Arjun P. is a recent graduate of the Turnbridge program, who completed primary treatment at Caron Treatment Centers in PA. Prior to attending Caron, Arjun’s attempts at sobriety were short-lived, but he has since devoted himself to attaining a better life and is continuing to make progress. According to Arjun, he first started using drugs and drinking alcohol when he went away to college. After two years, he got an apartment off campus and his substance abuse accelerated drastically. At that point, Arjun began using every day, and he stopped attending his college classes. “I stopped going to classes completely,” Arjun said. “I tricked my parents and everyone into thinking that I was still going to school. They found out on the day that I was supposed to graduate that I hadn’t been going.” The revelation shocked Arjun’s parents, and led to his first treatment episode in an outpatient program. After completing the program, he stayed clean for seven months, but then suffered a relapse. “I just really wasn’t done,” Arjun said. “I was miserable, and I wasn’t working the program. I didn’t really have anything to fill that void besides drugs and alcohol. I became completely selfish. I pretty much didn’t care about anyone else but myself, and when I was getting high I didn’t really care about myself. I just wanted to get high so that I could forget about the guilt that I had about not going to school and lying to everyone. My entire family was devastated. It was very difficult for them, and probably for my brother most of all. I was his role model growing up. He always looked up to me. We were best friends and I really let him down.” Arjun wavered in and out of recovery until last year when his parents found him in bed unresponsive, and were forced to call an ambulance and visit the ER. His parents decided to try an inpatient program, Caron, and the staff there recommended Turnbridge for an extended program upon completion. “Caron was a very good experience,” Arjun said. “It was a close, tightknit group of people. It was perfect for me before Turnbridge. [At Turnbridge,] I liked the phases. One thing that I will always say is I wouldn’t be where I am right now without it. It’s all about the people. I came through with a great class of kids. It was an irreplaceable experience for me. You literally grow up with these kids for a year. My case managers were all amazing. Chas, he saved my life. I feel that man never gets enough credit for what he does. I don’t think there can ever be a way that I can thank him for what he’s done. He singlehandedly made my experience in Turnbridge amazing.” Arjun is currently taking classes at Southern Connecticut State University and plans on taking additional courses at Yale next semester in the hopes of transferring credits to his original college. After college, he hopes to get a job as a computer engineer, possibly with a large corporation like Intel, and “pick back up right where he left off, but in a better place.” “I’m happy now,” Arjun said. “I feel like I’m back to the person I was, probably better off. Before, it wasn’t possible for me to have fun without using, and whenever I used I wasn’t really having fun. Some of the best times in my life have been over the past year, sitting with friends, and laughing about stupid stuff. I was never able to do that before.”