go to treatment, I detoxed at home for a week and then went from various friends houses to baseball dugouts to parks and stole whatever I could to get by. Eventually, it came to a head. Doing drugs like that was a full-time job and I was broke so I agreed to go to treatment. What happened is that I needed a ride somewhere and called my mom. After a lot of manipulation, she gave me that ride but told me, “In order to save myself I have to wash my hands of you.” You don’t really think you can push your parents to that level. I hadn’t eaten for a while and she gave me a loaf of Wonder Bread, peanut butter and a plastic knife. After that, I went to treatment.
Now I’m a hyper-critical person and very skeptical of people’s motives. But when I get there, I met a bunch of guys my age and they demonstrated to me what life could be. They actually placed value on things like integrity and honesty—things that had always seemed to me more like barriers than anything I’d want. But they made me actually want it.
Back2Basics is not a traditional wilderness program. It’s not survivalist though they do have things like that. It’s more about exploring, having fun and not being in a traditional environment, not being on your phone and just being in the moment—something a lot of addicts have trouble with. When you’re kayaking on the San Juan River and rafting, you’re in the moment. We’d go to Mexico and surf and go to meetings there and learn Spanish. In Northern Arizona, you’re near so many national parks and we took advantage of all of it. But I honestly think the community here was the most life changing aspect—not just in group but all the different activities—all the mismatched things we did made that happen.
I was in treatment for six months and didn’t have any desire to leave. I’d grown up in the Bay Area and being outside mostly meant seeing concrete. I’d been hiking but that was about it. Suddenly I was going bouldering, surfing and kayaking. I’d seen Go Pro videos of this stuff but I’d never done anything like that in my life. But I figured I was here, I was going to be doing it anyway, this is what’s happening and when was I ever going to be able to do this again? That alone made me see that there were more possibilities for me than I’d been willing to give myself credit for. It was a reality check—I would think, “I’m actually here, enjoying this.” I’d assumed that there would be no chance in hell I’d ever go river rafting but since I went and enjoyed it, I started to think, “What else is possible? Is sobriety possible?”
So much of my identity was tied into my drug use. Rehab made me realize that I could do a lot more than I ever thought. I could actually have fun without drugs. Before, if someone didn’t want to go out on a Saturday night, I would wonder, “What are you going to do?” Going to treatment here made me interested in the possibilities. I thought, “If this is how it is now, what could it be like a year from now?” It’s now four years later and I’m about six weeks away from getting my Masters in Social Work. I can relate to a lot of people with a lot of different issues, not just with addiction. I feel useful and it feels great.
Photo courtesy of Back2Basics; used with permission; Click here to see all of our How I Got Sober stories.
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