Harbor Care One-Hundred Percent Saved My Life

Hi! My name is Kurtis. I work for a treatment provider in Greater Nashua, helping others follow the path to their own best lives. People listen to me talk about sobriety, and I can tell they’re thinking, “come on, you’re BSing me.” When I come down on them for something, or hold them accountable for their decisions, they think I’m being a jerk, but I’m not. I’m being their best damned friend. And I’ll tell you why -- because I know where they’re coming from. I know what they need to do to get to where they need to go, and I know all this because I used to be them. 

Back in the day, I was pretty smooth. I convinced my family that I was trying to get sober whenever they confronted me about my drug habit. 

I convinced my family that I wasn’t selling drugs from my apartment. 

I convinced the courts that I deserved leniency by entering rehab whenever I got arrested. 

I convinced my mother that these same rehabs were death-traps with irresponsible staff so she would come pick me up and drive me home. 

I convinced her to let me stop at a pharmacy on the way home so I could pick up shampoo, when I was really meeting my supplier.  

I convinced myself that I would die if I tried to get sober, like my uncle, who got hit by a car.  

I convinced myself that my drug habit wasn’t really a problem because I still had a job, and could still pay my rent.   

I thought I was quite the trickster, the magician, the puppet-master, but the person I was really fooling was me. 

In the end, I lost my job, couldn’t pay my rent, and still wanted nothing but my next high. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t showering. All I wanted was to regain “that feeling,” and I wanted it badly enough that I was stealing from my mother, from my grandmother. I didn’t care who I hurt, or how much pain I was causing the people who loved me. 

Until one of those nights of perfect clarity.

It was one of those nights you’ll hear people in recovery talk about, when the drugs weren’t working for me anymore. I couldn’t get high anymore, just couldn’t reach that place where everything was great and nothing – absolutely nothing – mattered.  

I could see how messed up my life was with crystal clarity, and I couldn’t look away. I could see how I had wasted my school years just getting by, how I’d never had anything but a low-end job and probably never would. Worst of all, I could see how much hurt I was causing my entire family and I couldn’t NOT see it. My means of escape had abandoned me and I was forced to look at the ruin I’d caused. 

I know the thing to do in that moment would have been to call NH211 and try to get into a program somewhere, but I’d been in programs so many times that I knew they couldn’t help me. The only way out of the pain was to leave this world, I figured, so I grabbed all the opioids I had on me and ingested it all, every last bit.  

To my everlasting surprise, I woke up the next day.  

Hmmm.  Though living had turned into a spectacular failure, dying wasn’t working for me either. What to do, what to do?  

Despite my experience at various treatment centers, getting into rehab looked like the only option left on the table.  

But then I couldn’t get in. “Sorry, you don’t qualify for treatment.” “Sorry, your substance abuse isn’t severe enough to warrant treatment.” “Sorry, we don’t have beds available for anyone, no matter how severe their dependence is.” I just put the phone down on the table and just stared at it.  

And then a wonderful thing happened. The phone rang. Someone was calling me! It was Tanya from Harbor Care. She’d heard my message on her voicemail and determined we needed to do an assessment right then, right over the phone. 

Having gone over all her diagnostic questions with me she said, “I don’t know who told you what, but you need to be in high-intensity residential treatment. We have a bed and you’re coming now.” 

After all the false starts, and after all the times I went into treatment just to try to game the system, that moment on the phone with Tanya was the beginning of my recovery.  

She wanted me to drive over immediately, but I put it off a day because I was scared of change – the big life change I was facing.  

But the next day I did show up.  

The first few weeks of inpatient were tough. I was dope-sick and hating everyone, plus my old worldview was still operating. Because I’d spent my life up to that point manipulating those around me, I figured that the staff at Keystone Hall were doing the same to me. When Robyn, Brenda and Tanya talked to me about getting sober, I thought it was a load of crap. And Joe? Man, I hated that guy! He wasn’t letting me slide once inch; he knew what I was there to do and was holding me accountable.

I didn’t realize back then that many of these people were in long-term recovery themselves, and they were teaching me the hard-earned lessons from their own lives.  

Some of it sunk in, however. By the end of my high-intensity inpatient stay, I had done a lot of work, and I didn’t want to get high anymore…. 

But I also did. I still had that nagging voice in the back of my head. That is the moment I started making good decisions, because I went to Robyn and said, “Listen, I have $150 in my wallet, and as soon as I walk out that door I know I’m going to get high. Can you help me?” 

I put in my application for Keystone Hall’s low-intensity residential program and Robyn got me a bed there for three months.  

I was making progress, but recovery is a long road. I still believed I was better than the others. I didn’t recognize myself in those other people in the program… but of course that’s just the way substance abuse manipulates you. That’s the way it keeps you hooked – you don’t see yourself the way you truly are. But I was trying. I was putting in the work.   

A week into low-intensity residential we got locked-down for COVID-19. We weren’t able to go out to meetings anymore. It was a blessing, because it made me focus on myself. I got a sponsor. I attended Zoom meetings. I reached out to try to help others, and started doing 12-Step work. Fast forward three months, I was moving into a men’s sober living facility. Those guys were great! We watched out for each other, kept each other clean.  

All these things were things I had said I’d never do, but staff held me accountable every step of the way, so I did everything.  

The staff at Harbor Care just showed up for me. Always. They showed me a whole lot of love that I hadn’t felt in a while. And when I say that, I’m not trying to throw shade on the love my family gave me, and still gives me. Not one bit. It’s just that my friends, and my co-workers who have been through substance abuse and come out the other side, they understand me in a way that no one else can. I understand them too. I rely on them to catch me when I fall, to keep me honest, and I do the same for them. No one else can do that for us, because the gap of understanding is just too great. If you haven’t been chained to substances, you don’t know what to look for, and what to watch for. Do you know what I mean?  

If you want to know more about recovery services at Harbor Care, I encourage you to visit its Substance Use Services page, or just call 603-882-4848.  

I’m telling you, these guys 100% saved my life, and they can do the same for you.