Ivan F.
DOB: 2/10/50; Brooklyn, N.Y. Lives: Athens, Ohio.
I visited nine different countries and I was arrested in seven of them.
Click Here for Addict Out of the Dark and into the Light – 36_Ivan.mp3
I was born in 1950 in Brooklyn, New York. The first six years of my life, I didn’t get into any trouble, until the first ten. At the age of ten I got picked up for shoplifting. At the age of eleven I stole my first car. I didn’t take my first drug until I was eleven and a half. What that tells me is that I was addicted long before I started putting drugs into my body.
I grew up into a family not talking, not trusting enough, not feeling. And that was the same way my father was brought up into his family. My grandfather being an addict, dying from an overdose, and my father brought me and my two brothers up dealing with it the only way he knew how to: not trusting, not talking, not feeling. Today, because of my recovery, I know that my son doesn’t have to grow up that way.
At the age of eleven and a half, I asked my father if I could drink some beer. He sat there with a cigarette in one hand and a can of beer in the other. He said: “Don’t smoke cigarettes and don’t drink beer.” I didn’t do what he said; I did what he did.
It progressed rather quickly for me. At fifteen I started smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol. I didn’t do pretty well in high school. My parents put me into a private school. They went through a terrible divorce. At that time both of my parents drank abusively. I was physically abused by my father. It had a big impact on me. I wanted to get back at my parents. I started to care more about my friends. I no longer idolized my father. My friends were more important.
I started wearing bell bottoms. My father called me a faggot and I told him that was a stupid thing to say. I tried to get back at my parents by hurting myself, by using drugs blatantly, bringing friends over to the house, smoking, dope, drinking their alcohol. In total defiance of their authority.
I did very well in private school. I got a couple of A’s and a couple of B’s, which was new to me, and my father didn’t say, “Hey, great, man, two A’s.” He said, “What are these two B’s?” I got three A’s and a B. No matter how hard I tried to please my Dad, how hard I tried to meet his expectations, it was never good enough. I came to the realization that I wasn’t going to be able to please him, that I would have to please myself.
I went to college to basically stay out of the draft, and avoid the Vietnam war. It didn’t work out. I was flunking out of college, so I dropped out. Went back to New York, hooked up with some friends, and we dealt drugs for nine months. I believe Nixon was in office at the time. It was “America love it or leave it.” So we decided we were going to leave. And we sold drugs fore nine months and we saved up some money for round-trip tickets to Europe.
In the nine months that I sold drugs, I did several things that I said I would never do. I said I would never take LSD, and I did. I’ve been busted with possession of LSD. I said I would never use sleeping pills because they were a down instead of a high. I was at a party one night. There was tiny Nembutal, little yellow pills. I’ll just do six of them, and passed out for a day and a half.
My parents committed me to a mental institution when I woke up. I got free room, free board, and free Valium. It was no big deal, fifteen days’ observation. I also said I swore I would never stick a needle in my arm. The first time I ever did I ended up getting hepatitis. Three months later I spent three weeks in the hospital. During that nine month period I wasn’t aware of any problems. It wasn’t until after I came into recovery.
I went to Europe. I visited nine different countries and I was arrested in seven of them, all drug or alcohol related. Came back to the United States after a year. I have never been to a demonstration. My goal in life was to get high. Moving to Ohio, abusing the way I did, did not hurt my parents six hundred miles away. It may have hurt them somewhat, but it basically hurt me most.
Traveled around, went to Haight-Ashbury. Hung out in California, and San Francisco, at the end of the Haight-¬Ashbury days. Keep on going back to Athens, Ohio. Eventually went back there, stayed for a little bit, and decided my problem in life was that I didn’t have any money. I moved back to New York and hooked back up with one of my friends that I went to Europe with who was selling drugs. I started meeting some pretty influential people in the “needless of goodness” and started making lots of money, and I started using drugs a lot.
I’d take one drug and mix it with another and then do this one and then that one and just did various combinations. I’d shoot LSD and heroin together, throw up because of the heroin, and then hallucinate on it because of the LSD. I didn’t enjoy the buzz at all, yet I did it more than once. Same thing with thorazine. I never considered them to be a high, but yet when there was nothing else around I would take them.
I also swore, because when I got hepatitis the first time I used a needle, I wouldn’t do it again, but two years later I was shooting up again. I guess my favorite thing was speedballs — cocaine and heroin together. It was like going to the top of the Empire State Building and jumping off. Which I wouldn’t recommend to anybody.
I ended selling drugs for a year and a half, and started getting paranoid because everybody sort of knew everybody. All that coke and stuff. Sitting up at three o’clock in the morning, saying, “Ah, I’m not going to do this anymore. I can’t stand the way it makes me feel.” Then two days later I’d be sitting in the same chair, three o’clock in the fucking morning, saying the same thing.
