“I was addicted to methamphetamines for about nine and a half years. I thought I’d been through the worst. I got my life back. I had two and a half years clean and I thought, ‘This is it. There’s no more struggle.’ Then I lost my mother. I clung to worldly things, such as alcohol and heroin to numb that pain. Don’t take your mother for granted. She was my best friend. She was my sponsor in recovery. She was the best of the best and just like that she was taken from me. So trust in God and do not take your mothers for granted. That term, ‘earth-shattering,’ I lived it. I’m just now putting the pieces together and getting my life back. It was April 23, 2017, so it’s been over a year and a half. This heroin, it’s hell. That epidemic they’re talking about, it’s real.

Hitting rock bottom, going to jail several times, living out on the street, living out here in the cold, having literally nothing to my name helped me start from square one again. I was like, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ And it just came to me, ‘Pray.’ One thing led to another. They have the clinic at Project Reality where you can get on methadone. They’ll help you get off of it. God is great. If I had trusted in God I wouldn’t be where I am today. Now I’ve got a huge hole to climb out of. But without Him I’d be worse off than I am.

Trust in God. I don’t know about religion at this point: I’m still figuring out if that’s the important part. I do know the relationship between me and God is important though. He has put things and people in my life to help me get to that next step. A lady just blessed me with twenty dollars. Now I can go down and get my ID. I can go to a Temp Agency, get a job, and start putting cash together to get into an apartment. It’s all just coming together. You just have to make that one first step and trust in God always.”