Beating Addiction – One Man’s Journey of Recognition and Recovery

 

Alcohol entered Scott Masi’s life early. He remembers helping his grandfather stomp grapes to make wine as a child. But when he started regularly drinking in his early teens, he knew he was different from his older sister and younger brother: “They could stop,” he says. “I couldn’t.”

From alcohol, he eventually moved to illegal drugs. By age 42, Scott says, “Alcohol and drugs identified me. They were in control.”

He tried and failed so many times to get clean. Then, one day in 2007, his aunt invited him to her house. When he walked in, he saw his entire Italian clan there: mother, father, sister, brother, aunts and uncles.

The family had called Love First, a Michigan-based organization that specializes in interventions and recovery. During the intervention, the family learned how they could support Scott – by getting him into treatment.

“They appealed to me to get help, to become the person they used to know,” Scott says. The real gut punch? “I saw my mother’s look of love and helplessness.”

He agreed to go to the Ascension Brighton Center for Recovery, where he spent 28 days in inpatient therapy. Then, he moved to outpatient treatment at other facilities for six more months.

He has been sober ever since. Scott now advocates for other people with addictions as a referral and outreach specialist at the Brighton Center for Recovery.

Helping yourself

Through treatment, Scott began to understand that his drug and alcohol abuse wasn’t a character flaw or moral failure.

“Addiction is a chronic illness, one I will have for the rest of my life,” he says. “It’s like hypertension, asthma or diabetes – there is no cure.” He also began to comprehend the role alcohol had played in his life. “It had taken me to all the wrong places.”

At the root of all this, he finally realized, was his poor opinion of himself.

“My self-esteem was so low I could crawl under a door,” he says.

Alcohol and drugs helped him keep these feelings at bay. But his family intervention sent him an even stronger message that he was loved and that he deserved a better life. Treatment showed him how to get there.

To cut his chances of relapse, he took a night job so he could continue treatment during the day and began volunteering at the Brighton Center. On the second anniversary of his sobriety, the center recognized his efforts and hired him as a full-time employee, first in data analysis and then in his current position. The job gives him a purpose in life, he says. “Having a sense of worth is amazing.”

Addiction may end, but obsession won’t