I had to get out of there. So I sold my hash connection to my coke connection. Moved back to Athens, Ohio. The only money that I had was the money that I had gotten from that last deal. I had spent all the money kind of easy come, easy go I opened up a clothing store, and about a year later I got together with some other friends and we opened up a bar. And after a short period of time I sold the clothing store to buy more interest in the bar. I owned it for ten years.
In that ten year period a lot of physical things happened to me. The emotional stuff at the time I couldn’t relate to. If today I can look back on my life and see the pain I caused myself. My drug use was so heavy that I couldn’t feel anything. I just went through day after day after day.
I thought my problem was that I had no will power. And it was explained to me in recovery that I had a ton of will power because I would go out and get beat-up and throw-up and get arrested and spit at and whatever, fighting with friends, and then I get up the next day and do it again. What that tells me is that I had an incredible amount of will power.
The problem was my will to use drugs. I didn’t know how to change that and at the time I didn’t even want to. At twenty two, I had a drug problem, enjoying it but I still believed I was enjoying it too much, the situation being that I felt better when I was using drugs than when I wasn’t. But I didn’t feel the way that drugs used to make me feel when I first started using. I can see that today, but I couldn’t see that at the time.
I severed a tendon in my right thumb and I can’t bend the knuckle in the top portion of my thumb. The more I used the worse I felt, and the worse I felt the more I used drugs.
I was picked up twice for DWI — beat it one time. I was convicted of DWI the second time. At the age of twenty nine I got married for all the wrong reasons. I thought if I got married then everything will be better and really all I did acquire was an excuse to use drugs. People would say, “Why do you take so many drugs, and why do you take so much?” I would say, “Because my wife is on my back.”
In 1980 I started having seizures from drug overdose, at least that is what the doctor thought. I started flapping around on the floor like a fish out of water. I was always blatantly honest, except when I didn’t want to be. The doctor said, “Have you been using drugs?” I said, “Yeah.” “How much?” I said, “three hundred milligrains of dilaudid.” He said, “Well, you had a drug overdose!” I couldn’t understand how it could be a drug overdose when I was used to using five hundred milligrams.
I know today what was called addictive intolerance, that my body was trying to tell me something there, that I couldn’t handle it anymore. I had my fourth seizure when my wife was six and half months pregnant, and in the scrimmage and everything, her trying to get help, she went into labor. That night we gave birth to a one pound, fourteen ounce baby boy who had a seventy per cent chance that he would die. Of course, that’s pretty high chances, and if he didn’t die there was a seventy per cent chance that there would be something majorly wrong with him. So he was hospitalized the first two and one half months of his life in Columbus Children’s Hospital.
After about five weeks, I said if my son is going to live for me then I’m going to live for him. I knew I was going to have to stop using drugs because I was dying. My son came home from the hospital in August. I had been seeing a drug counselor a little bit, wanting to control my drug use, as always substituting one drug for another. I am not a heroin addict; I’m doing cocaine. I’m not a coke head; I’m eating acid. I’m not an acid freak; I’m smoking pot. I’m not a pothead; I’m drinking alcohol. I’m not an alcoholic; I’m shooting heroin. And all I wanted to do was stop doing everything. I just wanted to drink alcohol and smoke pot like everybody else.
What happened was I smoked ten times as much and drank five times as much as I had been, and all it was a substitution of one drug for another. Coming back from a Frank Zappa concert, tripping my brains out on mushrooms. The police were outside my bar and I said, I’ll stop in and see what’s going on. I stepped outside of my car and I got slammed up against the car. A plainclothesman handcuffed me and stuck a second degree felony in my pocket: aggravated trafficking.
At that point I was ready to seek treatment. I am ready to do something about this. I think I went to treatment initially for two reasons. I wanted to see my son grow up, and number two I wanted to stay out of prison. I really don’t believe that the overall thing was to stop using drugs. But shortly after I got there I realized that the only way I was going to change my life was to put down the drugs. I thought that, you know, what I have here is a drug problem. Of course, six months later, being clean and still having major problems in my life, I began to realize that the problem was me.
And I am still working on that problem today. I went through thirty five days of treatment and after that I was introduced to programs of recovery. I got involved in several programs. I went to a halfway house in Omaha, Nebraska, for three months. I had my second degree felony reduced to a third degree on a technicality. Fought it in a court of law, had a hung jury. So I ended up copping a fourth degree plea on a drug abuse possession.
