The room was called “The Fishbowl.” It was somewhat small and white walled with white acoustic ceiling tiles and fluorescent light fixtures, placed accordingly in rows throughout the ceiling tiles, and hung in the ceiling with aluminum lenses to disperse the light throughout the room.

With an aisle down the center, The Fishbowl lined with rows of padded blue chairs with padded armrests on black steel wired frames that were less than comfortable on nony asses such as mine. The floor was light colored hardwood and Continue reading →

No one ever plans for it. It almost seems like we blink, and the next thing we know, we’ve fallen so far off course. Three things were frightening to me. First is since I moved in too deeply; I was so far from the starting line that I thought I was too lost to turn around and find my way back to the straight and narrow. Second, and most importantly, I was too afraid to stop. The anxiety of feeling Continue reading →

I was in a small room across from a desk in a small office without any windows. The office was not specific. The desk did not belong to anyone in particular. There was nothing in the room that would indicate this was an office in a psychiatric ward at a hospital. There were no scales or any sort of medical apparatus in the room. There was only a desk with a chair behind it and a chair in front. There were a few posters on the wall, which were more like pharmaceutical advertisements than anything else.
Near the door, which was wide opened to the hospital wing, there was a Continue reading →

You want to know why I cry?
You want to know why I wanted to be involved or why I do what I do?

I sat in the small bathroom of an upstairs suite of an old hotel that was transformed into a drug rehabilitation center. The decorations were something from the 70’s. The suite had a blue rug, white walls, and wood colored furniture. The main lobby was also outdated with wood paneled walls and Berber carpeting. The couches were old. The pictures on the wall were perhaps left behind from the days when the treatment center was a temporary home to happy hotel guests. In its exchange, the hotel became a temporary home to people like me. This was a place of recovery for drug addicts and alcoholics.

I was 19 at the time and fulfilling my Continue reading →

April 1^st 1991. This was day one

I had to go back to the beginning and start all over again.  I had to go back to the place where it all began. I was only six months out of treatment.  I was six months away from the lessons I learned and six months away friends that were more like “Family” to me. Soon enough, however, I found myself back in trouble.
It was as if I never left.

Worst of all, I traded the one thing I had. I traded something so priceless and important. I traded my value and my dignity. I traded the work and the time I put into my sobriety. I gave away the one thing, which in my eyes redeemed me from the previous wrongs and my past sins.
However, this was not a surprise. Not at all. My Continue reading →