Miracles of Recovery

Gary H. - Houston, Texas 28 years

Gary H.

clean date 12.17.92

 My name is Gary H and I’m an addict from Houston, Texas. I was born in Cottonwood, Arizona February 26, 1951. When I was about five years old, my family moved to Houston, Texas. I had two brothers and one sister. We were placed in Ingrando home for children while my parents went through their divorce. My Dad took me to get a haircut and bought me eighteen Tootsie Rolls one Sunday afternoon and when we got back, the other kids wanted me to share my candy with them. I said, “no, this is my candy,” clutching the candy. Remind you, I was five years old and didn’t know any better. The old lady that ran the place put a pink dress on me and tied me to the flagpole. The cars on the freeway were beeping their horns as they passed by. I felt humiliated. I didn’t understand why my Mom and Dad left me there all alone and I remember crying myself to sleep. I remember laying in my bed watching the headlights from the cars passing on the freeway.

 My Mother got custody of us kids later on so she got us a place to live and worked downtown at Houston Natural Gas as a bookkeeper. I remember in 1960 it snowed in Houston and we went to Gatesville, Texas that year to visit my brother that was in the reform school for kids that had gotten in trouble, a state school. My brother’s name was Rudy and before that he was in a reform school in Lousiana called the Louisiana Training Institute. He was always in jail and I really wasn’t close to him.

 We always had a place to stay and times were hard. My Mom was the only one paying the bills, buying groceries, etc., but we were together as a family. When I was about ten years old, I was mowing yards and started sniffing gas. I got a friend of mine to get high with me until his father caught us, it never happened again, we never did it again together.

 Me and my brother Steve fought all the time. He was about a year and nine months older than me and about that time I started staying out after the Saturday afternoon movies, hanging out at the pool halls and the bowling alleys. I remember that one of the older guys we hung out with at times had a bottle of whiskey and I had a few gulps from time to time, but I remember it burned my throat.

 We moved from the Northside to South Houston. When I was seventeen we were going to a teenage dance. One guy stopped and bought everyone a half-pint of vodka. I drank all of it and passed out in the backseat of the old Chevy. I came to and stuck my head out the window and rolled the glass up to my neck and couldn’t figure out how to get my head back in the car. The police came up and couldn’t wake me up so my brother arrived and he hit me two times trying to wake me up. I went to jail. My friends had robbed the gas station next door while I was in the car passed out. I remember walking up the stairs in the jail and the next morning I could hear my Mom downstairs. I think she paid like $25.00 to get me out.

 My brother went and joined the Marine Corp. I remember taking him to the airport with some of my family. He went to Camp Pendleton for basic training and then Vietnam while I stayed at home. I quit school in the ninth grade and was working to be able to have a car and a little money. When I was seventeen I started going downtown to pool halls and clubs and the hippies were gathering on commerce at Allen’s Landing/Love Street and that’s where I smoked marijuana for the first time and the next night I took LSD. I was experimenting with drugs and Rock n’ Roll, getting high was all I was doing.

 My brother came home from Vietnam and we had a party. I remember I rolled joints for about an hour and we smoked some weed and then I did some LSD. I got mad at my girlfriend and drove to Anahuac, Texas. I ran out of gas, went to get gas, returned the gas can, and ended up taking the moneybag. Got arrested, went to jail, got out, and received eight years probation from 1971 to 1979. Had to report every month about an hour from Houston. Kept using and one day I went next door to borrow some weed from a neighbor named Ross and he had a rig with speed in it and offered to fix me, so I held out my arm and he fixed me so I started doing speed.

 In 1972 we moved away to the other side of town. I was at my Mom’s when the police came and arrested me so I went to jail with no bond because I was on probation already for nine counts of possession and a felony marijuana case. My brother made my bond several times before I got busted because they didn’t know I was on probation, then they found out that last time, so it was automatic that I was arrested. Nine months later I got out of jail. While I was locked up my brother’s wife died. They had a baby daughter Heather, so I moved in with my brother and got loaded and we just used.