I went up before the judge — owned a bar for ten years, paid taxes, had a six-month-old kid, been through four months of recovery, working door-to-door selling cookware, volunteering my services in an adolescent treatment center. I figured I was a shoe-in for probation. The judge gave me six months to five years in a state pen. Fortunately, after thirty days he shocked me out and I was put on probation for five years.
At three years clean and continuous abstinence from drugs, I got involved in carrying the message of recovery to other addicts seeking help from active addiction. The 12 steps of recovery have helped me to be able to live with myself, help me to be able to forgive myself, see myself for who I am and allow God to make those change in my life. Today I have just over six and one half years clean and it’s been a miracle for a very long time to be able to maintain that. I look back here, I was four months clean and no money, I just lose my business, and at five months clean, I was in the state penitentiary.
Both my grandfathers had died in the last six years. My Dad is in the hospital right now, had a sever heart attack, and a few strokes, and may, never be the same. There are so many excuses that I could have used to go back out and use drugs again, but, they aren’t good enough for me, not anymore. I believe I have truly surrendered to the disease of addiction and turned it over to the care of a Higher Power.
I’m not a religious person, although I was born in the Jewish faith. I can’t deal with not being able to eat ham, bacon, lobster and all those great kinds of foods. Earlier on in my drug using days, around the age of seventeen and eighteen, I felt like there was something missing in my life, because I didn’t have that belief system.
I started looking around at the Buddhist religion. You had to drink tea and eat brown rice and that didn’t cut it. I checked out the Hare Krishnas. They had this food and stuff. They didn’t have any carrots or nothing orange on the plate. I was tripping a lot of the time and looking for them colors. They said we don’t eat carrots because Swami B. doesn’t eat carrots. I said this is a bunch of bull and I couldn’t find anything to fill that void in my life.
But the drugs were working pretty good and that’s what I went with. And I do believe that drugs were my Higher Power for many, many, many years. When I finally put them down the void was there again and I needed to find some time. I needed 12 steps and the fellowship, a loving God, and other clean addicts helped me to see what spirituality was all about. Opening up and letting God into my life.
Today I believe that I can handle anything that comes my way because my Higher Power wouldn’t give me anything more than I can handle. Also, I believe things happen for a reason and I don’t even know what they are. I don’t have to figure everything out like I used to. I don’t have to be perfect, because I know I’m not. Neither does anybody else. Through the fellowship and my Higher Power, I’ve gained patience which is one thing addicts do not have. I’m still loving and caring.
However, I put myself on a much higher priority and try to care for myself first. I’ve got a certain amount of tolerance and acceptance in my life today. There are things my son does with me that even just a few years ago I would not have been able to tolerate. So God has seen to it that things are wonderful and every once in a while he puts something in my way that makes me stumble, because I need to and that stumbling for me is reminding me or giving me some humility to remind me where I’m at, who I am, and the things I need to do.
I’m not well, but I’m better. I’m making progress on a daily basis. I owe it all to my recovery program. Looking back on my life, I feel good enough about myself today where I don’t want to and don’t need to put drugs inside my body.
If they had a cure for this disease I wouldn’t take it because it’s not necessary. I believe that even normal social users would be better off if they didn’t use drugs at all. It’s just not necessary. There is no need for it in my life today. I’ve got my family back today. I have my life back today. I’m becoming the person that I was originally meant to be. No matter what, things are going to continue to get better. I have a lot of faith and a lot of hope and I have a lot of willingness.
From: Ivan F. – jus42day
to “Christopher Keeley, LICSW”
date Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 4:47 PM
subject Re: Ivan if your interested send a short bio
Ivan F is a recovering addict of 28 years with 27 years experience working with addicts seeking recovery.
I currently am Executive Director of a facility, in Cincinnati Ohio, which operates four houses three for men one for women. Two of the men’s houses are independent living after they have completed the residential recovery house program. Both the men’s & women’s programs are specifically designed to increase the life-long recovery success chances for each individual we serve. The residential program can be from six month to a year depending on the need. The residents pay for their own stay through full time employment and paying weekly rent.
I initially worked for nine years with adolescents both in a treatment program and serving as a prevention specialist in 10 school districts in four counties in Southeast Ohio. I moved to Cincinnati and for three years was the director of an Intensive Outpatient Program working with individuals with different or multiple addictive behaviors, including Sex & Love, Gambling, Eating, Exercise, Spending, as well as, alcohol and other drugs. I then took over and developed and established a men’s recovery house north of Dayton Ohio, where I worked for eight years. I have been Executive Director of Serenity Consultants for the past five years.
My philosophy on addiction and recovery is not of the main stay. I do not agree with most of the nationally renounced leaders in the field. I do think and operate outside the box. Our current success rate at our houses is 5-10 times, that of the national average, depending on what you call a success.