you cool are you ready to roll I mean are you ready to roll well just roll and
then we'll work with what we have I mean the pressure is off you know I just
want to I just I need I want to jump in the water yes so just roll a tape my
name is Joshua Jalati and I graduated from the University of Massachusetts in
2005 and right now I work at the University of Massachusetts financial aid
and I've been doing so for two years and I've been sober for a little over a
week my name is Jeremy Kaplan I go to UMass Amherst I'm studying environmental
design and I'll be graduating fall 2012 and I've been cleaning sober from all
substances for a year now my name is Nate Cartel I graduated from the
University of Massachusetts in 2004 now I'm the lead pastor teaching pastor of
me to know the church having worked in the concert business for a while as a
manager of the Mullen Center and then for another church as associate pastor and
then stepped out and started a church two years ago grown it from 8 to about 80
at this point I entered a detox on February 19 2004 and so I guess we could
say that that started it there were probably a day or two before I'd stopped
using but I think that's where I would mark the date because when I stopped me
in a drug addict
psychology might say anything that's sort of an obsessive compulsive disorder
where you're you're obsessing about it you're thinking about it once you start
it you can't stop it so the obsession is the mental game where you're
constantly dwelling on it thinking about the next time you can do it and then
the compulsion is once you begin you can't stop so I mean the gambling sex
porn drugs alcohol coffee cigarettes you know personality you know I'm sure
there's internet addicts and and video games is now being recognized as an
addiction and I mean you name it I think the human tendency with people who are
broken towards addiction is to make something addiction exercise clothes
shopping debt I mean whatever it is you know in college they gave me at all at
first I didn't like it but then one time I started just hammering them and all
sudden I felt amazing I felt an unlimited energy resource and then I
discovered I could add caffeine and then I discovered I could add nicotine it all
started with pot that was the main one I started using that when I was about 11
pot, coracine, and air dusters, coke, heroin, crack, mushrooms, acid,
Adderall. Enough was never enough and I discovered a website where you can buy
Ritalin and I discovered a website where you could buy Valium this website
nearly killed me. The first time I used heroin I was extremely I was very
aggressive and mean towards my girlfriend at the time which was
definitely not cool it's not the type of person I am and then but it just you
know it latches on to you you get hooked. I forgot my life and just thought
about the high and basically did everything so that I could get high
whenever I wanted to. It got to the point where I ended up I was at my job for
about a year and a half up until then and I just I was jonesing so bad for
heroin that I just I put my computer on a five minute away time that you would
use to go to the bathroom and I just got up out of my thing and I just left I
drove down to Holyoke and walked around the block and found a bag found
somebody would sell me a bag of dope. Drank, bottles of liquor, tons of beer, felt
like I wanted to die my body wouldn't stop shaking I wanted to kill myself I
wasn't so much pain and realized what I had done I had become I had sort of I
had hit sobriety I had realized what I had done I realized that I had just care
you know I had chased around a drug that's all I cared about and it hit me
so hard that I wanted to die. At one point I ran out and it got so bad that I
you know I was very close to being in the woods with the shotgun.
Today officially is day nine if you count me actually not putting chemicals in my
body I woke up this morning extremely grateful that it was the weekend I had
one of the toughest weeks of my life. Getting yourself sober is hard because
the the heart is set on evil so we're all created fallen broken far from God the
Bible would call us all idolaters which doesn't necessarily mean we're
worshiping statues or what we in the West think of but it means we're we're
worshiping something other than God and what alcohol or the addiction does is
it is it allows you to worship it's actually an outflow of worship and so
you have this hole that only God can fill and you're trying to fill it with
with false gods you feel like an egomaniac on one level and so you're
worshiping yourself you also feel inferior on the other because of the
shame associated with addiction and the lie of the drug is I'll make you feel
better you get that initial high and then you feel inferior again and then
comes the shame in the guilt and how do you cover the shame in the guilt well
you get high again and so it's this cycle but it comes down to it's a
worship problem and and so without turning from your idols whether that be
I want to escape what was done to me in the past or I want to be this you know
the superhero rock star live the the Lindsay Lohan type life there's some
idolatry in the heart that you're focused on and and it's hard to turn away
from that I mean that's all you've known that's all the the society's told you
that's all your friends have told you it's all the drugs have told you so
it's really giving up your whole life Jesus would say to follow him you have
to crucify yourself die to yourself and then you'll have a new life and that
that's sort of the story of the attic they have to die to everything they know
and really forsake it all and that's that's a scary leap
they're the higher power or God behind the whole thing and it almost brings
peace to the situation because the community that I found was at a church
in Amherst called Vita Nova and I've been I was raised as a pastor's kid and I've
been to dozens of churches but I've never been to a church like like this
and and this is the way that church should be you know welcoming broken
people like I was and making me feel part of a family and accepted in that
even though I have fucked up issues it's okay basically what happened a week
nine days ago was the whole church every single guy representative of
marriages and couples and whatever was in there and they said you're you've done
it again this is it it's been years you haven't changed at all and they said to
me that we will support you if you stay sober and when what tears me up is that
they told me that they would do anything that they would do as long as I
never took another drug again and promised to just be sober and do what
Jesus wants me to do that they will just they'll be there for me they'll walk
alongside me they said you can live with me just don't ever use again and I was
so moved that they really meant it everyone really meant it that I said
fine I'll try it I was angry as hell though the first couple days I took it
out I was so angry that I had to do it their way once I realized that they
really cared and that they really would be there for me I decided I was going to
just try at this point I don't know if I'm gonna be able to keep my job I went
every day since then without a drink or drug the other day I was driving in my
car and I kind of just came to my head and I said it out loud I said I used to
smoke crack and snort heroin and it just sounded like the most crazy thing in
the world because thinking about who I was then and like and who I am now it's
like I can't even I almost don't believe it it's like no there's no way that I
could have at me like I could have been in a place where I was walking the block
and picking up crack and heroin the time when I was the most scared people
still responded and they said you know get up come hang out with us get up go
do this go to work I mean it was took all the ounce of energy to shower
sometimes I I mean the last Friday I was shaking in the middle of the night I
was like let me call and sick please guys let me call and sick some schools
thought maybe I should have the amount of work I got done but I stayed at my desk
I answered questions I joked around with my co-workers I went to an AA meeting I
did my job I didn't mess anything up and I only had a cup of tea and my friend
finally said you're gonna eat some damn smoothies and he basically made if I
if there was a keg of smoothies I think you would maybe do a keg stand of
smoothies and force it down my throat and I felt better and then I ate tacos
and then I hung out with people and I felt great Brian is awesome and if you've
been abusing drugs for a really long time and don't have any days sober in
between there like once you get sober it's almost like being high because
you're not used to it and I found that just I found that really amazing when I
first started being actually sober when everything was out of my system I was
like well now you hear the her term high on life but this is like this is kind
of different because you forget what it's like to be sober it's actually
really cool so if you're chasing the next high sobriety actually be it
