A Second Chance at Life: Marriage, Fatherhood, and Full Recovery

 

Growing up in Louisiana, the “Sooner State”, I had a very typical childhood―parents that provided for us, school, football―a very good life. One of my best memories of that time is playing on football teams coached by my dad.

The problem with drugs started in high school when a buddy got into a car accident and was prescribed opiate painkillers. He said that they made him feel good and gave me some to try. Thinking they were just medicine and no big deal, I took some.

Unfortunately, that led to drug addiction and all that goes with it. I lost jobs, scraping by in life begging for money, destroying relationships, bouncing around from my mother to my father to my grandmother.

I tried a number of 12-step programs, but these were not what I needed and they did not work for me. At that point my parents took charge. I had a brother who had done the Narconon drug rehab program a few years earlier and succeeded in handling his addiction, so my parents told me I was going there.

I did not want to go at first, but when I arrived the staff were very friendly and helpful and I decided to give it a try. And it was perfect for me.

Some of my biggest wins were getting through withdrawal and feeling much better at the end, and then doing the sauna portion of the program and feeling healthy physically and with much improved mental clarity. I was no longer a prisoner in my own body and mind to a substance. I was free to be a normal person.

I was looking forward to starting over and fixing everything and I succeeded in doing this. The first thing I did was help others by joining staff at the Narconon center where I worked for a year and a half, becoming an expert in getting new arrivals to the center through withdrawal and onto the rest of the program.

“I have great relations with my family, and am a productive member of society with a job as superintendent of a construction company.”

I went on from there to get married and my wife and I just had a beautiful baby girl who is 5 ½ weeks old. I have great relations with my family, and am a productive member of society with a job as superintendent of a construction company.

My advice to others who have a substance abuse problem is simple: it works even if you don’t at first want to go. It just takes the decision to do it.

K.R., Narconon Graduate