 A few months passed and I was at my Mother’s house, November 20, 1973, Sunday night. I’d seen my brother drive by in his car so I went to my Mom’s and then we went home. We stopped and got some beer and when we got home we smoked some weed. My brother was talking and writing as we got high. He gave me some downers. We were getting pretty messed up so I took him from the kitchen table and put him on the couch then I went to the bedroom. When I came to I realized what was happening. I thought “O GOD! NO! PLEASE! NO!” So I went next door and asked a neighbor to take a look. He just opened the door and said “He’s gone, I’ll call an ambulance.” They came and started screaming “Why did you wait so long to call!” I had to clean up the apartment in case the police came. We went to the hospital and a couple of his friends told me that I’d better not tell who gave him the dope. My Mother unplugged the machine because the doctors told her he was brain dead. This was November 23, 1973. A little while later we had the funeral.

 I started using and about three weeks later.  I was depressed so I got some methaqualudes (horse tranquilizers) from a pharmaceutical salesman I met and decided to end my life. People were knocking on the door after my mother went to work and I was just handing drugs through the door telling them I had something to do. I remember that I ate twelve and one would knock out a horse. I wanted to just die. Something told me to call someone and tell them what I did so I called my sister Charlotte and told her to get me a room at the cemetery because I was on my way. They got an ambulance there to the apartments and the management let them in and they got me to the hospital in time.

 A few days later, I was seeing somebody, a girl named Theresa, and she wanted me to meet her friend Margaret. I started getting high with her and one day while loaded at her Father’s house, after we smoked weed and ate some pills, I nodded out in his easy chair. I came to and he said he didn’t appreciate us coming into his house loaded cause he had small children running around. I told him, “No sir, we wouldn’t never do that.” 

 He said he would not let me see his daughter unless we went to a meeting. I said “when’s the meeting?” He said “next Tuesday at 7:00 p.m.” I said I’d go and the day of the meeting we went to Palmer Drug Abuse. There were a lot of people there, maybe seventy-five. My Dad had come and gotten me the week before and took me riding around town trying to find me some help. He didn’t know what or where to go, what I needed, what kind of help. But it was good he was always there for me when I needed him.

 After a while I found out there was a Narcotics Anonymous meeting Wednesdays at St. Joseph’s Hospital in the Cullen Family Building in Downtown Houston from eight to nine o’clock. I started going to the meeting. Alive and Kicking was the name of the group and it only met once a week. This was early 1974.  I went to the other fellowship also. I had a slip after 90 days had another slip after 90 days more, and had another slip after 60 days, but on September 20, 1974, a Friday night after about a month of me using, Hank and Danny came by to see me so we talked. It was about 7 pm. I knew Hank’s family, I used with him on the streets. I just met Danny in the program, but I knew he was OK, though. Both of them were clean. I decided to go with them. I was just high and didn’t have a habit because I hadn’t been shooting any drugs, Thank God!

 We went to Danny’s parent’s house and I went in the back bedroom and came down. His brother came in and stumbled over me, he came in from a date, turned on the light after he stumbled over me and said “Gary Homan, what are you doing?” I said, “Man, I’m coming down.” He said “Great!”

 The next day I set my clean date: September 21, 1974 and started back going to meetings. I went to NA on Wednesdays. Palmer Drug Abuse and the other fellowship. At 90 days clean I started chairing the NA meeting, picking someone to lead the meeting every week. I had a sponsor and at 60 days I started working with others.

 The first guy was named Bobby, I took him home, took him to some meetings, and after about 18 days and I heard him talking on my Mother’s phone about drugs. I told him that he would die if he hung with them people and he was gone the next day. He called me about four times telling me he had some good dope and invited me over to get high. I said, “No.” and told him I would like to see him if he wasn’t holding or loaded. I never saw him again alive.

 I went to an NA meeting we started at New Directions Juvenile House and found out Bobby died. Went with my sponsor to his house and talked with his family after the meeting. They were all drinking and drugging. I few nights later I went to Hyde Park Funeral Home to see Bobby and say goodbye. I walked up to the casket, looked in at a seventeen year old kid that went out to have a few drinks and someone had a bag of drugs and he went home and got up in bed and ate them all. I said goodbye, but as I was standing there it occurred to me that this is a relapse. Powerlessness over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable. I understood Step One and the fact that I had a disease called addiction. I think I accepted Step One entirely. I haven’t been able to forget that and I haven’t had any trouble with Step One since then or trouble being honest with myself. I went to my sponsor upset about this and he said, “Don’t worry, this won’t be the last time.” Boy, was he right.

