Last year, I had the privilege to interview Daniel about his recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. I met Daniel at a secular wilderness therapy program, and he’s got an awesome story that I wanted to share with you. At the time of the interview, Daniel had been sober for over four years, and he now holds a degree psychology, which he is using to help other people on the road to recovery. A transcript of the interview is included in this post, and the audio version of the interview is embedded below, courtesy of SoundCloud. If you are reading this post from a feed reader or an e-mail, you can find the audio version of the interview online here.
Transcript
Dean:
Hi, my name is Dean Reynolds, I’m the pastor and president of Seeds Wilderness Therapy. We’ve got a really neat experience right now that I want to share. One of our friends, this is Daniel, who I met at a secular wilderness therapy program, and he’s got an awesome story. I just wanted to introduce him real fast and then we’ll bring him on the line. So, first of all, hey, Daniel, how are you?
Daniel:
Hey, Dean, how’s it going?
Dean:
Good, man. Thanks so much for joining us. So, Daniel, when he came to wilderness, was really, really struggling. In a second I’ll ask Daniel to share some of his story, but first I just want to brag on him. He’s doing such an awesome work right now. So, he’s about to graduate with a psychology degree from a major state school because he really wants to help people. He’s sober now, and just wants to give back, and we couldn’t be more proud of the work that God’s done in Daniel’s life. Daniel also is working with guys who are in what’s called a 7/8ths house. That’s not quite a halfway house, but in that direction and it’s really just helping guys to walk out their sobriety and kind of mentoring people. Daniel, first of all, gosh, just thanks so much for sharing your story here. How did you start to slip and kind of where was your starting place?
Daniel:
My story begins…I was born and raised in Miami, Florida, and was born to two great parents and was put into a Christian school, a private Christian school down there. Just like most kids, I played sports, I was in a loving family, I never needed for anything or really wanted for anything. It all started, really, with me wanting to be that cool kid. I always looked up to something that I really wanted, which was to be in the cool crowd. And, going along with that, as I grew up, that’s what I sought out. And I was a part of them. I believed I was a part of them, and they accepted me, and I was the cool crowd along with my friends. At the age of 13 or 14, my best friend since we were five introduced me to marijuana for the first time. And from there, that’s where it started. I didn’t get sent to the wilderness therapy that I was at until I was 16 years old. So there were a few years there with lots of experimenting and figuring out what I was going to do and really going down the rabbit hole.
Dean:
Can you speak a little bit about…you talked about wanting to be the cool kid, but why drugs? Why did that help you to be the cool kid?
Daniel:
You know, it wasn’t really drugs that was the staple of being the cool kid. It was more so of an outcast where I was at, but it was something that was taboo. You weren’t supposed to be doing it, and why do people get addicted to it? Why do people tell you not to experiment? And in my mind, I wanted to do what people told me not to do. I wanted to experiment, and I wanted to try, and to figure things out for myself.
Dean:
How did you start getting sober?
Daniel:
So, after I left the wilderness that I was at, I was put into a therapeutic boarding school, which I stayed at for six months. Right after I got out of that boarding school and went back to my same environment, which was conducive to my drug use—my parents weren’t accepting of it, obviously—but everyone else, all my friends and the people I hung out with accepted me as I was, as a drug user. In getting back to that same environment, I began using drugs again, right away. After having about eight months of not using, the second day I was back, I was offered drugs for the first time. After that, there was a lot of hiding, a lot of, “What’s going on with Daniel?” I ended up graduating from high school and the signs were there. But my parents, they didn’t want to believe me. They took a risk in pulling me out of the boarding school, which wasn’t suggested by the people that ran it because I had only been there for six months. And now, with my psychology degree and things that I’m studying, it typically takes a person at least 18 months to change their lives. That’s what studies show. And they pulled me out after six months, and a total of eight months out of my previous environment. And like I said, I started using drugs right away. The signs were there, but my parents didn’t want to believe it. And eventually, it just got to a point where they couldn’t deny it anymore. They would find things, and I would make up some excuse. And eventually, I got kicked out of my parents’ house at the age of 19 years old.
Dean:
Wow! How did you get clean and sober now?
