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My Life is Just Beginning
The following story was written by Thresholds staffer Charles Green. Once a member at Thresholds’ Integrated Treatment residential program, Rowan Trees, Green openly shares his struggle over depression and substance abuse. Clean and sober today, Green has a new life and says his life is just beginning.
I am an alcoholic and I guess I always have been. I also suffer from Depression, though I didn’t always know it.
During my teenage years, I often felt sad and listless. Sometimes I didn’t feel much of anything. It’s hard to explain but my life often felt very gray or black—that’s the easiest way I know how to explain it. I didn’t find it odd, though, because when I looked around me, no one seemed to be really happy. My friends and I went from one day to the next, not really expecting much of anything.
I started doing drugs—weed, vapors, downers, mescaline, acid. I grew up in the seventies and these drugs were all easily available and cheap. When I was high I felt fine. When I wasn’t, it was like I was not even alive. It’s what we called “spaced-out”—not even on this planet.
At a party one day, a friend handed me a beer, my first. After my very first sip, something inside me clicked, and I knew this is what my life had been missing. I felt “normal.” I became sociable, happy, and outgoing, and soon forgot about the gray and black areas that often filled my life.
The remainder of the seventies and all of the eighties and nineties are now one big blur to me. I was always able to work and was always well-liked. I never drank on the job, but as soon as I got home. I would drink until I passed out. All through these years there were times when everything went black. This is what I call beyond depressed; when I would just lock myself away from any kind of human contact. As long as I had my bottle, I didn’t care. I could easily drink two-fifths of vodka and a case of beer in a day and still want more. Throughout all of this, I never was hung over, never got physically ill, and always held down a job.
After decades of this, the day came when I said: “Enough, I can’t do this anymore.” Something inside me told me I had to quit drinking or die. So, I quit drinking without thinking of the consequences. Of course, within time, I fell into a case of full blown D.T.’s. I can only describe this as an acid trip gone bad. Heavily hallucinating, hearing voices, and thinking people wanted to kill me, I thought I had lost my mind. No one around me seemed to notice that anything was wrong with me, which intensified my feelings of having gone insane. I wanted this madness to stop by any means possible so I took a butcher knife and tried to kill myself.
I woke up in Jackson Park Hospital—a blur of doctors, nurses, family, and friends. Question upon question, drugged until I couldn’t even tell you my name. The only clear memory I have of this time is of two strangers approaching me, asking if I needed help. I wasn’t quite clear on what kind of help it was that they were offering, but laying there in the hospital, having lost my job and my apartment in the process; yes, I did need help.
Of course, these two strangers were from Thresholds, and by working closely with me, eventually they were able to place me in Rowan Trees—the place I now call home. With its outstanding staff and its wonderful program, I have made a journey of a million miles in a very short year-and-a-half.
It’s hard to put into words what the staff at Rowan Trees (and Thresholds) has done for me by working with me. It’s nothing short of miraculous. With the help of Dr. Tibbets, I have found that small doses of a non-addictive drug keeps my depression in check. I have no more gray or black areas in my life. I haven’t touched any kind of alcohol in eighteen months, and as far as I am concerned, never will again.
Did I really want to kill myself? No, at the time it was the only way I saw to escape the madness that was enveloping me.
I am not working at Thresholds Southwest. Although my position is titled File Clerk, it is becoming so much more than that. With each passing day, I am being allowed the privilege of working more closely with the members. I find it enriching and fulfilling. One day, I would like to become a case aide or even a case manager. This would be a dream come true: to give back a fraction of the help that was given to me.
My story does not end here because my life is just beginning, and what a wonderful life it has become.
Charles Green
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