I Found I Was Worth Saving and So Are You

NH Narconon Graduate

I came to Narconon in February of 2015 at the age of 25. I had finally come to the point that many describe as their “bottom”, where I had nothing. There wasn’t a single thing in my life that I valued. My family had become this estranged thing that I only ever talked to so that I could manipulate them. Real friends were long gone and the only people I ever associated with were those who would not call me out on the miserable way I’d been living. Everything around me was collapsing and I was committing suicide on the installment plan as well as attempting it during one of the darkest times of my life.

I was being evicted from my drug den of an apartment in Florida, which sucked, but I’m not sure why I cared at all. The only thing I ever used in my apartment was the bathroom sink and a drawer for my needles. My family reluctantly came to my aid as they had sone so many times before, and drove me to Louisiana. I had heard about the alternative style of treatment that Narconon offers and wasn’t sure what to think. I’m very much a natural-born skeptic and I easily find fault in things. Add in a rabid addiction with little hope of changing, and you end up with a very difficult person to help. That was me to the core.

I sit now remembering ways I’ve felt over the course of my life and in doing so found many common themes. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve always felt essentially helpless, completely lost, hopelessly caught up in a confusion about life in general and I never before had honestly looked at why. I hated it—not in an angry way—but the type of hate that slowly consumes and crushes the life out of you. I’ve written songs about these themes and even felt for a long time that I was meant to suffer such things in order to create more meaningful music. This was no way to live. I just needed a way out and to learn a new way of living that would provide some hope of lasting happiness.

Coming to Narconon was one of the best if not the best, decisions I’ve ever made. I am aware of how cliche that sounds, I just don’t know how else to describe it. I started off broken and hopeless. I now feel healthy and even optimistic toward life in general. I came here struggling to maintain my will to live, and now I have a genuine desire to move forward and be the best version of myself that I can be. I’m a musician and I never seemed to be able to shake off the nerves associated with playing in front of people, but finding the courage to get up and play open mic nights at Narconon every other Sunday was huge in helping me move past my own insecurities. The program wasn’t easy at times, but overcoming my initial skepticism and giving it my best shot has been rewarding in a way I’m not sure I could describe.

I have felt throughout my life that I am no more then the result of every thought, experience, and perception I’ve ever had. The problem with that idea is that when I leave it up to those things to define me, I deny myself a core self, what some would call a soul, and probably the most important thing for someone to have in life, without which everything is oblivion. By far the most important discovery I made in my time at Narconon was the realization that despite all the terrible things I’ve done in the name of addiction, I was still worth saving. I never before thought that was true. I still get chills thinking about it and to anyone reading this that feels too far gone or helpless, I discovered you’re worth saving too.

—NH Narconon Graduate