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Max: Hope, Healing, and Higher Power
I remember lying awake in my bedroom at my stepmother’s house on Christmas Eve 2015, thinking not about the usual festivities with Rudolph and Santa, but about whether I’d make it another year to witness my nephew Wyatt’s first birthday. He had been born just hours before that evening.
Given the direction I was going, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to make it another twelve months anyway—I had been kicked out of six colleges in a year and a half because of my drinking and drug use. I really had no idea what I was doing or where I was going in life.
I grew up in Redding, Connecticut, in an alcoholic household. My father’s drinking really took off shortly after I incurred a traumatic brain injury from a television falling on my head and crushing my body when I was about 6 years old. I had to relearn how to walk, talk, and do all the normal things any 6-year-old knew how to do intrinsically. Growing up, this translated into a bad case of ADHD and—after being discharged from the hospital—I was forced to wear a bright blue sumo wrestling helmet wherever I went, as the doctors weren’t certain how I survived. Since I was littler, I’ve always felt the “isms” they talk about in the 12-Step community. I was always less than my peers, or different from them. I started to learn about alcohol and drugs when I was young, observing my father and what worked for him to feel better. It wasn’t long before I was on my way and the drink and drugs had me.
My 6th college experience was like the others. My addiction took precedence over attending classes and attempting to achieve good grades. Thus, I was shipwrecked in my hometown, with no purpose or goals. Following the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, on January 08, 2016, everything came crashing down—or I should say—my bottom was reached. I knew something had to change. It seemed like a glass mirror, which had revealed how my addiction affected those around me, shattered in front of me. I was horrified.
I decided to act. I entered an intensive outpatient treatment program in Ridgefield, which required me to attend group and individual counseling sessions, learn ways of coping to prevent relapses, and get drug-tested regularly. The early days of recovery felt almost insurmountable, as I was being taught what to do and what not to do. I didn’t want to listen, and most of the time I didn’t. However, I was being held accountable, and I was not a fan of that.
I took almost none of the suggestions initially, and my life got worse before it got better. I finally stopped fighting against 12-Step meetings, as I realized there were many who attended the meetings that wanted me to recover. I decided to give my life over to the care of a loving higher power. I slowly started to recuperate from the addiction that had ravaged both my life and my father’s life. Dad had gotten sober years before me.
Since those early days of recovery, I’ve earned an associate’s degree in drug & alcohol counseling and a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and I’m well on my way to completing a master’s degree in social work. At Sacred Heart University, I joined the Collegiate Recovery Program and am currently the house manager of the Men’s Program. Despite all these accomplishments, and while things continue to improve in my life, I continue to focus on my recovery work. I have learned that when I stop trusting in God, when I start acting powerful, I regress—hurting myself and those around me.
Today, I can say I try to help others and continue to grow in the direction of my Higher Power. I work part-time at the Ridgefield outpatient center where my recovery first started, in addition to my work with Sacred Heart and my private counseling job with men diagnosed with schizophrenia. Out of all the blessings so far in this journey, the biggest gift today is that I get to have a relationship with my own father, a man who before sobriety I resented so much I couldn’t bear to have a conversation with. And yes, on occasion we’ve been known to attend 12-Step meetings together!
