Instagram: @pichilin54g

My name is Gabriel and my drug of choice were several as a youngster.

Sober since March 19, 1991 

I started sniffing glue back home in Puerto Rico—not for too long, but long enough.

Back in the 70’s, soon after I turned 18, I wanted to leave home. And seven days later, here I was in New England (Boston). I came with a so-called friend to a place where I didn’t know anyone. 

I had always heard about Marijuana, but didn’t have a clue what it was until one day I was offered a joint. It was lit up of course, and was told to hold my breath and to do it several times—right there and then I began to smoke as often as I could get it. 

Long story short, I began to meet people and started drinking with them. Back then I also started using Mescaline—the high would last 10-12 hours. It induces an altered state of consciousness.

There was another drug I tried called window paint. One trip, and the high lasted a little more than a day and a half. I got scared because I thought I wasn’t going to come back to reality. I stopped the use and abuse of that particular drug as I was getting older. 

I then started doing heroin and drinking at the same time, and moved to cocaine followed by crack. 

I had girlfriend at the time (a woman I couldn’t keep up with), and using at this pace—the way I was living caused me to lose all kinds of jobs including her.

After we broke up, I found an apartment and it became a shooting gallery. I hit rock bottom so bad that I thought I that I would never make it out alive. I went through all kinds of changes—it was not a very good experience at all.

I had been to at least four detoxes to no avail., but in March 1991, I looked at the sky and said to God: “I’m not like this and don’t want to continue like this.” 

I went home drunk as a skunk and I had a detox phone number a friend had given me.

I was drunk and high when I called the detox. I was told that they would have an open bed on a Tuesday. 

That day came, I got up early in the morning, and I went to the store and bought some wine. I drank half of the bottle while waiting for the bus. When I got to the detox, I hid behind some bushes and drank the rest of the wine and went in. 

There was a woman that knew me, and she asked me if I wanted to go to a sober home for six months. I said “yes”. I was just sick and tired of being sick and tired. 

In the fifth month at the sober house, I was let go because they said I wasn’t doing the program—and that was 30 years ago. (Don’t anybody tell you anything different.)

My sobriety date is March 19, 1991. 

In my sobriety days I’ve been through the good the bad and the ugly, yet alcohol and and drugs were of no worries.

Two months after I got sober, I went back home to my girlfriends home and I apologized and told her what I had done. She told me that she already knew because she had said a lot of prayers. She told me that prayers do work and she let me stay on the condition that If started using again, she would kick me out. 

Four years into my sobriety, I found her dead of a massive heart attack. That hit me really hard. 

Two years later, I met my present wife, a widow of 16 years, we got married and she came down with cancer 12 years later into our marriage. She is now in remission, but 5 years give or take, she went blind. Chronic graft-versus-host disease presents multiple challenges for both clinicians and patients. 

Two years ago I had open heart surgery. And a couple of weeks ago I was bleeding inside my stomach—they told me that I may have Lymphoma.

I maintain my sobriety one day at a time. The first 24 hours is the hardest for any alcoholic or a drug addict and the reason behind that is because we never know what the next day is going to bring. 

I’m doing great considering the kind of life I had lived. I am very grateful to God, without him, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be writing this about myself today. 

My advice to a new comer is to keep coming back. Maybe the first few days is not as comfortable as you thought it would be, but let me say that it gets better each and every day.

I just celebrated 30 years of sobriety March 19, 2021

Thanks for letting share—it was my pleasure.