The Gift of Recovery: My Story

Written by Paul Mitchell

April 29, 1987. It was a Wednesday, two days after my 17th birthday. I remember both days. On one I was at school early, trying to find someone who would get me high for my birthday, not wanting to use whatever drugs I had hidden away. On the other I was checking myself into rehab.

I was what they call a high-bottom alcoholic and drug addict. I hadn’t lost a family, house, career – I was only a teen. But, nevertheless, I was trapped in a spiraling addiction that had taken several forms since my very earliest memories.

I never fit in, never felt right, always wanted to be somewhere else, wanted to be someone else, wanted to light my home on fire and run away (tried both, unsuccessfully) and it wasn’t until I first got drunk that I realized there was a solution. My solution was in drugs and alcohol. From my first drink and drug use, I knew that I could feel right if I could just maintain that high. From then on, my focus became drinking and using, hiding and diverting from my growing addiction, and doing everything I could to maintain access to my “solution.”

On that Wednesday, a long-haired counselor who looked like he just stepped off his Harley, told me he was an addict and asked me what my story was. He asked me how much I used, and I said “three to five times a week” and he nodded, and said, “ok, three to five times a day,” which was, of course, more like the truth. He talked about kids who commit suicide, and I had never even told him of my thoughts. He asked me directly, do you want to get out of this, and somewhere I received the willingness to say “yes.”

I’m grateful every day that I had my moment of clarity at such a young age. It wasn’t a shining light or burning bush, but a gradual acceptance that I had become, like my father and his father before him, an alcoholic and an addict. Now, decades later, I still know that this evolving alcoholic and addict inside of me carries on and I’m not like everyone else, but through fellowship, my work with others, and the principles of a program, I have been able to stay sober and be the person I’m grateful to have become.

I was recently reminded of the alternate path that was before me. My best friend, using buddy, and stepbrother, Greg, were on parallel tracks. In high school we could be confused for one another, we were so similar in our looks and behavior.

We both went to rehab, and for me it took, but for him it didn’t. His path, and what was likely mine, led him to continued drinking, heroin addiction, jails and permanent physical and psychological damage. Last year he passed away, alone in a residential living center, at the age of 43, directly as a result of his years as an addict. When I first attended a Saint John’s event, I was overcome with emotion seeing what was before me. I held in the tears. Before me were real people, women and their children, finally protected from lives that had spun out of control, often due to the same addiction and alcoholism that I carry with me. I felt connected to their stories, I understood how regular people can be driven to these depths, and I felt guilty for not doing more with this gift of recovery that I was given.

April 29, 2016 will be the 29th anniversary of my walking into an adolescent drug and alcohol rehab unit and being given this gift. And as a part of my commitment to Saint Johns and the women and children that they serve, I am helping organize a dinner with my cycling team, Rio Strada Racing, at the finish line of our annual race.

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