Daniel:
After I got kicked out of my parents’ house, I did lots of jumping around, got even worse into my drug use and just living in the dark. I was living a rough life, and eventually, the friends of mine who truly cared for me and were in the right mindset would always nudge me in the right direction. One day, I finally opened up my eyes and didn’t want to do it anymore. Or, actually, I didn’t want to be in the situation I was in anymore. I wanted to be able to come back home to my parents, eventually go to college and be somewhat of a normal person. But I never wrote off using drugs or alcohol. And that was a lesson I had to learn. So from there, I actually ended up going back to the wilderness that I was sent to when I was 16 years old. After that, I went through, I think, eight other programs from Georgia to New York to South Florida, somewhere in Florida, and eventually ended up coming back here to Georgia. And I still wasn’t ready to stop. I thought I was smarter than the counselors. I thought I was strong enough to do it on my own. And the reality of it was that I wasn’t. And I had to humble myself and look around and see the people who have achieved sobriety and follow what their directions were this entire time.
Dean:
What were they advising you to do?
Daniel:
They were advising me…the biggest thing about the program, really, is turning your will and your life over to the care of God. And you have to believe that you are powerless over alcohol and the way it affects you, and your life has become unmanageable. And that’s the first step. The first step is believing that life has become unmanageable and that you can’t take any consumptions of drugs or alcohol into your body. So those are the two big staples. And when I finally realized that my life was going nowhere fast, after hitting a lot of bumps in the road, I’d been in and out of these facilities since I was 16 years old, and I had learned a lot on the way, but never applied anything. And that’s where the change came. When I started to apply what these people who came before me, their suggestions, my life changed drastically. One of the biggest suggestions that I took was given to me by a gentlemen named Jimbo, I call him Jimbo, and he calls it the Jimbo challenge. And the challenge is to pray on your knees five times throughout the day. At the beginning of the day, pray for whatever you’re struggling with, whether it be some mental health issues, or in my case, drug and alcohol addiction. Pray that God will help you get through that through the day and stay sober and stay in the right mindset. Three other times throughout the day, pray anything you want. Have a prayer of gratitude, say a prayer that’s structured. And at the end of the day, before you go to bed, pray on your knees again and thank God for everything He’s done for you. And thank Him that He’s gotten you through the day without falling or helping you get through whatever you’re going through.
Dean:
Man, that’s such an awesome challenge. I think probably all of us need to take the Jimbo challenge and pray on our knees five times a day.
Daniel:
I agree. It changes a lot. It changes a lot.
Dean:
Like, wow, it just sounds like prayer just really helped change your life.
Daniel:
With the Jimbo challenge, what it really did was help me reestablish my connection with God. Because, like I said, I was in a Christian school from the time I was four years old until the time I was 16 years old. I’d believed in God my entire life, but I wasn’t following His will for me. When I finally was humbled through the experiences that I’d been through, and made the decision and put in the effort to reestablish my connection with God, and know that He’s got a better life for me and I’m willing to live that life. But the biggest thing is that I need to be willing, and I need to put action behind it. From the time I was 4 years old until I was 16 years old, I believed in God, and I believed He had a will for me, and He had a plan for me. I just wasn’t living according to that plan and I wasn’t putting any action in to follow that plan.
Dean:
Man, that’s awesome. It’s so cool just to think about how God’s will is just so good and so perfect for us and that His plans are wonderful and that He fills us full of hope and life. And it sounds like that’s kind of what happened in your story.
Daniel:
Yep, it definitely is.
Dean:
So, let’s fast forward to now. How long have you been sober?
Daniel:
I’ve been sober since December 27, 2014, so a little over four years.
Dean:
That’s great. Gosh, there’s a lot of people out there that are still struggling, and you know from your own work trying to coach and mentor other folks who are in the throes and vices of addiction, there are so many people that are struggling, so many families that just don’t know what to do. Daniel, what advice would you have for them?
