My Family and Drug and Alcohol History

When I was nine years old my Mother died by suicide.  When I was fifteen years old my Father died by suicide.  My earliest childhood memory tells me my only brother tried to kill me.  He was four years older than me.  When he was fourteen years old he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent the next year of his adolescence in a child psychiatric unit at the University of Minnesota. 

At the age of fifteen, my violent outbursts (temper) lead my step mother to the final option wherein the juvenile court system declared me incorrigible.  From the ages of fifteen to eighteen that court system assisted in keeping me out of trouble with the aid of a child psychologist and a probation officer.  On my eighteenth birthday I smoked marijuana for the first time.  This began a journey into drug and alcohol abuse for the next seven and a half years.  My drug of choice was all of them; marijuana, LSD, barbiturates, cocaine, heroin and finally alcohol.  The last two years of my abuse I spent twelve hours a day in a bar drinking.

I was charged with criminal damage to property, trespassing, and worst of all simple assault.  I also had numerous driving violations.  All of this was directly connected to my drug and alcohol abuse.  Near the end of this madness I attempted suicide when I was twenty five years old.
The final intervention by my family and the courts was to sentence me to chemical dependency treatment with a recommendation for a halfway house after completion of treatment.  To put it simply, the concerted effort by my family and all the resources available led to my successful recovery from drugs and alcohol.  On January 2, 1977 I had my first day of sobriety. Since that time I’ve made it my life’s mission and purpose to lead and guide others to a path of recovery.