“I think everyone, in order to find recovery, needs to trust in some sort of community.”
“I remember a specific moment,” Paul says. “It was on Christmas Eve, and I was, at the time, working at a shelter for homeless youth. And I remember walking to work-- it was eleven o'clock at night, and I remember hearing families and households being together, enjoying each other’s company. And I remember just feeling so disconnected from that. And at that moment, it just felt easier to continue on with my addiction.” Far from his friends and family, Paul felt isolated and alone.
But something changed. “I'd run out of good ideas, is what happened,” says Paul. “I got out of my own way.” He decided to try asking for help. “It was probably the hardest phone call I'd ever made. But when I think of what happened after I made that phone call…there was this stranger on the other end of the phone, he told me to meet him at a coffee shop in Chinatown in Victoria, and I did. And I remember seeing this man who just had this sense of integrity.” The man Paul met with introduced him to Narcotics Anonymous, where he found the support he needed to begin his recovery.
“I used to think it was cookie cutter,” Paul says, looking back. “I used to think that the only way for somebody to stay clean was to commit to the process of a 12-step program. Today I've learned that it's different for everybody. I think everyone, in order to find that recovery needs to kind of trust in some sort of community,--but it doesn't necessarily have to be a 12-step community.”
After many years of committing to the 12-step process, attending meetings, working the 12 steps with a sponsor and becoming a sponsor himself, he was then able to connect to other communities in many different ways.
“I was actually thinking about that word, ‘community,’ today, because at first it was a community of Narcotics Anonymous that showed me how to live a new life and how to get right with myself, others and a higher power. But from there, my life has expanded in different ways. So now that I've got a family, my communities are a little bit different. I've got a gym community now. I've got a trail running community now. It's such a huge piece in terms of the process of changing one's life—you need a community to support you through it.”