Brady grew up in a family that was very disconnected. Everyone seemed to do their own thing every day. Both of his parents had an addiction to drugs, but his parents tried to hide it from him. After getting his girlfriend pregnant, he decided to get married to try to do the honorable thing. At 25, he started working at a liquor store and began drinking very heavily.
While drinking at work one day, a man came through the drive-thru and had cocaine. Brady decided to try it and at 26 he developed a cocaine addiction within a very short period of time. He started using cocaine to wake him up and alcohol to help him when he needed to sleep.
Eventually, he got a job working for a phone bank where he maintained a job for two years. During those two years, he was not only drinking and doing cocaine but also started using pain pills. After injuring his back, Brady’s mother gave him a pain pill to try to ease the pain. He liked the way that it made him feel and began using them frequently. Within a year of working at the bank, he realized that he needed the drugs and alcohol to feel the way that he wanted to feel. He tried to stop using at one point because he was spending so much money so quickly. He wasn’t worried about health risks or legal risks. He just cared about decreasing the amount of money he was spending on drugs and alcohol.
Things Fall Apart
After working at the bank for about a year and a half, Brady’s mom overdosed on Xanax and Oxycodone. This caused his addiction to spiral because of the loss of his mother put him in a bad place emotionally. He started drinking all day and night, while still doing drugs to try to numb his feelings.
Eventually, the drinking led to Brady developing pancreatitis. He was hospitalized and then lost his job because he had missed so many days. He missed ample days before he was hospitalized and the days that he missed during his hospitalization was the last straw for his employer. He didn’t fight the firing because all he cared about was drinking more and more alcohol. He ended up getting pancreatitis three times over the next year. The alcohol was doing so much damage to his body that it was slowly falling apart.
In 2009, a doctor told Brady that everyone only has so much that they can drink. He was told that he had already drunk all that his body could handle. All that he heard was that he needed to stop drinking. He assumed that it meant he could still do all of the other bad habits that he had been doing. Brady detoxed from alcohol but didn’t stop taking drugs. He gave up drinking alcohol and switched to using drugs on a regular basis. He was so addicted to the drugs that he showed up to his mother’s funeral strung out. He didn’t know how to handle the situation in any other way.
Deeper into Addiction
For the next eight years, Brady ended up getting arrested many times for theft and for writing fake prescriptions. At 32, he started using heroin because it was more affordable and became even more addicted. He became very depressed after his father died.
Brady started to feel as though everyone would be better off if he wasn’t around. He thought that his life was meaningless. He went back and forth into rehab and eventually his wife had enough and left him. After she left, he considered suicide because he was so depressed. He went to the pawnshop to pawn his daughter’s flute. On the way, someone said to him that he needed to take care of himself. He didn’t know who the person was. He pawned the flute, but then couldn’t find any dope for a few days.
He decided that he was going to kill himself and went to cut himself but couldn’t do it. He started to pray and told God that if he hated them to just kill him. He knew he couldn’t do it anymore and wanted to be able to live a better life.
At this point, he calls a company to come and pick him up to take him to rehab. He shows up to the detox facility and the guy that talked to him when he was going to pawn his daughter’s flute was there. He asked if Brady had heard what he said, and the man said that he used to work with him. Brady asked why he told him to take care of himself and he said that Brady looked like he was going to do something bad.
Brady Finds Hope
The man at the counter suggested that Brady went to rehabilitation for getting help for drug addiction. He thought that he couldn’t afford it but found out that the state would pay for it. During detox, he went to group meetings and started reading an Alcoholics Anonymous book. He thought that if he got all the help, he could get his life back, but that wasn’t the case.
He ended up relapsing and started drinking and using drugs again. He thought that it would make things better, but they made things much worse. He moved to Phoenix and ended up homeless. He met another homeless person and ended up doing heroin intravenously for the first time. He overdosed. A week later he realized that he needed to get professional help. He was able to get sober again and got a job as a busboy. He eventually moved his way up in the business and started running three restaurants. This is when his recovery took a backseat to his work. This led to him drinking and it made him realize what the disease really is. He started using drugs again and overdosed twice within five days. He lost his job, his apartment and even his son living with him.
He went to recovery again and was able to recover again. He worked with his sponsor and decided to start volunteering at the facility rather than working at the restaurants again. He went to meetings three to four times a day. He figured out that he needed to take steps to feel more comfortable. He created a strong circle of friends and is able to have a more fulfilling life. He puts his recovery first and Brady realizes that he has a life that is even better than before he started using. He has great relationships with his family and tries to give back whenever he can.
