Alumni of the Month Stu

Hi, my names Stu I’m an addict.

My story begins in North Vancouver where I grew up in a loving home.  I had the most amazing parents who would do anything in their power to help me, and I was their youngest out of three siblings.  There was my sister who was extremely smart, my brother who was a sports superstar and then there was me.  I never felt like I fit in anywhere, whether that was at home or at school.  I would look around at the other kids in class and feel different.  I always felt like I wasn’t good enough and I never understood why I wasn’t like the other kids.  I never understood why I wasn’t happy like them or why I felt the way I did.  I learned at a really young age if I use drugs I didn’t have to think or feel the way I did.  I went on for years thinking this way and thought I had found my answer to my problems.  What came with my using was a lot of consequences.  My grades and school attendance started to slip; which progressed to me getting suspended and expelled from school.  Outside of school I was getting arrested on a regular basis and starting to move my life in a direction I had not planned on going.  After years of justifying my using and being unwilling to look at it I came to a breaking point.  I was going nowhere in life and was tired of being wired to drugs.  I reached out to my parents and asked for help.  I then got introduced to the recovery community of New Westminster and gave being clean an attempt.  After ten months of being clean and building some relationships through New West and the Last Door I dropped my program and relapsed.  When I relapsed I had the insanity of my addiction back and then some.  My using progressed to a lot worse and I instantly felt separated and alone from all my friends in recovery.  It took a couple months before I was so broken that I was ready to give being clean another shot.  After two weeks of trying to go to meetings to get clean and being unable I decided I needed to go to Last Door.

Going to the door was the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.   When I first got there I was super crazy and out of my mind of how things were.  I slowly started to defrost and open my eyes to all the damage I had caused through relapsing.  With the support of all the staff and the amazing group of guys I was surrounded with I started to work through it.  I learned a lot in the months I stayed at the door.  I learned to take responsibility for my life and my actions.   I learned how to live clean and have fun doing it.  I learned how to be a friend and what that means to me.  I learned how to be a son and a brother to my family because I was never one.  Then I learned how to be happy and okay with whom I am and what I’m doing today.  At the Last Door I learned life tools that were taught to me at a very young age which somewhere along the way I forgot.  I got caught up in the energy of the Door and the amazing life I can have clean.  The Door became my second home well I was there.  Along the way I got suggested to volunteer at the Youth Door and decided this would be a good way to contribute to my home.  After six months of volunteering and getting to know the staff and crazy youth I was offered a job.

Today I work at the Last Door Youth Program.  Over the past year of working there I’ve found a life worth living.   My whole life I sold my self-short and today thanks to the Door I don’t have to live that way.  I have opportunities in my life today that I never thought would happen to me.  I have a job I love and have been given the opportunity to be put through collage and given a career from the Last Door.  I’ve gained an amazing group of friends who I met through the Door and being in recovery.  Today I’m being a son to my family and contributing to them for the first time ever.  To the point that I get to go full fill a dream of my dads in a couple days to go to the tomato fights in Spain as a family; A dream that has always been held back because of my addiction.  Today I live a life free from drugs and free from the inner turmoil that troubled me for years.  I live with gratitude in my heart today because of what The Last Door has done for my family and me.

Thank you Last Door for saving my life!

Stu

Clean date: December 19,2012