Th Fix group in Schenectady, NY

Hey guys, I'm Brian. I'm a heroin addict. It was sobriety date. It's April 24th, 2012. I I have a sponsor. His name is Mike. He knows he's my sponsor. We work steps out of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. I've been very blessed to have other men asked me to take them through the book Alcoholics Anonymous. I have a Home group. It's a no choice group of heroin Anonymous. We meet

Saturdays at 7:00 PM at 125 High Rock Ave., Saratoga Springs.

Commitments at that meeting. I have commitments at pretty much every level of HA service.

Um, you know, and as a result of those things I've had, you know, I connected to a power grid of myself that has relieved me of the obsession to get loaded. And that's the most important thing in my life. I always start with that because that's it. I, that's how I got sober. That's how I stay sober. That's how my sponsor got sober, that's how he stays sober and so forth down the line. You know, anything I'm going to share after that is just my opinion

and my experience with this program.

If you want to see your life change, you know, start engaging in those processes. So the other thing I like to say, I love heroin.

I, you know, as a kid had a lot of great ideas for my life. And the best I could do was to put meth and heroin in a rig, take a handful of Xanax and, you know, get weird.

I like to I like to do speed with my heroine.

I like to talk to shadow people. I like to not leave my house for a few days at a time and not sleep,

but I like to make it very clear that all those things are true. That was not my problem.

Heroin was not my problem. And right, if it was my problem, the only thing I would ever have to do is not buy heroin, right? I would just not come disconnected and I would never be tempted to buy heroin and I would go about my life and I wouldn't have to come to these meetings.

But the reality of my life is that, you know, the problem existed way before heroin. Heroin was just a solution to my problem,

you know, long before I could ever remember. Like as soon as I start having memories, I remember being broken. You know, I never knew what the hell that was, but I knew, you know, from the very beginning that something wasn't right. You know, I, I honestly used to go to the doctors from, you know, the age of five to

like 36 in hope that the doctor was going to tell me, come back and say this is wrong with you. Because I knew something was wrong and nobody could put a face on it, you know, and maybe if they could tell me what exactly was wrong with me, they'd make a pill for it and I could get better.

I you know, the, the,

so that brokenness, that's, that's the issue. So the next really important thing that happened to me, I was 12. I got loaded for the first time. I had my first beer and,

you know, I drank that night till I threw up and,

you know, I think the thing that makes me bodily and mentally different from my fellows took place that very night. You know, there's a

they, they talk about the disease of alcoholism and what it, what it talks about is when I put one in, I can't stop, right. And for me, it never mattered if one was a drink, if one was a bag, if one was a hit acid, if one was a pill. But once I put that one in, you know, before I took it, I could say I'm going to have a couple and I'm going to go about my life and I'm going to continue to be a, you know, continue to be a son and continue to be a boyfriend and continue to be an employee.

But when I put that one in, all those bets are off. And the only thing I care about,

what becomes paramount to everything else in my life is staying loaded. And you know, that took place that that first night, you know, I drank the first night till I threw up. And you know, I think the second thing that makes me an alcoholic took place that that next morning sober, removed from alcohol, removed from drugs. I knew it wasn't a good idea. I woke up in my own puke on the bathroom floor

and I was hungover. I was 12 years old. It was my first time getting loaded. It didn't feel good,

right? It wasn't a good idea, you know, But I came out of the bathroom and some older kids at the that were at the party, they were drinking Jameson's Irish whiskey. And they slid me a shot and they said you just need some hair, the dog that bit you. And, you know, that thought of like waking up in my puke and like needing aspirin, needing to go take a shower, All that went right out the window, you know, is of course, I need that. You know, this time it's going to be different. I'll just like control it a little bit,

you know, for the next 22 years.

That's what I try to do is I try to control it a little bit. And I was, I had no idea from the majority of those 22 years, but that just was never going to be in the cards for me. I could not figure out how to control drugs,

but I kept trying and I kept trying and I kept trying,

you know, for the next 22 years, the longest point of sobriety I'd ever had was 23 days. And I know that because when I was 17 years old, I got,

I got detained in Clifton Park for I was doing snow angels under a weeping Willow tree in a park on 25 hits of acid. And the cops came and they had questions because it was August and there's not a reason for that. So I was detained and, and they made us, made my family think it was a good idea to go to outpatient rehab. And in outpatient rehab, it took me 23 days to figure out that

