From Mountainside to Turnbridge Extended Care Sober Living

Our Resident Profile highlights a current resident. Here we focus on Mike, who came to Turnbridge Extended Care Sober Living after completing primary drug rehab at Mountainside Treatment Center in Canaan, CT. Adam began playing basketball when he was 8 years old. By the time he was 10, he had already started playing for an AAU (Amateur Athletics Union) team. He says basketball meant everything to him. He could …step out onto the court and the rest of the world would melt away. But then when he was 17, he had the misfortune of falling victim to a major ACL injury. When the injury happened, Adam says the only way to describe how he felt was as if he had entered into a period of grieving. He compared the loss of his ability to play basketball to the loss of loved one. There was an absence in his life that could never be filled again, or so he thought. Adam says he tried to fill that absence with opiates. Adam was still in high school when he entered his first drug rehab program. It was in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, but Adam says he wasn’t truly ready. He ran away and went back home. “I felt like I had it in the bag. I wasn’t ready to take suggestions and ask for help and really learn about the process. It’s a grueling process,” Adam says. “It’s not easy.” Only a few months before coming to Turnbridge Extended Care Sober Living, he attended Seafield Center, a drug rehab center on Long Island, but was discharged for inappropriate behavior. Shortly after getting out, he went to see a friend. Sitting on a table in his friend’s dorm room was an 8-ball of cocaine. Adam says this was one of those moments where life presents a fork in the road. On one hand, he could choose to do the cocaine and continue down the path of substance abuse. Or, he could follow a new path. He reluctantly decided to go to an AA meeting in town but soon realized that it was going to take much more than a few AA meetings if he wanted to obtain long term sobriety. With his new found determination, Adam said he finally had the strength to seriously attempt drug rehab. He enrolled in another drug treatment program, Mountainside Treatment Center in Canaan, Conn. He successfully completed the program and entered Turnbridge shortly thereafter for addiction treatment and sober living, a decision that changed everything. “I’ve never felt better in my life, ever. It’s like a high, but it’s just a completely different high,” Adam says. “Putting in a lot of work in yourself for close to a year, not many people get the chance to do that. I do as much as I can to give back to this program. They’ve given me a life with something to look forward to.” This transformation was by no means immediate. Adam says that after three years of alcoholism and substance abuse, he knew only one way to act. While he was no longer using, his behavior was still that of an alcoholic. But that changed over time. “I came in here and I was goofing off. I didn’t want to be here. I’d do stupid stuff. I’d do anything to not feel like me,” Adam says. “There’s so much good staff support here. The people that do this are not in it for the money. When I got to Phase II, they really worked with me, worked hard with me. I had an unbelievable change there. I did what they asked me to do.”