​When I look back at who I was before coming to Grandview and compare that person to who I am today, the biggest difference is clarity. For a long time, I was living in denial.

Throughout my addiction, everything felt clouded. Especially toward the end; years of my life started to blend together. I wasn't really present. I wasn't dealing with things. I was just existing.

Today, I feel more like myself than I have in a very long time.

For me, feeling like myself again means being productive. During my addiction, I let a lot of things go. Responsibilities became overwhelming, and eventually my attitude became, "Forget everything. I don't want to deal with any of it." I wasn't thinking about work, finances, my future, or what I needed to do to move my life forward.


Early in recovery, all of those things were still there waiting for me. I had to learn that I didn't have to fix everything at once.

It started with little baby steps.

Instead of looking at everything I needed to do and becoming overwhelmed, I started telling myself, "Okay, what's the one thing I can take care of right now?" Having sober time helped me slow down, organize my thoughts, and stop overthinking everything.

One of the first times I realized recovery was actually working was when I started feeling good without having to use anything.
After the initial cravings started going away, I began waking up and just feeling okay. It reminded me of a time much earlier in my life when things felt normal. Today, I don't really experience cravings. Honestly, thinking about using has almost the opposite effect on me now. It stresses me out because I know where it leads.

Being around the other guys at Grandview also helped me more than I realized at the time. We all came from different backgrounds and had different experiences, but there was one thing we had in common: we were all in the same place trying to change our lives.
Being able to connect with people who understood that made me feel a little more human again.

Addiction had made me bitter. I was rough around the edges, short with people, and didn't have much patience for anyone, including myself. As I got further into recovery, I started rediscovering parts of myself that I hadn't seen in years. I became more social again. More carefree. More willing to connect with people. More importantly, I became more patient with myself.

I used to have extremely high expectations for where I thought I should be in life. When I wasn't there, I became angry and bitter about it. I would look around and think, "Why isn't this happening for me? Why am I not where I'm supposed to be?" I still have high expectations for myself. The difference is that today I'm okay with not being there yet. That's been a huge lesson for me.

Recovery has taught me humility. I've learned that everyone has their own situation and their own struggles. You can't completely understand what another person is going through, so judging someone doesn't really accomplish anything. I used to spend a lot of time thinking, "Why me? Why did these things happen to me?" Today, I understand that everybody goes through something. That perspective has given me more peace.

I'm not going to pretend everything in my life is perfect now. It's not. I'm not even close to where I ultimately want to be, but I'm okay with that. Before, I wasn't. Today, I can say, one day at a time, and actually understand what that means.

Success has changed for me too. I'm still figuring out exactly what success looks like. Before recovery, I had this picture in my head of where I needed to be in order to consider myself successful. I was nowhere near it, and that disconnect made me feel broken. Today, I'm reframing what success means.

Sometimes success is simply seeing momentum. I can look at my life and see things moving in the right direction, and that makes me want to keep going. In the past, I would make progress and then tear everything down almost immediately. I'd get something good going and then destroy it. I don't want to do that anymore.

One of the things I'm most proud of today is having my own place and actually being responsible with it. In the past, getting my own apartment would have been an excuse to use. It would have been, "I have my own place now. It's party time." Before long, I would throw everything away and end up right back where I started. Today, having my own place represents independence and responsibility. I'm taking care of my space, working, paying my bills, and continuing to move forward.

Work has become another part of that independence. Right now, I'm working full-time doing DoorDash. I like having the flexibility to decide when I work and being able to earn money while still having control over my schedule. It has even opened my mind to possibilities I hadn't really considered before. I'm trying to stay open to whatever comes next.

I don't put as much pressure on myself to know exactly what my future is supposed to look like anymore. In the past, I would want something so badly that if it didn't happen when I expected it to, I would become frustrated and disappointed. Today, I try to have fewer expectations and remain open to possibilities.

I also continue coming back to Grandview for outpatient treatment and therapy. There are parts of my life and things I struggle with that are very private. I'm not somebody who wants to share everything with everybody. Having a therapist I trust gives me a place where I can talk about those things and continue working on myself.

I've had support throughout this journey. I keep my circle small, so I wouldn't necessarily say I had a huge village around me, but I have good people in my life. At the same time, I've learned that people can give me advice and suggestions all day long, but eventually I have to make the decision to do something with it. At some point, I had to wake up and start looking at my life differently.

What keeps me sober today is clarity. I don't want to waste any more time, and I don't want to move backward.

When I think about using now, I can look at it logically. What positive thing is actually going to come from it? Even if there is a temporary good feeling, I know what happens afterward. I'll start obsessing over it, things will become chaotic again, and eventually I'll be right back where I worked so hard to get away from. There's nothing productive about that life for me anymore. When I look back, sometimes I think about how much time I lost. I wonder why I allowed my addiction to continue for as long as it did. I can't get those years back, but I can decide what I do with the time I have now.

That's what recovery looks like for me: not wasting any more time.

If I could say one thing to somebody who is just starting their journey at Grandview, it would be this:

When you're caught up in addiction, it can feel like getting high is the best thing there is. You can convince yourself that nothing else is going to feel better or that there isn't anything more waiting for you.

That's not true.

Life in recovery isn't always easy. You still have responsibilities. You still have problems. You still have days when things don't go the way you want them to. You have to face things that you may have spent years avoiding.

But you also get your clarity back.

You get opportunities back.

You get the chance to be responsible for your own life again.

You get to start feeling like yourself again.

I'm still figuring things out. I'm still deciding what success looks like for me, and I'm still working toward where I want to be.

I'm a work in progress.

And I've learned something along the way that I hope somebody starting recovery can hold onto:

Reality is harder, but it's better.