Chris Kohl, 31

“There are moments when you look death right into the eyes, you are faced with all your emotions, all that stuff that you are running from and don’t want to feel. It’s like I was at the fork of the road, and I can either die, be in prison, or I can find this new way of life.”

I was about three years old when I remember saying good-bye to my dad. That was after he got into a fight with my mom, and he ended up going to prison because of domestic violence. We lived in Stockton until that time, but then my mom moved us to Eureka. I felt very isolated and disconnected from others.  When I was going to school and saw all the other kids play, it felt as if I wasn’t human. And I felt that way throughout my entire childhood.

When I was six, I witnessed my mom getting stabbed. She picked me up from school, and I was sitting in the back of her car, together with my two younger sisters, when she started screaming. She ended up going to the hospital, but I didn’t really know what was going on. I was very traumatized from that event. My school grades started declining, and I felt more and more isolated.

I smoked weed for the first time when I was 10. A friend of mine stole a pipe from his mom, and we took a hit, but I don’t remember getting high. My mom always tried to scare me away from it, but eventually I got caught smoking. When my dad got out of prison, he found out about it and threw my weed into the trash, because he thought it was cheap, “My son doesn’t smoke this type of crap”, and he gave me some green bud instead. Living in Humboldt County, everyone you know was using weed, it was normal. But yeah, this is how I remember it started for me. And those feelings of anxiety, depression, isolation and disconnection, all stayed with me, but they kind of went away when I was smoking weed.

My dad was in and out of prison three times, and by the time he stayed out I was 11. I needed a father, a male figure, in all these years, and I missed him. Despite the domestic violence, I also had some good memories. I loved my dad.

By the time I was 12 years old, we moved from Eureka to Marin City. All my feelings followed me, I was not social, and this made it harder for me to find weed. There were a lot of fights, and I got jumped a few times. Eventually I found a small group of kids to hang out with. And when I was 13 or 14, I began to drink heavily and started finding substances like ecstasy. From age 15, I used to visit my dad in Humboldt County over the summer. He had moved to a small town, but I would stay with my friends in Eureka in a kind of trap house. This is where I found methamphetamine; this was the start of doing hard drugs, besides ecstasy. I used to be kind of chunky as a kid, and I came back to Marin City skinny and everyone was like, “What happened to you?” That also became a reason why I used; I wanted to lose weight. And I wanted to escape the way I felt. But meth was harder to find in Marin, so I used other drugs like oxycontin, acid, mushrooms, ecstasy, and cocaine.

During high school years I got pretty much kicked out of every school, five all together. I was too stuck partying and trying to escape those feelings. The last school I went to, Oracle, an independent study program, I failed my assignments. It was easy and basic material, but I was not in the mindset, because I was using, and I had a bunch of untreated trauma, anxiety and depression. Using created lots of unmanageability, and because of the addiction and my underlying issues, I did not complete school.

I could not hold down a job either and got into trouble with the law. The first time I was arrested I was 15, was put on probation, and was in and out of juvenile hall. During that time I remember seeing a counselor who helped me a lot.

But by the time I turned 17, I had episodes of psychosis and suffered from gastritis. All the heavy drinking combined with cocaine caused the stomach to give out, and this caused me to puke every day. Eventually I gave up cocaine but kept using all the other stuff.

From the age of 18 on, I no longer went to juvenile hall but adult jail. I also participated in a treatment center in San Rafael. That was my first dose of recovery, and this opened a door to a new kind of life for me. I turned 19 while in treatment and completed a 6-month-long inpatient program. When I left, I relapsed. Relapsing after rehab brings out all the guilt and shame, and all the stuff you learned in recovery kind of comes back and haunts you. “You can do better, why are you doing this, there is a new way of life.” Despite all that hope and knowledge, going back into recovery is one of the hardest things to do when you are heavily addicted, it is very difficult.

It got really bad after I left treatment. I ended up being homeless and got into jail more frequently, would sleep under bridges, behind buildings, or on campsites. It was raining one night, and I had to look for a new site, got kicked out, and did not find a place where I could go. I walked in circles and kept getting arrested.

This is when I decided to leave the county, would go back up to Humboldt, and then the same thing would happen up there. And each time I would leave for another place, like Chico, Redding, or Southern California, hoping for change. I even hiked up to Oregon one time. It felt like I was trapped in a circle, trying to escape everything, you know. While in a support group in Oregon, I heard someone say, “Wherever you go, there you are.” I didn’t think much of it first, but eventually it dawned on me that I have stuff inside of me that needs to heal. I was 23 or 24, and even though I had this realization about my traumas, I could not stop using. I got stabbed, that was bad, and, again, got really tired of this kind of life, and I started to show up in support groups. Still, I was not willing to take all the suggestions and do what was required for me to do. Then, 6 months later, I got stabbed again, and this time I almost died, it hit one of my lungs, and yeah, I ended up in the hospital, had a few major surgeries, and it took a month to recover. That’s when I went back to the same area where I got stabbed, went back there to get drugs, and that is when I realized the insanity of addiction. And, you know, I started praying, “Universe, god, whatever is out there, please guide me on the right path, please help me to get clean.”

There was another incident when I got into trouble with someone; I could have ended up in jail, and it seems my higher power was telling me I was riding my chances. There are moments when you look death right into the eyes, you are faced with all your emotions, all that stuff that you are running from and don’t want to feel. It’s like I was at the fork of the road, and I can either die, be in prison, or I can find this new way of life.

And you know, luckily, I had the willingness to choose this new way of life. My last day using was Jan 11, 2017, and my first day clean was Jan 12, 2017. I was 25, so it’s been about 5 and 1/2 years.

Drugs at first gave me temporary relief but led me down a path of misery, destruction, pain, almost death, and, yeah, just everything in my life became bankrupt, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically. And then I found recovery, and, to be honest, I’m living life beyond my wildest dreams. I do things I never thought I was able to do. I have serenity, you know, I don’t have to be homeless any longer since I’m clean. I have been able to hold down jobs, I started a business, I’m helping others to find this new way of life, I am giving back. There are periods in my recovery when I am looking back, and I see this entire transformation. I am not taking credit for it, the only thing I take credit for is making this choice, but I couldn’t have done it by myself. I got help from countless people who were on the path with me and helped me where I am today. And, I am still in awe. I find myself doing something and I’m thinking, “What am I doing here?” It is surreal that I am here. And not everybody is so lucky, I lost my dad about 3 months ago to addiction; he overdosed. That is why I am able to empathize and have sympathy for those who have not been able to make it. It is a real struggle and I’ve seen countless people die from addiction; people forget how serious it is. It is tough.

 “You don’t have to live that way anymore. There is hope. You can find freedom from addiction. You can live a life beyond your wildest dreams. And it’s possible, no matter where you are, no matter if you are different from other people, or if you cannot relate, or if you think you are not like them, you have a home. There are many support groups out there, you can find your family and people who love you and will help you. Just don’t give up. And if someone relapses, or makes a mistake, or slips, just keep coming back. You know, it works. It’s not worth staying out there and dying from this stuff. Think about the harm you would do to your loved ones. This is a serious freaking thing.”