Testimonials

Bay Area Recovery Center Testimonials

Most of my life had been a roller-coaster between success and failure. From corporate wonder boy, to jail or prison in just a few years, over and over again. I always knew that somehow I was different and that there was something wrong with me but I could never figure out what it was. Finally, in 2003, after still another DWI, I had run out of “plan B’s” and just wanted to die. I didn’t think anything would work for me.

When I went to Bay Area Recovery Center EVERYTHING changed for me. I saw people there who were not using and who were still HAPPY. It gave me the hope that what they were doing might work for me. They educated me about my addiction and showed me what to do about it. I did what they guided me to do, and I began to change.

I’m still learning how to live sober, but today I’m happy and I feel useful to others. I’m successful in my career, financially stable, and the fear that used to consume me constantly is gone.

I never have to live in that hell- which was my life- again.

Thank you Bay Area Recovery Center.  Tim C.

I’ve never endured the death of a child, but I have felt the desperation of trying to save my child’s life. Living with the fact that any moment he could die or cause the death of someone else is something no one can imagine unless you’ve done it. No matter how many hours you pray, beg and cry or any amount of money you put into countless numbers of rehabs, until the addict is placed where there is someone who can reach them, you will be in agony every second of every day.

By the grace of God we found Bay Area Recovery Center. He learned how to be sober by watching them live. They have the same disease of addiction to drugs or alcohol but exist symptom free. He accepted the fact that he needed help from a higher power and is now healthy. He earns a living doing what he loves, he earns admiration by helping fellow addicts and he’s happier than I can ever remember – and it’s because God led him to BARC.

I know things happen for a reason. I never would have dreamed that something as horrible as drug addiction would be the source of his mission. When I spend time with him, he impels me to be a better person. I will forever be grateful.

Penny H.

I went through a treatment center 2 years ago and left not knowing much about the disease of Alcoholism. I continued using pain pills; destroying everyone and everything I loved. With nothing left and nowhere to go, God put me in Dickinson, TX. at the Bay Area Recovery Center. I thought I was different, and no one could have destroyed their lives like me. I thought I could never quit using. I started working the Twelve Steps of AA willingly and honestly. Hope and sanity started to return and the craving to use was removed. I take one day at a time, and have a second chance at life and happiness like I have never known. God surely blesses those that seek his will.

Ray M.

To me, my brother was always “just there.” It seemed like no one saw him, heard him, even me. I won’t go into specifics of how his drug use started and where it went, that’s not necessary….only that it got so bad that he might as well have been dead, because there was no Jeremy. Just a body hanging around, which by the way if you’ve never loved someone with a drug problem, is far worse than them actually being dead.

But he did not die. He was reborn. I searched for days on end for the “right” kind of recovery for him. Something kept bringing me back to this one place: Bay Area Recovery Center. I searched over and over to figure out why. I sifted through so much information and talked to so many people, but I just knew that was the place. Well, I didn’t know, God knew and whispered it to me, so to speak.

So between our telling Jeremy we’d already buried him and him finally giving in to help, I calmly told him about BARC and that I truly believed he could be saved. I told him the things I’d told him a million times: how much I loved him, how bad I missed him, the kind of person that I knew was still inside of him. Then I stood up and told him to stand up. I wrapped my arms around my baby brother and put my head to his chest and didn’t let go for a long time. He said, “what are you doing?” I said, “listening to your heart beat, because I’m afraid you’re gonna die”. Word for word, I’ll never forget that moment. He sighed a sarcastic sigh, of course because he was high at that moment, but it didn’t matter, that moment was for me. So, that was our intervention, well, more like our 7th intervention.

So… long story not quite as long, he agrees to go. Mom and I take him and it’s hard to leave him there. But it’s not like you think. There are no locks on the doors, bars on the windows, or straight jackets. Why? How can that work? Because it’s all up to the addict to recover, no one else. If they’re not ready to recover, they WILL NOT recover. Period. It’s between the addict and their God. So, he’s done the 12 steps. So faithfully, I might add that he was asked to stay there and be a house manager. He’s sponsored I don’t know how many addicts, and to hear him talk to his sponsees gives me the sense that God DRUG him through this entire thing to pull him up on the other side of it for his life’s purpose – to help others.