I could leave. I went to this place in Troy. I think it's Conifer now. It wasn't at the time, but it's right on the river. But I leave Thursday night at 9:00, and I didn't have to come back until Monday at 5:00. And it took me 23 days to figure out that I could leave Thursday at 9:00. I could buy some blow and I could drink for a day or two and pass my drug test Monday night after after rehab. And I know it was 23 days because it was the longest 23 days of my entire life. You know,

every minute felt like 6 days,

right? So the other thing I usually start with, which I kind of forgot, but I'll do it now because, you know, Yolo

now I just forgot what going to say again. I

yeah, anyway, I think I lost it. But so, you know, like

it just went, it just went like that, you know, like that was the first consequences. And when the first one came, like they didn't, they didn't go away. And I had to like figure out how they're coping mechanisms, you know. So like the first one I really learned after that was like when you burn your entire life to the ground at the the hands of drugs and alcohol,

a really good way out is this fucking like fucking bail, you know, and just run. And I did that a lot, man. I ran into college and when that didn't workout, I went to another college. And when that didn't workout, I went to like six more colleges

and I was like, I was in like this fraternity and literally everyone in that fraternity at the last college I went to could be sitting in this room today. Like they pretty much all qualify.

But they kicked me out of the fraternity house because I also like cocaine and I also like selling cocaine. And, you know, when you're having fraternity parties and like nosebleeds are happening on a daily basis and there's like blood on the walls because girls noses keep exploding, it's not a good look for the, you know, the college. So they asked me to leave the fraternity house, you know,

And from there I ran. I thought like, maybe I could go to Florida and like get it under wraps under there. Like if I left this stage

when 1000 miles away, like, you know, I never, I never at one point in my life ever wanted to quit getting loaded. You know, April 24th, 2012, It was not my intent to never get loaded again, but I definitely wanted to like, you know, do some things that would help me find control. And, you know, so I moved out of state and like when that didn't work and I was still out of control, like I had the girlfriend from college moved down and thinking I'd get it under control for her. And when that didn't work,

you know, like I proposed. And when that didn't work, it was her fault. And, you know, I had to move again. I think I went to Arizona from there. And then when that didn't work, I needed to quit my job. And, you know, I just did a lot of that, you know, like, I try to change all my external shit to fix the brokenness that has been inside me my entire life. And it didn't work. You know,

the next really important thing that happened,

you know, and I just did that for like a really long time. I don't think I need to go into like every gory detail of what being a, a drunk and an addict looks like.

I think if you guys are in this room, you probably understand. But you know, I just did that for a really long time. And you know, I was 29. I also was trying to to treat this brokenness with mixed martial arts. I thought like, maybe if I could beat you up to make you feel like I do on the inside,

I would be OK. And I had dreams of being Chuck Liddell. But really what was happening was I had a like, at this point, I was like a terrible alcoholic and I had a gnarly Xanax addiction. So what was really happening with those two things that I was getting injured a lot. And I remember I dislocated my elbow. It was like the 6th or 7th time I'd been in the emergency room that year. And, you know, the doctor gave me

shot of Dilaudid and he gave me a prescription for Vicodin. And

I knew at that moment that the fighting dream was dead. You know, I knew at that moment that I was going to follow this Vicodin thing as far as that was going to go. I was going to give everything I have to see where that went.

It was just a lot easier. I could like, take a Vicodin. I could still go to work. I could take a Vicodin, I could drive. I could take a Vicodin and like, not wake up as a useless human being as I would when I would get drunk and take Xanax,

you know, And that goes how that goes. You know, Vicodin turns into Percocets and Percocets turn into rocks using rocks he's turned into upon us

in. There's that one drug, though. You know, I grew up in the 80s and the 90s

heroin didn't seem like a good deal. You know, like

in the 80s they used to tell us like, it have like crazy infomercials and like your this is your brain to see your brain on drugs. But like they would just tell you like, if you did heroin, like you instantly got AIDS, became homeless. And we're just like, that's who you are. You know, in the 90s Trainspotting came out and I really didn't want babies crawling on my ceiling. You know, like, heroin didn't seem like a really good deal.

