Alumni of the Month Quinton

“Hi I’m Quinton I’m an Addict”

I grew up like any ordinary child. My parents both showed me love unconditionally. From what I remember I had a very good at home life while I was a child. When I was growing up I had a hard time trying to fit in with other kids my age, I was always different. I played a lot of sports so I loved the rush of adrenaline either it was from sports or it was getting in trouble at school or at home. I started to drink and smoke weed at the age of 14 and by the time I was 15 I was a daily weed smoker. By the time I was 16 I had started to dabble into harder drugs.

I had a very hard time in high school, I was getting suspended a lot and by the time I was half way through grade 10 the principle had enough of my behavior and expelled me.

This is when I started to be very hard on myself and felt that I couldn’t do anything right. I became very depressed and this is when I started to use harder drugs and my addiction had started to get a hold of me. After time I found a drug that had got a hold of me and eventually I started to do whatever I could to get high whether it was stealing from family or friends or even crime at this point I didn’t care all I wanted was to get what I wanted and that was drugs.

I came across The Last Door when I was going through treatment centers on the internet and I agreed with my parents that this is where I would like to go to treatment.  When I arrived at The Youth Door I was amazed how happy everyone was, all the guys in treatment made me me feel at ease and at home. My stay at the youth door was amazing, I was amazed that people didn’t care what you’ve done or what you used or how much you used but you were going to do about your problem. From the first day I was at the door I felt at ease and at home. I finally had found people who felt like I did and had been through what I have if not worse.

While I was at the door I did a lot of work on myself, I had to deal with a lot of feelings like shame and guilt and stuff that I didn’t think I could tell anybody that I had held inside from the things I have done and went through, but being with people who I could trust and have gone through the same if not worse I was able to talk about my feelings with people and had people who were there for me and helped me through everything.
While I was at the door I also had lots of fun. The guys in the house would do a lot of stuff together.

Unity play’s a huge role at The Last Door. We did almost everything together as a group. Whether it was step work, journals, or readings we were all most likely together. We didn’t also practice are recovery together but we did things out in the
neighbourhood together as well like going to get coffee together or go to meetings in a group or go to the gym together or even swimming.

I was scared once I started to come up to the end of my stay at the door and eventually go back home. But I made a plan and got a list of meeting’s I was going to attend and knew that I had to hook in with people at the meetings and make new friends that were in the program. A very important thing that I had to do was to continue to live the way I was while I was at the Door and continue to work the steps and live by spiritual principles.

Today my life is great. I live with integrity today and spiritual principles like honest, open mindedness, willingness and acceptance. I even have faith in myself today. Today I even have relationships with my family and have real friends in my life that care about me and want the best for me. I am forever grateful that I went to The Last Door.
Thank you Last Door for showing me how to live life clean!

Clean date: October, 5th, 2012