Daniel:
My advice would be…I’m not a parent yet, but with seeing it from the other side of it as a child of some parents, I would advise sticking with what you believe God’s plan is for your child and not giving up on them. My mom, throughout the years, when I was giving her headaches and heartache and tears, she would always tell me, “This isn’t the plan God has for you.” I would argue with my parents, they could punish me, they can tell me whatever. I was punished most of my life as a child, or grounded, but when my mom would tell me, “This isn’t the plan God has for you,” that would really stick with me. And I would shrug it off and not let her know that it really hit me right between the eyes, but when I got up into my room, it made me think. And because my parents persevered through everything I put them through, and didn’t accept the life that I was living, I was able to come out on the other end of it. As long as my parents would have continued to enable me, allow me to live under their roof, support me financially, pay for my gas, pay for my car, and me live the way that I was living, I would have never changed. But once they put their foot down and had to kick me out of the house, and I’m sure there were many nights with them staying up and thinking or praying, “What’s Daniel up to right now,” “I hope he’s home right now,” “I hope he’s warm,” whatever it may be, they persevered through that, and I was able to get sober. They were always there, and they were always willing to help me out as long as I was willing to do the right thing. And it took me 11 different facilities to go through to be able to snap out of it and to decide that I was going to take action on this way of life. But right when I got kicked out of a program or right when I left a program, my parents would say, “Well, you’re on your own now.”
Dean:
Is there a verse that has king of helped you walk through this, or anything that helps you think about where God is at in your life?
Daniel:
Yes. The verse that my mom has given me is Jeremiah 29:11. And it says something along the lines of, “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘Plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you a future and hope.’” And my mom would always tell me that Bible verse, and when I was in facilities that I wasn’t able to talk on the phone, she would write out that Bible verse for me in my letter. And now, I’ve actually got it framed here in my own house. I’ve got a picture of it. And I think we need to trust the process that so many people before us have taken and have been able to come out of the other end of it.
Dean:
Yeah. Praise God for your mom, and for her ability to continue to pray for you and to love you and to remind you that God has a wonderful plan for your life. It sounds like she really played a huge part in helping you get sober.
Daniel:
She did. She did, and she still plays a huge part in my life. Fast forward to over four years of sobriety, and my relationship with my parents is great. I speak to them on the phone on at least a weekly basis. They live down in Miami, and I decided to stay up here in Atlanta, Georgia, where I got sober because this environment is conducive to my recovery. I’m sure that if I moved back down to Miami at this point, I’m going to stay sober. But this is where I got sober, this is where I established my sobriety, and all my friends here are sober. But that doesn’t change my relationship with my mom and dad. Everybody lives down in Miami, and I go down there maybe three or four times a year. My mom and my dad just visited up here to celebrate my fourth year in sobriety with me.
Dean:
That’s awesome!
Daniel:
Yeah. My relationship with them is great. My dad supports me with everything I do. He’s a very business-minded type of person, so I bounce my business ideas off of him and my professional ideas off of him. And my mom is extremely loving, and anything I call her for, she can love me through it. For instance, about seven months ago, I fell into some anxiety, right when I was opening up my 7/8ths independent sober living, I felt some anxiety and my mind was just rolling and, “You’re going to fail at this,” and “You’re investing some money into this and nobody is going to come.” I had a couple panic attacks where I didn’t know what to do, and I’m not an anxious person at all. I’m as cool and mellow as you can get. And one of the first people I called was my mother. My mom talked me through it, sent me an index full of Bible verses and checked up on me on a daily basis until I was able to conquer it.
Dean:
Wow, man, she really loves you. Daniel, gosh, thank you so much for sharing your story and the work that God’s done in your life, the work that your parents have done in your life. You’re sober and your leading so many other people in their own walk with sobriety. What an awesome story! I couldn’t be more excited for you.
Daniel:
Thank you, Dean, thank you. You’re a part of the story.
Dean:
Thanks. Let’s close out and pray, and just pray for those who are still stuck, and for those parents who might be where you were at the beginning of the story where things don’t look so hopeful and their relationship is not so strong. God, thank you for Daniel and for the work that you’ve done through him to bring him into sobriety and bring him into the hope and presence of Jesus. Lord, we pray that many others would have that same story as you do, God, that the families would know that there is a plan for their lives, the plan not to harm them but to prosper them and to give them abundant life as you promised us in John 10:10. Lord, thank you for all the work that’s happened through Daniel, and we pray that same work continues for all those families who are really desperate right now. God, thank you, and we just know that we can put our trust in you. Amen.
Daniel:
Amen.
Dean:
So, for all those families that are out there, we’d love to help you find that same hope that Daniel’s had. If there is anything that we can do, please let us know. Also, just to know there have been people that have come through this much like Daniel, and that can happen for your son or daughter, too. Thanks so much.