So I, I had like made a pact of myself that I would never do it. And I meant that every day of my life

until

the Roxies were in Binghamton, they're getting expensive. I was in Albany and there was a girl that said we could take a ride at Schenectady and get dope. And that one drug that I, you know, if you put me on a lie detector test and ask me if I was ever into heroin, I'd say no and I'd pass. But there was no fight, you know, She just said you want some. And I said it absolutely, you know,

so I guess up until this point in my life, the first, so the first time I did dope,

I I snorted, I got a bundle. I started 2 bags and nothing happened. I had a was taking about 20 or 30 Roxies a day, Roxy 30s and it started 2 bags. I didn't even get well from the Roxy addiction, which you know, today I look at and I should, I'm like, that should have been like, just walk away, man. You know, like you did this drug that you made to be like the, the end all be all on drugs and you didn't even get well from it. You know, you didn't get high,

but that wasn't signed to walk away. That was a sign to call the girl back and take could you, could you come back over here and shoot me up? I'll give you $10. And she did, you know, and up into this, my point of my life, like some things have happened. You know, I think I, I, I done some cool stuff. I've seen some cool stuff. I got paid to fight another man in a cage. You know, I got to follow fish all over the country.

I didn't snow angels on 25 hits of acid. You know, like,

I can't tell you a lot about any of those things, but I could definitely tell you every detail about the first night I shot dope. You know, I I was in a yellow polo shirt. It was a brown Jeep. The girl was wearing like black leggings. She shot me up and now it's I'd never forget like she shot me up. I remember like that that we get. And then I looked at it and I started laughing and I was like, this is going to kill me. And

you know, sign me up, man.

But I think like, what's what, like we don't talk about a lot here, is like, what happened that day

wasn't that I was doing heroin, you know, it wasn't that I was using a needle. What happened that day is that brokenness that was inside me, you know, that went away for an hour and a half. And that allowed me to breathe, you know, that allowed me to just be OK. The pain of life

was so intense that that was the only thing I could find that would make that pain be tolerable. You know, I didn't do it because I wanted to do heroin. I didn't do it because like, you know, drive by the street and see homeless heroin addicts and be like, that's what I want, you know?

I did it because the pain in my life was so intense that it was the only thing I could do to to make that right,

you know, and heroin goes as heroin goes, right.

You don't hear many unique stories of what happens after you start shooting dope. You know

those things that you always said you never wanted to do and never would? You. They get replaced really quick and they just get thrown out the fucking window because I'm sick and I need to get well. And, you know, that's how my life looked.

I, you know, after a while that I just couldn't do it anymore. You know,

destroying the lives of everyone around me, robbing from people, waking up and locked bathrooms with needles in my arms.

It just wasn't going too well. I would sit like I honestly, I would sit at home at night and I'd like Google, like how do heroin addicts not do heroin? And there was only like 2 things that would ever come back. One was Suboxone and I had been, you know, my own Suboxone Dr. for a while and that that wasn't changing anything. The other one was passages Malibu and

that said like $60,000 for 30 days. So I didn't have that. So

I thought suicide would be a good idea to make this end. And I took action on that and it took a lot of lot of pills and

I shot a bundle at once. And I went out and went face first into a glass table.

And and then like, I hit a computer and the computer like fell back on top of me and my legs were underneath me. There's a computer on my chest. And I just lied there aspirating for the next 4 1/2 hours. And you know, that's how my mom got to find her youngest child. I was blue. I was dying. She called 911 and

they took me out of there. My mom later told me that like, they followed the ambulance to the hospital to identify a body because I wasn't responding when I left. You know,

they finally hit me with Narcan at Saint Mary's Hospital again. And I came to you this time for a second. I was in a coma for like the next four days. I kind of give you an idea of the disease that I have in me. I, I like wake up from this coma and I use that term loosely because you don't really wake up from a coma. You just kind of start breathing on your own, sound like you're well rested and you want to go play nine holes.

So Even so, like I couldn't talk. I was paralyzed from the waist down. I was deaf. I didn't know that, like, people were in the room with me.

But even in that state, every 30 seconds my family said I was screaming out the words in it. Because even in that state, I need to get loaded, you know? The pain of me is too great. I can't be in it, you know.

So after I like started coming to, you know, and like things started coming back, my family started intervening on me and

didn't rehab didn't really sound like a good idea until like I found out the cops got my phone, the cops got my needles, the cops got the dope, the cops got the weed

and so forth. And you know, all the way down the line and I call the dude that I was picking up from and I was like, yo, man, I fell out. The cops got my shit. And he's like Brian, as I told the police officers, I did not sell you Suboxone or heroin. And he like hung up. So all right, let's go to rehab. You know, there's nothing for me here. So I went to rehab with the intent to, like, get the heat to die down.

I was not going to change my life. I, you know, I just, I didn't think that heroin addicts could get a solution.

