recovery day 1

Recovery: Day 1

By:David Freeman

        Recovery is a war. It is to be fought with extreme intensity. Losing is not an option. Recovery is not sobriety. Sobriety can be achieved without any recovery what so ever. But to get recovery you must have sobriety completely and utterly. Sobriety is a stage of recovery but it does not end there. The people on the journey of recovery are on a mission to not just exist but gain back what was lost. One slip up one mistake one moment of loss of focus can send the person on the path of recovery spiraling back to the place they started from. Just happy to be alive or worse yet begging for the chance to stay alive.  I have experienced this kind of set back so I can personally attest to how pathetic it is to be back at square one. However better to be back at square one licking the wounds then to be dead.

        This war for me is really life or death. Heaven or Hell. Life and Life more abundantly or destruction and disaster with no mercy.  This war has an enemy, it has a face. It will not die easy. It will not go away without a fight. See the enemy has a strategy. The enemy has a vision a plan. It’s called divide and conquer. Kill steal and destroy.

        I was thrown into battle on May 17^th 2007.  That is the day I enlisted into the military of our King Jesus.  I had no clue how I got to the point of calling out to Him. The series of events that transpired in my life that sent me on the path to be on the corner of 19^th ave and northern in phoenix Arizona are foggy to me.  All I can remember is being really screwed up. So screwed up that I weighed barely and I mean barely 100 pounds.  I had not showered in a good two weeks. I occasionally slept outside. I was what you would call an urban camper. I ate out of dumpsters at times. However food was never never never the main objective for my day.  Chrystal meth amphetamines was. Pornography was a huge necessity. Infact I actually believe my porn addiction was only rivaled by my meth addiction. Not the other way around.  My addiction to sex and porn led me to places of complete abuse by self and others then isolation and determination of the brain. Total degregation. I had completely given my self over to every sexual deviation known to man that been within the bounds of my moral standard. Which was very wide. 18 and up and human were my main criteria and of course I needed dope at this point to function sexually.  Basically my depravity knew no boundaries. I was a complete junky. In every sense of the word. Still here I was on this street corner asking God to rescue me. Not to throw me away. I was asking for a miracle. On that day my life changed forever.

        I don’t remember the first time I ever did drugs. That is the truth. I don’t remember. I know it was around the time I turned two. My uncles and my father were well wild and crazy. They used to place a sack or a gas mask on me and fill it with pot smoke. I liked it too. I began asking them to do it all the time. I had this bird named Woodstock. My father and uncle would take his cage and go under the kitchen table put a big comforter over the table I mean this blanket was huge it touched the floor on all sides. And we would all sit under the table and blanket and smoke pot and get my bird stoned. I was like 3 at the time. Drugs were a staple in my life forever. They were the only thing constant. Everything else was very fluid. Where I lived. Who my step mothers were. What school I attended. Who my friends were. There was one thing constant that I was aware of that was drugs. From weed to speed . From shrumes to booze. It was all there. And I did it all.  I thought it was the coolest and funniest thing in the world. I used to tell people my daddy gets me high and laugh like it was funny. Looking back I kind of wonder why nobody did anything. I mean I told everyone. By the time I was 4 I knew how to roll joints load a bong. Weigh stuff out with a triple beam.  I knew what tie stick was skunk bud was and Maui wowi. I knew what cross tops were, and black widows too. I knew what grew on cow patties and to this day the sight of mushrooms makes me think of poop so bad that I won’t touch them.

          I had no pictures of my mother so I remember imagining to myself that the ladies naked in the pictures could be my mom.  There was nothing erotic about these images to me. But I do believe they planted a seed in my life that would grow and reap a harvest later on. Without a mother to show me otherwise I began forming opinions about woman right or wrong I did so based on the pictures I was being exposed to.

        It is my opinion and understand I am not a doctor or a psychologist. This is just my observation.  That those 3 events that took place simultaneously my mom leaving getting high and my exposure to porn are the three most critical things that set me on a path of surrender on that spring day in May of 07. So today I can say to you this Praise God. Those three things I did not ask for. I had no control over.  And they consumed me like a raging fire for my whole life.  What I have learned since that day in May. Is that it is not what happens to you that destroys you. It’s how you respond or react to it.  I had no clue the choice was mine. I honestly believed I was just a person who was doomed to failure. And doomed to repeat the same things over and over again.  The foundation of my life and everything that made it up was completely and utterly negative. Everyone and everything I had ever put faith in let me down and or abandoned me completely. Or so I thought anyways. 

        Looking back at that day there was a lot of stuff going on in my mind.  I lived in a perpetual state of insanity. There were audible voices of people who actually existed in my life at one time or another. I would hear them and turn my head expecting to see them. Or at other times I would walk for miles looking for them. There were the hallucinations.  You know I could kind of cope with the sounds that were imaginary. But the visuals were unbearable. Its one thing to not trust what you hear, but to not be able to trust what you see is incomprehensible. I mean I seen it right it has to be real. NOPE.  I began to discount everything I saw. It was all fake. Just another hallucination.  Knowing your crazy and remembering the days of when you weren’t sucks. I sunk into severe depression. To the point where I began to imagine my death. I did not respect my own life anymore. I would knowingly use dirty needles and rip people off who could kill me for no reason. So looking back at that day. I know in my heart I was making my last cry for help.  I had tried going to jail. I had tried mental hospitals. I had tried it all. But never in my life had I actually given Jesus a license to change me over.  I just wanted to live. What I mean by that is to live life is to do more then exist. To live life is to know what is real from fake to face challenges and over come obsticles and for once and for all I wanted the chance to achieve some real success.  On that day the voices stopped completely the visions ended. I was still homeless. My physical situation remained the same. But on that day I began my road to recovery. Thank you Jesus!!!!

        The first day of anything is the hardest day of all. The first step anywhere is the most difficult step to face. My story is not one bit unique. Infact it is mild compared to yours perhaps. The one common thread that everyone on this earth has is we all had to take our first step. We all had to begin somewhere. And no matter where our walk begin in the gutter or in a penthouse that first step is the most difficult to make. Can you imagine Adam in the garden. Hearing Gods voice call to Him. How difficult it had to be to take that first step out from behind the bush. The question I have for you is this. Have you gotten past day one? Have you begun to take that second step?

        I want you to know something about yourself. I want you to search your heart as you read. I want you to read the this chapter again but instead of reading my story replace it with yours. And when you are done I want you to close your eyes and say to yourself and God. These 5 words. I am not a victim.    I want you to understand this. The world does not owe anyone anything. The world does not owe an apology. Even though there are several events in our lives that we feel we are entitled to one. You can wait around for it for yrs and never get one. Do not do that. Trust me it won’t do you any good. Also right now on day one purpose in your heart to stay away from sympathy. We do not need people to feel sorry for us. We need action. We need a vision. We need to deal with our end of things from this point on. It is great to reflect on the things that we have been through. But it is horrible to live there again. God did not save us to live in the past but to press to our future. He has a great destiny in store for all of us. Nothing and nobody is insignificant in His eyes. Press on.  Lets Go you can do it.  You are not a victim. Do not live like one. More then a conqueror. Above and not beneath. The Head not the tail. Right now and possibly at different times it will be hard to see what you really are. Other people won’t recognize this either. But you must confess this daily. And right now take your chin from your chest and position it squarely in front of you. And show people your teeth. Smile.  Grace and Love to whoever is reading this.

         

By David H. Freeman Jr.