Travis shares how the love and encouragement of Avenues Recovery staff and clients fueled his recovery and gave him a second chance in life.
I had nothing. I lost everything. I hit rock bottom and I kept digging.
It got to the point where I was ready to take my own life, and they had me a bed within 10 minutes. When I walked in and I was coming down the hall, I felt nervous because I was out of place. I was looking around. And as I was walking down the hall, a client walked up to me and was like, “How you doing, Travis? Welcome to the facility. This is a family. You're one of us now.”
And that kind of gave me a little bit of hope that something was going to change. We had each other's backs. We looked out for each other. We gave each other advice. We made sure nobody went without. We took care of each other like a family should take care of each other.
I really never had anybody to have my back. Like I had my family, but when I got into active addiction, they kind of disowned me. So having all of these people who actually got me and understood what I was going through really helped out a lot. All the facilitators, the counselors, the alumni coordinator, the people - everything here was beneficial to me because it's what I needed.
I felt alone, and I didn't feel like I deserved anything more than what was coming to me. So when I got here and I met these people and they started showing me love that I wasn't used to, it kind of changed my perspective on everything. Hope changed everything for me. Somebody showed me a little bit of common decency and love, and that changed my whole perspective on life altogether.
This ain't something that you do alone. This is something that you do with other people because it's a We thing, not a Me thing. Just give yourself a second chance at life, because anything is possible.