I needed these pain pills in order
to go to my work meetings, to my Church meetings,
to my family outings.
Big lie.
But that's how it all starts.
I was in an actual position in the Church
where I led this congregation of Spanish-speaking people
in Los Angeles.
And therein is the challenge in this disease,
that you live these two lives.
And since I can't find pharmaceuticals that day,
I decided to use marijuana.
My oldest daughter drives by and sees me.
"Maybe she didn't see me.
Maybe she didn't recognize me and I
could get away with this, because that's what I do."
She knew exactly.
She confronts me and says, "Dad, you need help."
She had to get some freedom from the chaos
and what addiction brings in a home setting.
And she did that.
Regardless of how much we love people, regardless how much we
think we love God, we simply lie and cheat so
that we can feel in that zone.
Over a period of two years, I began
to use crack cocaine daily.
I had lost my job.
The house that I had built with my family was in foreclosure,
and my family had left.
My daughter, she met her future husband.
They were married.
They asked me not to come.
And I was devastated.
I was literally trying to numb myself to deal with the fact
that my wife and children had left me
because of my addiction.
I simply found ways and means to get and to use more.
So I used a woman who was a prostitute.
She traveled with me a lot.
I definitely had an interest in where she could get dough.
The police in my community had watched
me visit the different places geographically,
and they knew that I was a user.
I remember the lights coming on, and I
remember almost a relief coming over me that "Maybe, maybe
somehow, in a weird way, maybe I'm done.
Maybe."
They found what they came for, and I was put in jail.
I began to be lifted from this addiction.
Now, the challenge in recovery with families that have been
destroyed is, your family--since they were gone and I was
divorced--doesn't get to come with you through your recovery.
They still connect with you as an addict
and with all the bad behavior that
comes from being in addiction.
Step 9 says, "Make direct amends wherever possible."
And I knew that I needed to sit down and be
there so that anybody in my family,
my former spouse or my children, could tell me what they really
thought.
For an hour at a time, week after week for months,
we sat in that room and I heard about who I was.
And the days were hard.
I wept.
I looked at the wreckage.
And I didn't know if all of this process, the prior six
months of counseling and trying to come back together
and making amends, would actually work.
My current spouse admonished me to reach out to her
again, that maybe this time we would actually, maybe
reunite as a family and start to see the healing actually
take place.
And for the first time, I was able to see the grandchildren
and a daughter who I had shunned,
literally shunned, because of my disease and my behavior.
In working this ninth step of making amends,
a new life has been given to me in that I understand now what
God means when He says He's merciful.
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