So I went to this rehab and for four months I sat in the back of like they, I went to this rehab and it was basically just, it's not like it is here. They basically just brought us to a meetings and CA meetings and NA meetings. Heroin Anonymous wasn't there where I was a

like a lot of meetings and they gave us his book, you know, the blue book that we have here in, you know, I would come to these meetings, I would sit in the back and what I would do is like, I would just make fun of everyone in the room. You know, if I tore you down to my level, then like you had nothing to offer me. And you know, I felt horrible. So I needed to make you feel horrible. And like, I just sat there and I judged this shit out of everybody.

I talked about heroin a lot. I talked about suicide a lot

and you know, that's I hate the phrase bottom because I really don't think that there's such a thing as a bottom because

right to say bottom. It implies that if I knew enough drugs that I will eventually get to a point where I'll be thrusted into like this magical sober land, which was not my experience. But at four months over, I was so fucking miserable without drugs and alcohol that something had to change. And my first thought was heroin. And I knew a guy that got out of rehab in,

he was getting loaded so I could give him a call and I could go back to doing what I was doing. And that was that's where it was just one plan. You know, there wasn't a second plan. So I, you know, went on my back deck and I was going to give this guy a call. And for whatever reason, when I went in to get my phone, I came out of my pocket with a piece of paper rather than my phone. And it said Doug P. And it had a phone number and.

My counselor giving me Doug P's number and he said, you got to call this dude and he's going to be your sponsor. And I just looked at him. I was like, fuck you, Danny. Like I'm not calling some dude to talk about my feelings. Like that's not a good look for me, man. And but for whatever reason, I kept the number. And when I, when I took looked at that piece of paper, like something clicked, you know, I thought, I guess maybe that all the people in these rooms weren't completely full of shit. Maybe their smiles weren't because they were smoking

weekends or like doing dirty shit in the bathroom. Maybe they're smiles work because they were actually fucking sober and happy at the same time. And

maybe if I work the 12 steps, I could have that too. So I called Doug and I said, Doug, I have no idea how to stay sober. Could you show me how to do it?

I then told him that I was also thinking about suicide. So he came over that and like, thank God man. Like fuck. If somebody calls you and ask you to sponsor him, just say yes,

you know, because there is no other phone call that well, the next phone call was to Johnny and it was for dope, you know. So if Doug would have said no, Brian, I'm too busy or I have two sponsors already, I can't help you, you know, I'd be fucking dead, man. There's no way I'm sitting here tonight. But Doug had that responsibility because somebody had given that message to him and showed up for him. And

he came over that night with the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And he he asked me what turned out to be like the most important question of my life. He said, Brian, are you willing to go to any lengths to stay sober? And I just said yes, you know, I didn't know what the fucking man. I just

like, calm down, dog. Like, yeah. OK. And he said, do you know what? You just said yes to you and I like no. And he said, so there's these meetings. And at the meetings, there's a guy like Ryan here with the binder, and you're going to go up to him and you're going to say, hey, man, I want a commitment. And you're going to make that your Home group and you're going to show up no matter what. Do you know what? No matter what means. And I was like, you know, like the Dolphins aren't playing, you know, like if there's not like a girl that wants to go on a date, you know, like if I don't have a headache,

like basically if somebody drives me there and I got nothing else going on, right? And he was like, no man, no matter what, like how you treated the dope men, you know, you're you're there 15 minutes early. You call everyone you know, and see if they want to throw in on it. Like no matter what, even if he says I ain't got any, you still show up, you know, like, that's how you treat this. And he said every Sunday we're going to meet at this park bench and we're going to read this book and we're going to do the steps and you're going to be there no matter what.

I think he told me what no matter what meant again.

And then he said what has proven to be the most important thing that's ever happening in my life. He said, Brian, when this program deems that you have your own house in order and ask for your help, you say yes no matter what. And I agreed to those things. I had no idea what I was agreeing to, but I meant it. You know

the miracle happened to me at Step 5.

