My last day of using was riddled with thoughts of wanting my life to end. To not feel any pain. To seize the suffering and this overwhelming feeling that I needed something to be okay, when in fact every time I used those substances I was not. I picked up my phone and scrolled through the contacts. Friends, family, people who have been there all my life… Stopped picking up my calls a long time ago. I had nothing. A few pairs of pants on, two shirts, a sweatshirt. The people I got high with wouldn’t even answer my calls anymore. The feeling of loneliness set in as I continued to walk down the road.

I was desperate. Desperate for relief, desperate for food, desperate for companionship, desperate for sleep, and most of all desperate to not feel the way I was feeling. Drugs weren’t cutting it anymore. What do I do in a situation like this? Faced with few option, continue living in misery until I end up in jail, die or kill myself. Or reach out and give this recovery another shot.

Two years sober, I look back almost everyday on that last day… Filled with gratitude of the gift desperation brought me. At times I have took it for granted, that feeling of absolute misery. Being in a program of AA, I’m faced seeing that gift a lot and get the opportunity to live in that moment again.

-Chris