The SweetLyfe Magazines The SweetLyfe Mag Issue 1 | Page 19

I came to realize that my life had become a mess and I felt and needed to make a real life change of it. Today I can admit that I’m powerless over my dual illness of chemical dependency, and emotional, and psychiatric illness. My life had become an unmanageable mess. I went to prison on five different charges, manufacturing crack cocaine, heroin, robbery, permission of drug abuse and carrying a concealed weapon leaving me to face an eight year prison sentence to serve in a correctional facility. This was a direct result of my powerlessness over my dual illness with chemical dependency, emotional, and psychiatric illness that had my life unmanageable on a destructive path of despair. While in prison I made a clear change in my life but not my way of thinking. After prison I was sent to a half-way house on Post Release Control for an additional three years. I did well for awhile because I was clean and sober, but I still had that old addictive stinking thinking. I thought because I was maintaining two jobs, had a loving relationship with a beautiful woman that I was friends with before she and I became intimate, I never experienced that before; and to top it off the State of Ohio released me from (P.R.C) favorable in the short time of one year, instead of the mandated three years given by the courts. I soon came to a rude Awakening, I was still in my full blown ADDICTIVE!!!!!! Ways. See I never addressed the sexual abuse I experienced at the hands of a family member, whom just happened to be a Elder of the church. Nor had I dealt with the deaths of four newborns that died in my arms at their births, if that wasn’t enough the death of my father, whom died from lung cancer .Being his primary care-giver took a huge toll on me physical and mentally. I had problems with God, in terms of my sexual abuse I

had my life unmanageable

on a destructive path of

despair. While in prison I

made aclear change in my

life but not my way of

thinking.

After prison I was sent to

a half-way house on Post Release Control for an additional three years. I did well for awhile because I was clean and sober, but I still had that old addictive stinking thinking. I thought because I was maintaining two jobs, had a loving relationship with a beautiful woman that I was friends with before she and I became intimate, I never experienced that before; and to top it off the State of Ohio released me from (P.R.C) favorable in the short time of one year, instead of the mandated three years given by the courts. I soon came to a rude Awakening, I was still in my full blown ADDICTIVE!!!!!! Ways. See I never addressed the sexual abuse I experienced at the hands of a family member, whom just happened to be a Elder of the church. Nor had I dealt with the deaths of four newborns that died in my arms at their births, if that wasn’t enough the death of my father, whom died from lung cancer.