I Woke Up From 20 Years of Being an Addict
I was born in Switzerland, I grew up between Switzerland and a small village of 7,000 inhabitants in Calabria, Italy.
My life before using drugs was very cheerful and I had a lot of drive to build the dreams that I dreamt each day.
There have been several happy moments in my life that I remember, but one, in particular, is when I went to the beach together with my family. We went in many cars with my cousins and my uncles, and on the way to the beach I was always checking behind to make sure that my uncles were still there, and that we were all together.
Another time, everyone got together and we ate all the wonderful things that each family prepared. I remember tasting each goodie that my uncles prepared, we were with my cousins and uncles under the pine forests joking and playing, making fun of my uncles, it was a moment of true joy for me when we laughed all together.
I started using drugs, I would say a little bit for fun or surely for boredom, I started with drinking a bottle of cognac when I was 8 years old and I found myself at home in the living room in front of a display cabinet with several colored bottles of alcohol inside. Even today I can not give myself a plausible explanation, but that bottle was a springboard to my addiction.
For almost 20 years I lived in total darkness and I could not even say that during those 20 years I felt happy or that anyone would have told me “Fabio you are a special guy.” None of that, by then my label was decided by everyone to be that of “the addict.”
Drugs had a strong influence on me, I couldn’t help but take them. Of all the ones I took, the worst one was heroin. That was the one that little by little took me underground. It had a violent impact on me and there I went down, all while my family hated and loved me at the same time.
Aside from wasting my best years, during my addiction, I brought my parents down with me as well.
I did not find Narconon, Narconon found me. One day I found myself in an interview with a girl who worked in psychology and she explained that if I went to Narconon everything would change.
“I found Narconon to be like a school of life, something that no other place has ever taught me.”
I found Narconon to be like a school of life, something that no other place has ever taught me. My arrival was difficult because of how I was feeling being on 50 mg of methadone and on Xanax for 7 years plus other drugs that I snorted, up until the last day before entering Narconon.
My strength grew day by day thanks to the strength of all the staff that stood by me, in the worst time of my withdrawal.
What comforted me was that for the first time the staff made me feel like a normal person and that was being done everything for me, even if stated several times that I wanted to give up and leave.
My first win is that I finished the program, I’ve never completed anything I’ve started in my life.
My second one is that I finally felt awake and I cried a lot because I realized that for 20 years it’s like I’ve been asleep.
The third is that I knew I would never touch that garbage again.
When I finished the program I felt special and I had so much desire to rebuild my life.
For my future, I plan to help others. What keeps me going every day is getting a guy or a girl off the “street” to save their life, the same way others have done with me.
My relationship with my family is great now, we tell each other everything and they also trust me.
The thing I like the most is that I am no longer addicted to any substance. My advice for those who need help is that it’s good to be yourself again, so do whatever it takes to achieve that.
My advice to those in recovery is the following: “You can win this battle. Once you do, you will be proud of yourself.”
Fabio, Narconon Graduate
