I never thought I’d end up in a Philly sober living home, let alone one in Fairmount, where the townhouses and new builds look like something outta a magazine. But addiction don’t care who you are or where you come from, and mine started simple enough—Vicodin, just a few here and there after I messed up my back working construction in South Jersey. A couple pills a week turned into a few a day and then wasn't long before it was a handful twice a day, then the opiate epidemic hit and the crackdown came around pandemic times. That's when scripts ran out, and I started buying ‘em off the street. That got expensive fast, so somebody put what seemed like a reasonable idea in my head—same high, but cheaper. That’s how I ended up smokin’ black tar heroin out of tin foil.
It didn’t take long for everything to fall apart. Seemed manageable at first, but you see that's what I've come to learn is the insanity of this disease. Something that seems "reasonable" or "manageable" to me, sounds completely bonkers to any normal Joe. So that month or so of seeming normalcy turned into a lost my job, lost apartment, and was couch-surfing by the 2nd or third month. Basically did that until nobody wanted me around anymore.
Lucky for me I ran out of ideas and ended up in a detox, the year was 2019, and after about 36 hours I couldn't stand it. The sweats, pardon my French here but the diarrhea, muscle cramps.. I couldn't stomach it. So I got a bright idea, a "brainstorm" as they call it in the big book. My second day my phone call out was not to my ma or sister, it was to a buddy who I knew usually kept a fair amount of percocet or opiate pills handy. Hadn't talked to him much since I graduated down the latter to heroin. He seems happy to hear from me and seemed like he was seeking some lower companionship in his addiction lifestyle. Perfect fit I thought, so he mentioned I could come crash a few nights on his girlfriends couch and they'd love to have me. So I did, I left that same day, crept out the side doors during free time. They didn't even lock the doors there, the idea is that it wasn't prison and if I didn't want what they had to offer at rehab then I could leave at any time. So I get to my pals, walked about 45 minutes to South Philly with a stuffed backpack of my clothes and a few Stephen King books I had brought to help pass the time. When i got to my pals place, it was nice to see him but all that was really on my mind was popping some kind of pill, anything to checkout again. And so I did, within about 20 minutes I had a few percocet in me. There it was, the sigh of relief I had sought for so long. I chain smoked a bit caught up with my bud and his girlfriend a few days and sought to budget the 6 percocet he gave me. That would be two a day I thought, that would be long enough to hustle up some money. But oddly enough, everyone I called to try to hustle up some sort of scheme or scam or middle man, didn't answer or seemed uninterested. As if I had the plague or somethin'. "Fine, I don't need em," I thought. Thought I would lean on my buddy a bit more. Prob was he seemed uninterested in giving me any more pills than the 6 he had offered. I had ate my last 2 that morning and was starting to sweat a bit.
It was some point around then when I came to a weird point, something I hadn't never felt before. I look back at it now and realize it was surrender. Thank God in hindsight for that situation because I think for me I needed some sort of proof that I was hopeless. I humbly called the detox center I had just left a few days earlier and thank God they said, "Be back tomorrow by 7am or we're giving your bed to someone else." Buddy I was there at 6am sharp, first time maybe ever I was early for anything. The rest of detox flowed way better, they declined to give me additional meds, I picked back up where I left off after the 2nd day and the started me back on some suboxone once in the mornings. After 3 days of that and another 4 days there white knuckling they said it was time to move on to rehab or my next stage of treatment.
somebody suggested a sober house—one of those real nice, upscale sober living home types.. At first, I laughed it off. Places like that weren’t for guys like me. But I had nowhere else to go, so I figured what the hell. But a friend I made in rehab said he would ask if I could go where he was going. Lucky for me they had beds and I did a PHP program so first leg of my stay was all covered by my insurance, which luckily I didn't screw that up. I had about a month to find work again so I could cover sober living for the next leg or get a room mate or somewhere to lay my head again after rehab. So I had a plan and I set it in motion.
When I showed up, I couldn’t believe my eyes. This wasn’t some skidrow halfway house with bunk beds crammed into a room. It was big, clean, quiet, structured, with a freaking indoor movie theater. Place was called My Philadelphia Sober Living and it saved my life. The kind of place where you didn’t just survive—you actually had a shot at rebuilding a life. Everybody had their own responsibilities, meetings to hit, and rules to follow. I won’t lie, I was a bit fussy to the staff at first but thank God they were patient with me. The structure, the accountability—it all felt like a lot. But after a while, I realized that was exactly what I needed.
For the first time in years, I was in a place where recovery wasn’t just possible—it was expected. The guys in that house weren’t just tryin’ to stay clean for a few weeks; they were buildin’ lives. Some were goin’ back to school, some were workin’ steady jobs, and some were just learnin’ how to live sober for the first time in their adult lives. It wasn’t easy, but every day in that house kept me further from the life I left behind.Fairmount ended up bein’ the perfect place for it. The neighborhood was safe, full of parks and coffee shops where you could actually enjoy yourself without feelin’ like temptation was right around the corner. And with so many AA meetings nearby, there was never an excuse not to go. That’s where I met the people who really kept me goin’—not just guys from the house, but old-timers who’d been through it all and had the kind of wisdom you don’t get from books.
A few years later now, and I ain’t just sober—I’m livin’ it up. Got a steady job, my own place, and a life that don’t revolve around getting high. That upscale sober house in Fairmount wasn’t just a place to crash—it was where I learned how to be a person again. And if you’re out there thinkin’ you’re too far gone, I’m tellin’ you, you’re not. Find a place that pushes you to be better, stick with the people who want to see you win, and give it everything you got. You might just surprise yourself.