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I'm Devin Fox, I'm a young person in long-term recovery. What that means for me is that I
haven't used a drink or a drug in over 3 and 1/2 years. Recovery has given me choices.
It has given me the opportunity to make the next right decision, it's given me the choice
to be a better son, it's given me the choice to be a better brother, it's given me the
choice to be a better member of society, it's given me the opportunity to do the things
that I never even dreamed I could do!
[music]
I grew up and I didn't use a drink or a drug or smoke a cigarette until I was 18 years
old and then it was 17 when I was acting out sexually. I say acting out, but really I was
just freely expressing you know who I was. That I was a gay man and that I didn't know
what that felt like and I was scared and it was a secret and I didn't want to tell my
family and subsequently all of a sudden I was 18 and I graduated from high school and
I was in college, no longer under the pressures of what my family life was and now I had alcohol
and it was wow I can really be who I want to be and I thought that was everything that
I was. It really felt like I had arrived. Then the alcohol turned into marijuana and
then it was like smoking 10 blunts a day, you know drinking on the weekends, binge drinking
on the weekends, you know having this supposedly amazing college experience and slowly declining
and not knowing what it was. I thought that that was what I was supposed to do - and then
I couldn't stop. You know and then somebody introduced me to crystal *** and it was you
know I thought I had arrived before but my God now it was like now I was on the moon.
I woke up in the hospital a couple times and the last time it was okay well your in a hospital
gown, so you tried to kill yourself again. Maybe something should be different and I
went away and I was truly ready to stop everything. And at that point in time that is when I entered
into recovery, that is when I finally admitted to myself that like I needed a better way
of living and there were tools that I was willing to learn and to use to get better.
And my best friend said to me, oh, and I went back to school and there is this there is
this program there that is for recovering students. There is a recovery house, a collegiate
recovery program you know for students that are in recovery and I was like perfect, because
I was so afraid of going back to school, because school was where it all began. And I finally
said to myself, you know it's time to go back, and maybe this is the next right option for
you, maybe this is the next right thing to do. It was probably the best decision I have
ever made. Because it gave me the opportunity to be in a safe environment and to continue
my education to graduate with my bachelor's to graduate with my master's. And then move
forward into this realm of recovery. Recovery is everything and I stress that recovery truly
is everything because it is really the opposite of what addiction is. It is about giving back,
providing service, it's being everything that I was meant to be.