{"id":26,"date":"2014-01-02T00:06:45","date_gmt":"2014-01-02T00:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nashvillerecovers.org\/wordpress\/?p=26"},"modified":"2014-01-02T00:06:45","modified_gmt":"2014-01-02T00:06:45","slug":"philips-story-ex-drug-dealer-has-three-years-clean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/2014\/01\/02\/philips-story-ex-drug-dealer-has-three-years-clean\/","title":{"rendered":"Philip\u2019s story: Ex-drug dealer has three years clean"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy New Year! To help kick things off, I want to tell you the story of one of my best friends in recovery, Philip, 30, from Antioch, who has three years clean. Take it away, Philip, or \u201cPhillippe,\u201d as I like to call him!<\/p>\n

I grew up in Chicago, on the South Side. I grew up without a father; the streets was my father. I was infatuated with the gangbangers and the drugs, the people making fast money. The love they had with each other, or I thought they did, and the money they were making.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Philip<\/a>In my neighborhood, everybody was doing it. My homeboy, G, showed me how to make money, protect myself, shit like that. I started selling drugs before I moved to Nashville.<\/em><\/p>\n

And when I got here, I started selling drugs. And with selling drugs, I started getting high. I met a few guys who were moving a lot of cocaine, so I formed me a team to make some money. But in the midst of it all, I was getting high. Cars, women, clubbin\u2019 every night. I was a drunk, a pill head, I loved Ecstacy.<\/em><\/p>\n

I thought I was happy but I don\u2019t think I really was, probably. Then it came crashing down in \u201906 when I caught a charge, possession of cocaine with intent to sell. That was my first big boy charge. I went to jail for a little bit, got out, starting getting high again. Still selling drugs. I got used to the good life. The whole time I knew I was messing up but I couldn\u2019t stop it.<\/em><\/p>\n

I went to jail again, then I ended up going to rehab after two years doing time. That\u2019s when my life changed. I started to recover. I started going to meetings, met some good people who got me in the right direction.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now I live a better life. It still has its ups and down, but I always got somebody to call. I\u2019m happy, most of the time. The best part of it is getting to enlighten somebody like somebody enlightened me. Especially the kids. I love the kids.<\/em><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s so cool to watch Philip interact with some of those teens down at the Youth Opportunity Center at 17th & Charlotte. My favorite thing to watch is Philip touching the shoulder of one of those teens and saying, \u201cHow\u2019s it goin\u2019, little homie?\u201d<\/p>\n

Thanks for sharing your story, Philip, and for being my friend. If you\u2019re in recovery and want to tell your story here, please email me at brad@npponline.org.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll start getting back into some topic blogs soon. Next week: Recovery book thumpbers! That should be fun, and please\u00a0email me if you\u2019d like to get in on that convo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy New Year! To help kick things off, I want to tell you the story of one of my best friends in recovery, Philip, 30, from Antioch, who has three years clean. Take it away, Philip, or \u201cPhillippe,\u201d as I like to call him! I grew up in Chicago, on the South Side. I grew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}