Twenty years ago today I made a collect call home from a pay phone in the downtown San Jose, CA jail infirmary. When I told my mother what had happened, she repeated it back to me and something changed. “I can’t believe my son was found passed out under a car bleeding to death.” Her voice saying those words back to me finally broke the lifelong walls of denial I had been building around myself and my issues. Something needed to change and that was me.

I had no idea the journey I had begun after hearing my mother’s voice. I finally accepted I needed help. I didn’t know exactly why, or how, but then I was introduced to the disease concept of addiction and the Twelve Steps of recovery. I realized, the only way for me to have a chance at a better life was to stop using and drinking.

I spent a year incarcerated in a program dorm learning about recovery. I was able to take advantage of the well developed alternative sentencing programs in Santa Clara County and got the help I needed in a dual diagnosis drug court.

After years of probation and sobriety I was able to get my record clear and resume my career. I was sober eight years before I relapsed. It took another eight years to get a year. Now I have three. I have not been sober all twenty years, but I have been most of it.

I believe I would not be alive and well today if it were not for the alternative sentencing programs available in Santa Clara County and the introduction to recovery I received and the continued work in service I do to maintain my sobriety.

I also started living my dream and wrote my first book while incarcerated. I was able to publish the book after my release, Philosopher Stoned – Incarcerated in 2007. The picture of me on the cover is from my mug shot twenty years ago.

Life goes on for me, miraculously. I try to live and learn what I can one day to the next so that I may be able to experience the miracle of existence more and more each day. My hope is to share this with the world.