An auto worker for twenty years, Robert’s life changed when a displaced nerve in his back introduced him to pain medication. What started as a necessary treatment soon spiraled into an addiction that consumed his life and cost him nearly half a million dollars.
“I noticed my paycheck just wasn’t there anymore,” he recalls, “and I had an almost minute-by-minute obsession with where the money was going to come from for the next two Percocets.” Faced with a stark choice between seeking help or finding a new way to finance his addiction, Robert chose recovery.
Knowing where to turn made all the difference. “I knew coworkers who had faced similar struggles, and knowing they had been supported made me feel a little more comfortable reaching out,” he says. Even so, his first week at Renascent was far from easy.
“I was extremely out of my comfort zone,” he admits. “When I arrived, I weighed 95 pounds and looked like Grizzly Adams, beard and all.” But just over a week into his stay, something clicked.
“I had an ‘a-ha’ moment,” Robert says. “I shaved my beard, I began to eat, and from that moment, I threw everything away and started again. I had to find a version of myself from before the trauma and the ‘BS.’”
When asked what his life might have looked like without treatment, Robert doesn’t hesitate. “I would have had to have found progressively cheaper ways of living, until there wasn’t anything else left to cut,” he reflects.
“I’d probably be fired. I’d maybe be dead.”
Today Robert lives with chronic pain, but he’s found ways to manage it without addiction. “I’ve learned to live with it,” he says. “I’ll probably be in pain for the rest of my life, but I’d rather cope with that than live in addiction.”
Recovery has given him back his life—and more. “I’ve had the best year of my life in recovery,” he says. “I finally have the resources to spend time doing things I enjoy, like go to a baseball game with my son. He just turned 19, and it’s been so important to me to be honest with him about all this. I want to show him that if you fall down in life, there’s a way to get back up. Always get back up.”
Robert has also reclaimed the simple freedoms he once took for granted. “I recently renewed my driver’s license, birth certificate, and health card—all of which I had allowed to expire because if it cost $60 to renew, I couldn’t afford it,” he shares. “Now, I have a financial freedom I haven’t felt in 20 years. My health appreciates it, and my bank account does too.”
Reflecting on his journey, Robert feels a profound sense of gratitude. “This past year in recovery has been such a good year,” he says. “I’m never going back to the old Rob—I just laugh at the old Rob now.
That’s not me anymore.”