I can still hear the euphoric sound of pills being crushed beneath a crisp twenty dollar bill.

I heard myself reflected back through the stories and experiences of others.

Looking back I feel that it's safe to say that I was a prime candidate for addiction. I grew up in poverty, my parents had been through their own battles with drugs and alcohol and pretty much any other stereotypical criteria had been met. I first tried alcohol and pot around the age of fifteen, escalating to various other substances and behaviors over the years, but when I was 19 I believed I had found my soul mate. Prescription opiates took hold of me like nothing ever had before. In a short amount of time I found myself needing more and more to achieve my desired high. There was no looking back.

I was in a very dark place in my life by the time I enrolled in school in the spring of 2012. My addiction to drugs and alcohol pretty much fueled all of my actions and choices, even enrolling in school. I didn’t have any particular goal in sight, but the student loans were appealing. Just a couple of months after beginning my first semester, I received an assignment from an instructor to attend a 12 Step Meeting and write a reflective paper on the process. To this day I am not entirely sure why I was so afraid to go to the meeting, maybe on some level I thought the people there would be able to tell I was an addict myself. I wrote up an impressive essay about how moving the experience of attending a 12 Step Meeting had been for me; the only problem was, I hadn’t actually gone. My fear led me to makeup the assignment and when it was returned to me with the highest grade possible, a sense of guilt washed over me.

To allow myself to move past the guilt of lying, I attended a meeting the following week. I was beyond terrified and made sure to introduce myself as merely a student, working on an assignment about addiction and alcoholism, but something strange happened to me that night. For the first time in my life I had a sense that I was not alone; that my feelings of unworthiness and isolation that fueled my addiction were not unique to me alone. I heard myself reflected back through the stories and experiences of others. The following week I attended another meeting and then another and before I knew it I was introducing myself as an addict.

During the final week of classes for my first semester at CCV, I celebrated my first 30 days clean from drugs. One of my classes required us to share an intimate story about ourselves with the class. With fear in my heart and sweat on my brow I stood before the class and my instructor and explained how I had lied about the assignment, but that through the experience I was now on a path to recovery and had reached my first milestone, being one month clean. As I ended my story, the applause from my classmates drifted into my ears and rested within my heart.

Now here I am, approaching my second year of sobriety. I am in a stable relationship, which led to the most important role of my life, being the best father I can be to my 1-year-old daughter, Harper. I will graduate next spring with my Associates Degree in Human Services and a Certification in Substance Abuse. I am currently working with the Vermont Recovery Network as a Recovery Coach for my community, facilitating recovery related groups and doing work with individuals who are trying to navigate their own paths in recovery.

That one assignment during my first semester of college quite literally changed my life forever. I have attached a picture of my daughter. On days when I feel overwhelmed and begin to ponder the importance of maintaining my sobriety, it usually takes nothing more than to hear her laugh or call out for me. This new life is as much for me as it is for her.