Don’t Give Up

Inside his home, there was yelling. There was hurt. There was abuse. By the time he was fifteen, the weight was too much. He remembers the “mental abuse and physical abuse” had piled up, and one day he just said, “I’m done,” and walked out.

As a teen, he became the lead singer of a metal band, touring and living the party life. But at 20, he tore his larynx on stage, abruptly ending his dream. Around the same time, he found out he had a daughter. He got a job and focused on raising her—first with her mother for seven years, then mostly on his own—balancing work, responsibility, and fatherhood while rebuilding his life.

He later gave up custody of his daughter to her mother and moved to Arizona. He says his daughter “wasn’t happy about it” and rebelled.

He was finally making good money, but heavy drinking followed him into adulthood, damaging his relationships and costing him his job. He drained his savings, moved to Tucson in 2015, and eventually quit alcohol at 45. But he “replaced it with nothing,” which led to ten years of meth use.

His partner was using opiate pills that were pulling her deeper into addiction, and after watching what it did to her, something broke inside him and pushed him toward recovery.

He went through four different facilities. But at Gospel Rescue Mission, something began to soften.

“When I first walked in here, I was hating life, and I was hating everybody around me.” Since being at GRM, he says he has opened up to talking to God again.

GRM offered real-life, hands-on programs. After years of chaos with alcohol and drugs, he now feels like he’s “getting myself back on track.”

He’s also learned, “I can have an existence by myself more than I really thought I could.”

When asked what advice he would give to others in addiction, homelessness, or struggling to live a “civilized” life, he says, “Don’t give up. The second you start looking back, you lose sight of what it is that you’re trying to achieve. So don’t give up.”