In 1969, during my senior year in high school, I was constantly surrounded by friends who were getting high. Whenever I was offered drugs, I would decline and say that I wasn’t ready yet. I graduated that June, and by summer I apparently decided that I was ready and began my 28-year journey into active addiction. By sophomore year of college, I was a daily user and continued down that path for the next 20 years, rarely spending a day without being high.

During those two decades, I watched my great “potential” turn into a “what could have been.” It took five years to complete college and after graduating, I had no idea what to do with my English degree. I managed to find teaching jobs in private schools, but they never lasted long. It wasn’t until I started a job as a drug counselor in a New York City high school that I started to question my own use and the hypocrisy that defined my life.

Also, throughout this time, I was incredibly lonely and wondered why I could not have a romantic relationship. After an illness in 1990, I spent 3 weeks without getting high and realized that I actually liked the way I felt. It took another 7 years for me to find my way into 12-step recovery, following a move to Nashville and a connection on the Internet with a person in recovery.

Twelve years later, my life is amazingly full and happy, with a loving relationship, a successful career, and an acoustic duo called Broadband. I continue to stay involved in a recovery program, and believe that we need to make recovery visible, so that it is accessible to all who need and desire it. And I feel like I am finally becoming the person that I originally set out to be.