 Another guy, Phil, would come in, go out and get drunk, and come back every couple of months, then one time his girlfriend called the police and he went to jail. He took his shirt off and hung himself. I went to the funeral home and said goodbye.

 I celebrated my first year about that time - all over town. I took my Mom to a meeting to celebrate my first year clean. It was great. She was so proud of me staying clean. A lot of meetings, a lot of caring and sharing, sponsorship, step work, and making friends went into that first year.

 The second year I got my own apartment. I remember my old girlfriend came back. She was married with a one-year-old and a three-year-old. We were seeing each other and about four months later she came by to say goodbye. I was hurt. I thought about using but instead I called my sponsor up and shared with him what was happening. I stayed clean. On the third year I met my wife and I was afraid to get into a real relationship. She went home and the next year we were married. She had my daughter February 23, 1981. I went and got my Mom and bought her to the hospital to see Michelle. I was thirty years old with seven years clean. I got a steady job a few years before so I was happy being married, working, and now having a kid. We went to meetings regularly, had friends, went camping, fishing, etc. In 1983, I quit my job and started selling, I was selling outdoor electric signs. I had a few addicts come and work for me from the group and we had a lot of fun going all across Texas selling signs.

 In 1992 I lost my Mom and Dad, shortly after that I lost my job and was depressed for about three years. I choose not to get on medication. I didn’t want anything controlling how I felt or being dependent upon a chemical. I started gambling every chance I could. My wife told me she was moving out with my daughter, and that was tough. So they left and I went my way. I started driving Yellow Cabs for about five years and I went to the Casino every week and blew the money on gambling. I didn’t make any meetings during that period of time, but not once did I want to drink or use. About 2001 I got a knot on my neck – woke up one morning and it was there.  I didn’t have it checked until about a year later. I got mad at admitting, threw the paper work down, and walked out. A few months went by and I started going back to meetings and found out I was a grandfather, my daughter had a baby. I started coughing up blood and having nose bleeds about November 2002 and went to the hospital and found out I have cancer and it has spread in my lungs. They said that I have about three to six months to live and there’s nothing they can do. I called my nephew Jeff and he came to the hospital a few days later. My ex-wife and my daughter came to see me. I hadn’t seen them in about four years.

 I got out of the hospital and prayed with a friend almost two months ago and I haven’t coughed up blood or had any nose bleeds in about a month and a half now. I met my grandson and I’ve called about a hundred and fifty people I’ve known in the last 28 plus years since I’ve been clean: 9.21.74. One person was using and everybody else was clean. Out of a hundred and fifty people. That’s pretty good.

 My friends have been there for me. I appreciate all everybody has done. I had given my daughter my twenty-eight year chip that I received in September of 2002 in the birthday meeting. I needed a chip so I called World Service and explained that I had given my chip to my daughter and I explained why and I gold chip in the mail with XXVIII, 28 years, on it. That was my Christmas present and I opened it up and could not believe it, I was so surprised. It made me cry. I called Bo S., my sponsor, and shared this with him and shared with the group.

 Well Christmas is over now and I am just taking it one day at a time. I just talked with my daughter and I know this will be hard on everyone, but I decided to let everybody know where I am at and what’s going on and let my family, my immediate family and my NA family, love me until the end. God, I have been blessed with so many friends in this program. I just want to say in the end of my life that I have been touched by so many people in my clean time. I can’t list them all. I just want to die clean and I know that not having any treatment for this disease is the best thing for me. I just hope I’m able to see my sponsor and my best friend Bruce at the end of the month at our regional convention at the end of this January and my friends before I get too sick to make meetings. I want to thank everyone that has helped me and my family through this. Yes, I am afraid. I’m human, but I feel that with NA I will be alright no matter what happens because I have people that believe in my and want to help me in my recovery. It’s great having people who care about you, that will be there for you when you need them, and care about what happens to you. I hope that this might help someone and if I can be quoted on how I feel about Narcotics Anonymous, my family, by the way, it would be:

 “I’ve always said, if I could touch someone and give them the desire to be clean I gladly would, but I can’t. But you all have touched me and for that I thank you.”

 Love Always,

 Gary H.  9.21.74

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