I’ll always be grateful

I’ve been a transient since 1998 which, in my case, means I’ve been totally hopeless these past 16 years and pretty much thought my life was over. I’ve been living either on the street (outside) or in detox and short term rehabs. It was a trip to Walter B. Jones in January of this year that got me to Hope Recovery Homes. I went to Walter B. to get off the street for a couple of weeks, do laundry and get some food in my stomach like I had done many times but ended up staying for 35 days. We had a cold, icy winter in eastern NC and I knew that I couldn’t go back to the tent I was living in so the social worker at Walter B. Jones suggested Hope Recovery. I grudgingly agreed but had no real thought of changing and I thought I could come here and blend into the woodwork and just kind of “skate”. I was wrong. This has been a very painful experience but it’s one I know I’ll always be grateful for. I was living by self-propulsion before I got here and failing miserably. This has been a process of “ego-puncturing” for me and this has been what’s made it painful. I can now see, at 106 days sober, that the payoff for this painful process is something totally priceless.