Garson C. (Alumni) Testimonial This time a year ago, it was easy to imagine myself dead. It wasn’t a matter of if but when. I had basically pushed everyone close to me as far away from me as possible. And really, that’s how I liked it. If I wasn’t close to you I couldn’t pull you down with me. Whether or not I actually believed that was the case or not is irrelevant, it affected everyone that loved me. In the year prior to my decision to go to treatment for a severe drug addiction I lost my fiancé and was about to completely be shut off from my family. And that, was all I had left.
I’ve heard you have to be in a place of complete and total desperation to want to get clean. I’ve heard you have to hit your bottom to want to get clean. I’ve also heard that you have to lose everything to want to get clean. I think these things are all very true, but to me it all comes down to one very simple thing. You have to want it more than you want the drugs. YOU have to want to be clean. And most importantly, NO ONE ELSE can do it for you. They can’t make you or convince you otherwise. It’s all up to YOU.
I loved getting high more than anything else in the world. More than my music. More than my family. And certainly more than any relationship I ever had. Drugs, more specifically Heroin, were my significant other. But of course, I did them all. I always had a theory that I’d try anything at least once and I succeeded pretty well at that. For over twenty years I mastered the art of being a drug addict or as I liked to call it, “being normal.” Drugs helped me escape a reality which I didn’t want to have any part of. I was so delusional in fact that I thought no one even noticed when I was high.