I Fixed My Life and It Was Mind-Blowing

 

I am 100% clean and sober today thanks to the methods of the ways and means of the Narconon program. 

I was a poly-substance user, and I was basically a garbage can for substances and I used anything I could get my hands on. I would use people, places, and things in order to change how I felt. In many, if not most cases, I was causing complete chaos that also disrupted the order around me. 

At the end of my addiction, I was using about 2 grams of meth a day and drinking 2 half gallons of liquor per week. 

I was taking tranquilizers and marijuana to help me try to mellow out. 

In the last month of my addiction, I had added LSD to it. 

I was so paranoid that I was placed on a 6-day hold in the hospital to get stabilized after using so many different substances. They were trying to treat my drug-induced issues with more drugs and it just was not working. 

I was given different diagnoses, but everything really just stemmed from my drug addiction.

“I was given different diagnoses, but everything really just stemmed from my drug addiction.”

This was my 15th appearance in an in-patient drug rehab. 

I had tried the spiritual and the faith-based programs. 

I had sat in group after group with well-liked therapists who were telling us to remain positive and to become more social, all the while charismatic people who were still in treatment dominated the conversations with what they know and evaluated what everyone else was saying. 

If you were lucky and could track down the therapist, you may get a session or two of rushed conversation and surface-scratching commentary.

My mother drove me here, to Narconon Colorado. 

I cried the entire way here. 

I knew it was going to be tough and I was hoping I wasn’t wasting my time again. I understood about personal accountability, but every person is different, and I am a person who fell through the cracks and needed some real effort to help me get clean. 

I was literally at death’s door. 

I am a solid 215lbs right now and when I got here, I weighed only 170lbs. I had open sores and I had chemical burns all over my arms, feet, and legs. I was so paranoid and distrustful because of my past behavior and actions. I was physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually very sick.

I was in withdrawal by the next morning. I fought with the staff in every way except physically. They did not send me on my way, instead, they said, “you’re almost there, keep going.” I got medical help to get me on track. I could not sleep because of all of the withdrawal effects. The staff did help me get comfortable and treated me very nicely, despite how I was acting. I started my understanding of being in the moment and how to start confronting things.

Soon, I was done with withdrawal and joined the other people in the sauna detox. I started eating healthy and getting my body healthy by sweating out toxins and letting the vitamins help restore my body back to a healthy state. 

I had noticeable reactions when the drugs came out of my body. 

After about 3 weeks of being here, I was finally able to think rationally and I was able to call my mom and actually have a good conversation with her. I was able to start taking responsibility for the years of destruction I caused, and I kept going. I had the full support of the staff here that had themselves been through addiction and got clean. 

They had a certain level of credibility I never found in other programs. I admit, I became kind of enamored with these people and grew to respect and value their time and efforts.

After 40 days, I was still going strong on the program. 

Every Friday night at graduation, I was hearing people tell me that the changes they had here were significant and I wanted that. I had gotten color back in my face, I had put healthy weight on, and I looked like myself again. 

After the sauna program was complete, my thought process was rational again, and that’s when I entered the Objectives part of the program. I was introduced to communication exercises that introduced me to my authentic self and that would allow me to work with another person to get real, workable therapy that is hands-on, above and beyond anything I have ever been through. 

I had a horrible and very rough time in the beginning. 

“After 29 years of addiction, I had some terrible behaviors that I had to confront and challenge so I could overcome them.”

After 29 years of addiction, I had some terrible behaviors that I had to confront and challenge so I could overcome them. Those things challenged my thoughts, feelings, emotions, and behaviors. I put the staff on the edge of their abilities. 

They 100% got me through it and I worked with people for the first time in my life. I’ve made my whole life about myself and for the first time, it was about others. Three months and four days into my program, I blew up and tried to leave the program. But the staff helped me see that I would only get back to what brought me here in the first place, and so I recommitted myself to completing the program.

Seventeen days later, I found out that my brother committed suicide after a long bout with alcoholism that reduced his life to believing the world was better off without him. 

This was the actual moment in my life when my life changed. I was devastated. I had just heard my mother tell me he was dead, I was kneeling down on the lawn behind the building because the understanding of what had happened hit me and my legs collapsed and I was sobbing in the grass, unable to comprehend.

“The end result of addiction is that you die from it.
My brother made 50 people I knew who died from addiction.
After that, I had to keep going without question.”

The end result of addiction is that you die from it. My brother made 50 people I knew who died from addiction. After that, I had to keep going without question.

I did the portion of the program that helps you identify the negative people in your life. I was able to take a look at my values by taking a long look at how I had acted and the things I had done. In the last phase, I looked at the whole big picture. I saw the reasons behind what I was doing. I looked at multiple different areas of my life that have been affected by my addiction. I didn’t know how to even look at it, let alone fix it. But now I look back on all the work I did and without even realizing it, I had fixed my life, step by step. It was mind-blowing to me, to say the least.

I am so grateful for this program and I’m ready to give life a second chance.

J.B. – Narconon Colorado Graduate