Recovery Month – Day 26 – Truth and Consequences

You are free to make whatever choices you want, but you are never free from the consequences of your choices.

— Unknown —

September is National Recovery Month.

The focus of my blogs throughout the month of September will be on addiction and its life destroying tendencies. The writings derive from my own personal experiences of battling addiction and living a life of recovery.

These specific writings are focused on the ACT acronym.

ACT leads to sobriety…

A – Acknowledge you have a problem and you are powerless over it and you need help.

– Connect with a power greater than you and people who have solutions that will help you conquer your problem.

T – Take positive, recovery-oriented action every day.

We spent the first 17 days looking at the Acknowledge and Connect stages of ACT. We will close out Recovery Month by looking at the most important stage and that is to Take positive, recovery-oriented action every day.


As I mentioned yesterday, I was starting to see the light and was having a little bit of hope when it came to staying sober one day at a time, for the rest of my life.

Then my counselor asked to speak with me prior to a morning session about ten days into my treatment stay. She shared with me that they had been contacted by an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and he wanted to meet with me.


Once again…you probably have a problem when the DEA comes knocking on your door.

I was mortified. Next to our second son’s battle with death during his early days, I’ve never been so scared in my life.

As they say, shit was about to get real.


The DEA agent’s name was Fred and Fred had no personality…go figure.

When I look back to that moment in my life, it is pretty blurry because I became very emotional when speaking with Fred. In spite of the cloudiness of that moment, there are two moments within that moment that I vividly remember.

The first moment was when Fred said to me, “Jay, if ever there was a time in your life where you need to be totally honest, that time is now.” What I didn’t know then, that I know now, was the DEA thought I was selling drugs because there were so many missing from the various pharmacies I had been working in.

Stealing and ingesting drugs is a crime, stealing and selling drugs is an even BIGGER crime.

If you’ve followed my story to this point you will know I never stole drugs with the intent to sell them. I stole them with the intent to destroy my life…at least that was the devil’s intent.

The second moment was when I told Fred everything. I had never been so honest in my life.

This truthful moment with Fred from the DEA, was a major action step in my recovery journey. The proverbial monkey was finally off my back.

In that moment, the truth had set me free from a huge emotional, guilt-laden, burden I was carrying. Today I know we are only as sick as our secrets.

But the truth had also set me up to face some major consequences for my actions.

More to follow tomorrow.


John 8:32, “Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”

P.E.A.C.E.

Jay@EagleLaunch.com

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