From Addiction to Entrepreneurship: My Recovery Story
If at that place is 1 thing I learned when recovering from habit, it is that the path you have to climb
If in that location is one thing I learned when recovering from addiction, it is that the path you have to climb is long and difficult. The steps are not directly and most certainly don't always go up. The pathway to a successful recovery is a twisted i that has no actual end. Information technology is always ongoing, just will go ameliorate one step at a time. With this in mind, I would like to share with you my ain winding path through recovery and towards sobriety and entrepreneurship.
From Addiction to Entrepreneurship: My Recovery Story
I avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking up.
– Charlotte Brontë
Becoming an alcoholic
My parents moved from Latin America to California when I was 5 years old; that was back in 1993. Our origins are important, since, equally Latinos, nosotros oftentimes grow up surrounded past parties and alcohol — alcohol is nigh an obligation when yous gather with friends or family. This of course doesn't mean that all Latinos are alcoholics or annihilation of the sort, only merely that such gatherings are adequately regular.
I can clearly remember the first time I got drunk. I was just eight years old, and it was at a family gathering. Alcohol was being passed around to all the adults, and I, naturally curious, asked if I could have some. They said no, considering I was too young. Simply as the party kept going and everyone got too drunk or decorated to pay attention to me, I took my starting time potable. I didn't particularly like the gustatory modality, but it felt somewhat empowering. So I kept going.
At 18, I met cocaine and meth at a college party, and my journeying towards the worst affiliate in my life began.
A trivial later in my life, when I was 14, I encountered marijuana. Trying information technology was a scrap frightening. I was young and stupid, and because all the cool older kids were doing information technology, I had to do it also. I started and could non stop. At 18, I met cocaine and meth at a college political party, and my journey towards the worst chapter in my life began. Information technology hit a milestone when I was 23 years old, and I was incarcerated in Colorado on drug-related charges for 2 and a half years.
I will non go into the sordid details about the hardest and ugliest parts of my addiction story; they are very similar to anything you might accept read. Even though information technology was difficult and it taught me many things, the important part of my story, and of my recovery, is what happened side by side.
The Anonymous support groups
I first heard nigh Alcoholics Anonymous when I was in jail. At first, information technology was something I was doing just to get out of my confinement. Information technology was better to hear unimportant things (I thought at the time) than to be stuck in my petty jail cell.
That was the moment I realized that I had addiction and life problems, for existent.
About three months subsequently I started attending, some other inmate told his story near having hit rock-lesser, in which he explained how he ended up with the residue of us. He started drinking and lost control. Ane mean solar day, when he was very moody considering he didn't have a lot of money, he had a violent statement with his ex-wife. He took his car and smashed it through the wall of an empty store. He woke up in the hospital and two days later, he was locked up.
He knew that if that hadn't happened he could take ended up hurting his wife, or even taking his own life. He realized then that he had a serious problem and that, ironically, jail was giving him a second take chances.
It was difficult to hear. I was so sure that I had everything under control, and that it was but the others there who had problems. I hadn't yet grasped just how deep my own issues were. That was the moment I realized that I had addiction and life problems, for real.
The many faces of addiction: the workaholic
Later I got out of prison things did not get easier. I struggled to discover a chore, and despite attending Alcholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings on a regular basis, I was relapsing; habit was withal a big problem . Life seemed unbearable, so I decided to cheque into a rehab center in Colorado.
When I finished my rehab process, I felt not bad, and thought that I was ready to face up the world and get on with my new sober life. I was sadly mistaken, withal, and relapsed subsequently only a few months. I was fresh out of prison, not knowing what to exercise. I had no other choice but to concentrate on something else to avert going back to alcohol or drugs.
I moved to northern California and got a job selling cheap perfumes. I started at 5:00AM every day and visited flea markets, gas stations, shopping centers and even streets, besides selling the cologne from my firm. I learned how to speak to people on the street, and how to interest them in my production and then they would purchase it. It wasn't long before I started making some money, which got me feeling positive and confident. I was sure I could become the best salesman around.
Trading a drug or alcohol addiction for a work addiction was simply walking the same path with a different name.
My focus helped me improve, and soon I was teaching other people to sell the perfumes successfully. I had my own part and was working overtime, just had an effective little business concern going. I had become obsessed with beingness successful. Only information technology wasn't in a salubrious fashion.
I was still attending (although not often) my AA and NA meetings, and my sponsor at the fourth dimension, Steve, seeing how much weight I'd lost and how much I was losing myself (once more), gave me a book to read chosen 'Psychologically Unemployable', by Jeffery Combs.
With that book, my sponsor wanted to show me that passion was non the same as obsession, and that trading a drug or alcohol addiction for a work addiction was but walking the same path with a different name. This made me extremely lamentable as I realized I was even so an aficionado past heart. I sold my business and decided to move back to my parents' firm in southern California.
The entrepreneur
Moving back with my folks was the best decision I could have made; in them, I constitute help and support through my depression. Over two months later, I found an NA/AA customs and started attention the meetings. I also found an amazing sponsor. I started to piece of work at Target just to laissez passer the time and help pay the bills.
My sponsor saw potential in me, and being the amazing guy that he was, he fabricated a compromise with me: he would keep working with me on the condition that I signed up for some classes at the local community college. They could exist anything, so long as I liked it.
This didn't make sense to me, and I was actually not interested at first. I just wanted to keep at staying sober, do my task, and pay the bills. Still, I forced myself to go to the nearest campus and become into the only class that defenseless my attention. It was chosen "Introduction to Website Development (HTML)." Websites and computers held my involvement at one point of my sober life, so I felt it was worth it to requite it a chance.
In merely three months, I had filled my sleeping room with books near designing websites. I spent hours at the computer doing inquiry, reading, learning, and coding. Then I idea how astonishing it would be if I could create a company from the skills I was learning.
I learned to exist successful while enjoying life and not letting work rob me of important moments.
Long story brusk, here I am today, well-nigh vi years afterwards. I have worked hard while keeping my life in cheque, and I am the co-owner of a successful coding bureau. My team feels like family, and, I was able to requite my brother a job.
Fifty-fifty though I have been sober for five years, I withal nourish meetings almost religiously. I got used to the amazing feeling of existence sober. It became a part of my daily life and gets easier with each passing day.
As to my company, I learned to be successful while enjoying life and not letting work rob me of important moments. Part of success is non losing yourself to your job; you have to dearest your life and relish information technology, and beloved your task so it is not a nuisance. I learned that my business was very similar to my sobriety: one footstep at a time I had to build it, and one stride at a time I had to relish information technology.
It'southward about more than just myself
When you are going through recovery, you lot are taught that the first and nearly important thing is yourself. Everything you lot exercise, every step you take, every task you complete, has to circumduct effectually you and your recovery, and this is very important.
However, after a few months, or peradventure years, of working through your recovery, you lot come up to the realization that the whole process is bigger than you are. You lot will come to help others, you volition build and educate a family, you will dearest your job, your family, your spouse; you lot may even be the next biggest entrepreneur. Believe me when I tell you, maybe now you don't feel very inspired, but everything happens for a reason and the path you took towards sobriety volition pay off, large time.
Don't give up, and thank y'all for taking the time to read my story.
Source: https://www.goalcast.com/addiction-entrepreneurship-recovery-story/