My recovery story: Jeremy

By Jeremy Hartsell
So the purpose of this is to tell my recovery story so that we may bring hope to others. My childhood was okay. We weren’t rich, but my family worked their asses off so we had what we needed. I was raised with manners and did good in school.

When I was 15, my dad went to prison and it turned my life upside down. Neither side of the family wanted responsibility of me. I lived on the streets until I was 17 and moved to Arkansas from Texas by myself. I checked myself into high school and when they found out I was on my own, they called DHS. I got put into foster care and sent to a boys ranch.

I was a kid full of anger and rage. I ended up going to prison within a month of turning 18. In 1997, I discovered methamphetamine. I went back to prison two more times on non-drug-related charges. When I got out the last time, I was smarter. I earned my place with a motorcycle club where anger and rage were seen as assets and I finally found a group of people that accepted me.

Over the next few years, I continued using meth until my life started falling apart. I went to a 12-step treatment center and then into their sober living home. I was sober for about a year and got into a yelling match with one of the managers and got kicked out. They judged my program as not good enough. I went back out for 10 years, using meth on a daily basis until at the end, an 8-ball a day wasn’t working anymore.

I still remember the feeling of crying while hitting the pipe and the drug not working anymore. I thought about killing myself, but didn’t have it in me to pull the trigger. I gave the shotgun to my daughter and called my little brother and sister-in-law who had just come back into my life.

They bought me a bus ticket to Virginia Beach where I detoxed for a month at their house. Her sister worked for Hope for New Hampshire Recovery in Manchester, and brought me to stay in Richie’s Sober Living House.

I found SMART Recovery at the Hope Center there, and I also found out that people up here knew a lot about people coming off of opiates, but didn’t know much of anything about people coming off of methamphetamine. They couldn’t deal with my mental state.

So my sister-in-law brought me to Claremont and introduced me to the Hope Center staff here. Through their help and encouragement, I got a mental health evaluation, and got the meds I needed to level out my mental issues. But that’s not enough by itself. I also go to therapy and use the tools from SMART Recovery to manage my emotions.

I’ve been here since February 2017 and have been working on my recovery ever since. Recovery isn’t rainbows and daffodils, life still happens. I got into a relationship in early recovery and made poor decisions that put me in front of bath salts. The first few times, I was able to say no, but I eventually slipped. It reminded me of why I quit using in the first place. I got out of that situation instantly with the help of my sister-in-law.

That’s why I’m such an advocate for sober living in this community. I came all the way across the country, left everything I knew in order to find recovery, but I ended up slipping because I made a series of seemingly irrelevant decisions. I had no safe place I could live where drugs weren’t in my face.

I take full responsibility for my actions. That’s part of recovery. So it’s been almost three years since I came up here from Little Rock, Arkansas. In that time, I’ve joined the Americorps Community Resource Corps program through Dartmouth-Hitchcock and have been a part of the creation of The Center for Recovery Resources under TLC Family Resource Center’s umbrella when Hope closed its doors. I’m doing my second and final year of that as we speak.

I’m a Recovery Coach, a SMART Recovery Facilitator, have completed all the required training for my CRSW (Certified Recovery Support Worker), go to Sullivan County DOC twice a week for SMART-based programs for the TRAILS Program, co-facilitate Sober Parenting Journey with Liz Morse (another member of our great staff at the center) twice a week at the jail, and once a week at our center. All this because I decided to change my life.

I see judgment in a lot of stories in the paper lately. It saddens me. Three years ago, I was a person struggling with an addiction, I was a VIOLENT member of society, I had undiagnosed mental health issues, but I decided that I needed to change my life, and was fortunate enough to find a supportive group of people that instead of judging me, gave me the opportunity to grow.

Thank you for helping me and trying to understand my story, and allowing me to be living proof that people CAN and DO change.

Jeremy Hartsell is a member of the Americorps Community Resource Corps through Dartmouth-Hitchcock. He is placed at The Center for Recovery Resources in Claremont as a recovery coach and meeting Facilitator.