Surviving Sobriety

For four years I lived in a homeless shelter, on an island out in Boston Harbor. I was drug-addicted and I was flat-out broken. I was still feeling the effects from the last concussion I sustained, in a series of concussions that happened from being too high.



I had lost my home, and all of my possessions. I had lost all my teeth. My emotional functioning was going downhill because of concussion-related depression, and I lost my social security checks because of an outstanding

felony warrant. Things couldn't be much worse.



The only thing that I hadn't lost was my life itself. But by this time, I was getting the idea that my life might be the next thing that I was going to lose. My life was a total disaster, but I wasn't indifferent to dying. Something had to change.