Ninety days can be thought of as a relatively brief span of time or an eternity.  Of course, perspective factors in all things and as a man who has been actively addicted to crystal meth for the good part of eight years (or shall I say an eternity? Again, perspective.), the ninety days clean and sober I celebrate today are tantamount to infinity.  Sobriety has returned me to me, to the present time in my own nation, to the real world.  I’m here, and, more important, I am happy to be here, dare I say happy to be me?  dare I declare, “happy?”

I know the wise and caring souls who have steered me to this swell location would insist I commend myself above all others, but I credit in equal measure a place called Frank’s House.  Now, Frank’s House is far more than a mere property, more than a building with numerous bedrooms, terraces, walkways, picnic benches, arbors, refrigerators, driveways, offices, bathrooms and sheds.  It’s a feeling, a concept, a conglomeration of personalities who are warriors engaged in a concerted and ongoing effort to combat an enemy to the human spirit, an adversary with seemingly boundless weapons of mass destruction, a force of evil more demonic than Satan himself: a place for victory over such peril, a place of recovery.

Ninety days ago Frank’s House took me in, gave me cozy sanctuary and bounteous food, surrounded me with brothers in recovery, counselors and therapists, televisions, hot water, Big Books, a dog, a reservoir to walk around, groups, meetings, commitments, opportunities to be of service, shoulders on which to cry, a means to find the channels to those tears, insights, love and a road map to self-love. Oh and friends with intimate knowledge of the ruinous void that was my existence under the influence, whose entry into my life has replenished the stock of soulfulness and unconditional love, enabling me to replace deadness and drugs with meaning and fulfillment.