So, an addict is always an addict. It’s a disease of the mind. He has to live all day every day “one second at a time” using the tools he gained in recovery to stay well, sober. It’s a scary thing. But now, his family gets to see him truly happy. He has now landed a job working for a multi-million dollar company as an Aviation Mechanic, moved out of the sober-living house and into his own apartment. He works his ass off, goes to meetings, sponsors addicts, and visits his family when he has days off. He’ll call us out of the blue to tell us how much he loves us and regrets hurting us when he sees someone else slip up. I’m so proud of him that I can’t even express it.

I’m so thankful to God for saving him. The stuff we went through is nothing now. All gone, and we’re all stronger and closer for it.

Happy 1st Birthday, Brother. Keep at it, one day at a time.

Amanda L.

I am 36 years old and have recovered from alcoholism and drug addiction. I am originally from Raleigh, North Carolina and graduated from college in 1993. During my college years, I drank and drugged alcoholically. Despite graduating a National Honor Society inductee, I also acquired two Driving While Intoxicated (DUI) charges. What seemed to be sufficient reason to stop my behavior only proved the beginning of a long ugly road.

After graduation, my drinking and drugging increased immensely and by 1995 I had become a full-blown drug addict and alcoholic. I entered my first treatment center in 1995 and swore never to do it again. The years that followed brought with it countless vain attempts to prove that I could drink and drug like other people. These attempts always failed and landed me in jail, other treatment centers or overdosing.

By the year 2006, I couldn’t stay sober longer than 15 months. I had been in eight or nine different treatment centers had done almost a year of jail time; received six DUI’s and lived on the streets. I’ve been shot through the back, totaled automobiles, lost expensive homes, all but wrecked my family, found myself on a financial roller-coaster and came close to taking my life on numerous occasions until arriving at the Bay Area Recovery Center on Sept 23, 2006.

What has happened since arriving at the BARC has been nothing less than an absolute miracle. I was told what was wrong with me. It was explained to me what an alcoholic was. I was told the suggested program of recovery that I needed was The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was told that the main object of their book was to find a power greater than myself. I was told that my way was not working and that I needed to find a different way to live. I believed what they told me.

Because of what was suggested to me here at the BARC, I no longer suffer from the symptoms of my alcoholism. I no longer obsess over or have interest in the drink or drug that has been trying to take my life for many years now. My days now include helping other alcoholics and drug addicts, working at the BARC as a counselor intern, making AA a way of life, attend AA meetings and functions, chairing AA meetings and functions, seeing what I can give rather than what I can take.

Before I got to the BARC, I had met many people that had an answer but didn’t have my problem (church). I also met many people that had my problem but didn’t have an answer (non-solution oriented AA/treatment centers). I finally met many people that had my problem and had my answer… The Bay Area Recovery Center.

Banks

Life had been golden for me. I had a loving family, great education and talents that took me to the top of everywhere I went. Maybe it was that mistaken sense of being golden that led me to believe that recreational drug use would work for me. For many years, using and drinking was just an occasional retreat from the monotony of the day. But that all changed. I became less effective in every aspect of my existence. As a mental health professional, no one around me would have guessed that my drug use was getting out of control.

As is true for so many of us, when I could stop using, I didn’t want to. When I wanted to stop using, I couldn’t. I had surrendered myself to my drug of choice. Disconnected from anything that meant anything, I existed only for my next hit.

Through the intervention of the criminal justice system, I found myself at Bay Area Recovery Center. Embraced by others whose stories reflected my own, I came to understand my addiction and to recognize that there was a solution. If so many other hopeless addicts could find hope, maybe there was hope for me. The 90 days I spent pursuing that solution set me off on a journey that has brought about a transformation in my life. Not having to use is only a small part recovery. I am becoming an effective human being, someone you might want to know, rather than someone you would pity. I will be forever grateful that BARC came into my life.

Dan F.