We we sat down with my four step and we're guys going to read it to me, read it to him and do step five. He read

in the book it says many of us will have will begin to have a spiritual experience. The alcoholic problem will be removed at this point. He explained to me that that was the obsession, that stupid voice in my head that when I was dead ass over said get loaded, get loaded, get loaded, get loaded, get loaded. You know, the only voice I've ever heard for the past 22 years. He said that's going to shut up and you can just start being a human being. And I looked at him as like, fuck you, man. Like

you don't know who you're talking to you, you know,

that's what I thought in my head every second of every day. The only thought I've ever had was to get loaded. I don't care if I was loaded. I was like, when am I getting loaded again? You know, if I'm having sex, I'm like, when is this going to end so I can get off of her and get loaded, you know, like so to tell for you to tell me that that's going to go away, like no. But luckily the the steps have no cares or thoughts or concerns about what Brian thinks are going to do. You know, I read my four step

that it's told me to do in the book and I went home and I meditated for an hour just like it told me to do. When I came out of that meditation, getting loaded wasn't a good idea. That voice said shut up so that obsession would go on. But what the real miracle I think that happened that day is that book told me something was going to happen if I did in action.

And I did that action and the promise it had made me had come true. So for the first time in my life, I had faith, you know, I had faith that if I do something like that, that I can't see the end result, that I can't physically feel the end result, that the end result will happen. And you know, a few weeks, it's seven years and those those results haven't stopped happening when I do the actions.

It's the only reason I'm sitting here, you know, like if, if this,

if this was as painful as getting loaded was, you know, I'd be getting loaded. I, if this wasn't a good deal, if this wasn't infinitely better, I'd be getting loaded, you know, because that's what I do. That's what my history shows. You will happen

I but that problem has been completely removed in my life. Today is infinitely better.

There's stuff involved, like people get up here and they talk about this stuff they got in right. That's not really,

that's not really being sober. That's like getting a job, you know, like we don't really need to talk about the stuff we got, but I got the stuff that people think is attractive and it's cool. But that's not what this program has promised me. This program has promised me that if I do this work, I'll be a free human being. And I could get stuff, you know, I could Start learning what it means to be like a husband, what it starts meaning to be like a son

and a brother, you know, the an employee. And I don't use those terms loosely because

in my old life, I thought that I was those things because like, I had a mom. So I'm a son, right? You know, I take money from her all the time. She's got to be my mom. I got to be your son. But you guys have told me what those things mean. You know, my mom calls me and it's like, Brian, I need to go to the hospital and I'm sober. I can get in my car that I own and I can drive over to it and I can help her out. You know, my my job. I like show up to you and like when I have reviews, he's like excited about my performance and he gives me,

you know, like these things are all you guys. They have absolutely nothing to do with me. I'm just so grateful for it, you know? So I'm going to start with this. So I've been thinking about this a lot. There's a question as I'm sitting in these rooms that I like to, I like to ask and I like to answer. It's YHA, right? Why am I in a Heroin Anonymous meeting?

You know, I think at the very beginning. So where I got sober, there wasn't a heroin on this meeting. Me and my buddy,

we really wanted to go to one, you know, so we we hit the website up and we got a startup kit. We started one. And the reason we wanted to do that was because, you know, at first I always thought it was because like I wanted to talk about needles and I wanted to talk about like not being able to poop for two weeks. And you know, like I thought like this alcoholic doesn't know what dope sick meat, you know, and like I thought it was about those things, but it wasn't. It was about

when I went into other programs,

this was like, you know, like being sitting in these chairs wasn't my lifelong goal. So when I got to another program and they talked about rigorous honesty and then told me to don't tell my story, you know, that hurt. You know, it was another place that I didn't fit in, another place that I wasn't accepted, you know, another place that I was still less than the bottom of the Farrell, you know, and that shit hurt. That shit hurt every single day. The other reason why HA for me today,

so I've had an experience with the power greater than myself. And in this book it talks about my job today is to be of where I am of maximum service to God and to others.

And if I'm honest and I say yes to that and I say that I am doing that today, the only place that somebody like me is a maximum service to God and to others is in a meeting of Heroin Anonymous. You know, because I've had the pain that you guys have had, you know, you've had the pain that I've had and having found a solution,

I'm uniquely qualified to hopefully like hold someone's hand as they as they walk to that solution. And you know, that's why I love Heroin Anonymous. That's why I'm a servant to Heroin Anonymous. It's really important to me. And so I'll shut up. Last sentence, I swear

I heard this guy say this. And if you don't understand why I why or how I love Heroin Anonymous, he said if you want to be in love with somebody or something, start serving it. And that's what I have found. You know, that's how I fell in love with Heroin Anonymous. It started by greeting people at the door. It started by sitting here with the binder. You know, now it looks like I'm going to Arizona

in a couple months and to serve on the World Conference. You know, the more I serve you guys, the more I connect with you guys and the more I connect with Heroin Anonymous. I'm Brian. I'm a heroin addict.