Christian, 45, has been at the Gault House Sober Living Environment for over a year. Christian has been addicted to alcohol, weed and a little bit of everything else. He started drinking and smoking pot early in life, and it rapidly progressed in volume and frequency. At his bottom, he was physically unable to walk into the store to buy more booze and resorted to paying strangers to bring him his booze to drink in his truck, where he was sleeping at the time. After numerous DUIs, a devastating d...
Dec 15, 2020•30 min
Carlos, 45, grew up in the East Bay and Northern California. In his teenage years, after numerous Grateful Dead shows and experimentation with using and selling psychedelics, he was eventually consumed by alcoholism and trapped in a cycle of relapse brought about by cannabis use and his drinking. This is the story of how he came to arrive at the Gault House SLE, and what his hope and inspiration for recovery look like today. He joins Paul Noddings to tell his journey to us, providing wisdom and ...
Dec 01, 2020•1 hr 3 min
Jeff K’s best times with drugs consisted of hiking trips where he and his friends went hunting for psychedelic mushrooms. He remembers it as a fun experience of connecting with friends, something that he didn’t to come down from. But then there’s the flip side. As Jeff progressed into alcoholism and meth addiction, he started to struggle in leading a decent life and cultivating fulfilling relationships. There were times he wanted to kill himself and getting arrested was just a normal part of his...
Nov 17, 2020•20 min
Elijah is a 26-year-old Oregonian who began smoking pot as a sophomore in high school. He soon began drinking and eventually turned to cocaine which took over his life. Unable to hold onto a job and grappling with mental health concerns, he is newly sober (13 days at the time of recording) and a resident at the Gault Street Sober Living Environment. He has never been to a treatment facility and is determined to hold onto his mental clarity through sober living.
Oct 08, 2019•24 min
Robert is a 61-year-old man from Southern California and a current resident of the Gault Street House Sober Living Environment. The son of alcoholic parents, he picked up his first drink at only ten years old, malnourished, afraid, and seeking an escape. His drinking led to cocaine use and jail, and finally a desire to free himself from the misery of addiction. He has been struggling towards sobriety for a long time and has renewed his commitment to sobriety with a move to a Sober Living house. ...
Sep 24, 2019•47 min
Losing a loved one at a young age and having to grow up in an abusive environment can take its turn for the worse. With this kind of background, Dave, a client of The Gault House Sober Living Environment in Santa Cruz, California, eventually turned to marijuana, LSD, and meth at age fourteen. Spinning out of control, he later progressed to full-blown heroin addiction. Dave shares his entire story of addiction and recovery and the twelve steps he took to get to where he is now. Treading the spiri...
Sep 17, 2019•45 min
Everybody has a chance at a better life, even when that chance means reforming your life in prison. In this episode, Paul Noddings interviews Tommy who is a 43-year-old male from the Hayward area of San Francisco Bay. Tommy started using crystal meth at age 13 and was soon living a within-the-gang lifestyle. This led to a long period in prison which led to a desire to experience a different lifestyle. Tommy’s road to healing and recovery is inspirational. He offers some great advice to anyone wa...
Sep 10, 2019•50 min
The great Nelson Mandela once said, “If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.” This quote strongly applies to how Billy made his way through constant terror from bullies growing up. Having started weed at age eleven, he progressed to booze and drugs thereafter. In this episode, Billy shares his life story from childhood to present day, going to Genesis House, finding work as a bouncer, succumbing to alcohol, doing stand-up comedy,...
Sep 03, 2019•36 min
Dysfunctional family life tends to manifest for some people into addiction. Having learned he was adopted at a very young age, J.J. has since tagged himself as different from everybody else. He then spiraled into his story of addiction, beginning at 14 years old. A client at The Gault House Sober Living Environment, J.J. is on his recovery from his drug of choice, alcohol, along with meth. He shares his story with us on how he went through years of struggle, going in and out of his addiction acr...
Aug 27, 2019•48 min
A 26-year-old male shares his journey from alcohol in middle school to heroin in his mid-twenties and how his life fell apart. This is a powerful interview with wise words from a young man. Blake has been 95 days clean and sober. Will it last?
Jan 17, 2019•25 min
Andrea did not start using drugs until her twenties. She married and had children but she lost these to drugs and alcohol. Andrea has lived in her car for over a year but maintained an Executive Assistant job in Silicon Valley. Now Andrea has eleven days clean, will she be able to stay that way?
Jan 10, 2019•28 min
Luke had very little structure in his early teens. Smoking weed occasionally at eleven years old led to smoking pot heavily at thirteen. Luke is a big, strong, young man who was a stud on the football field. A broken arm introduced him to pain pills, which lead to heroin and then crack. He could not get off the drug train and would openly smoke crack on the Bart train system in San Francisco. A month in rehab would give his body a break but he was soon back onto the cycle of weed, pills, heroin,...
Jan 03, 2019•32 min
Katie was an athletic teenager, winning a national championship for springboard diving. A back injury led to too much idle time and Katie used that time to party, smoke weeds and drink beer. A car accident at age 21 added more idle time and heavier use of drugs and alcohol but then Katie met her husband and the two of them got sober, got married, bought a house and had the first of their two boys. Katie started drinking "socially" but soon her behavior was very anti-social, attacking her husband...
Dec 27, 2018•16 min
Sterling is a 34-year old male from Santa Cruz, California. He talks honestly about this addiction to heroin (and use of other drugs) that lasted for nine years. He came as close to losing a wife and two children that he loves. His honesty is inspiring.
Dec 20, 2018•39 min
Heather had ambitions of becoming a doctor. However, too much alcohol caused her to redirect her goals towards becoming a paramedic. After several years as a paramedic, Heather became a firefighter where she handled many horrific calls. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder crept up on Heather. With the Fire Departments being generally a heavy drinking “boys club,” Heather soon after joined into the drinking and then added cocaine by her own choice. Friends encouraged her to get into recovery. Now, Hea...
Dec 13, 2018•46 min
Whitney is a very attractive, slim, blonde, blue-eyed, white woman; not the typical look associated with severe drug addiction. Whitney had her wisdom teeth removed as a teenager and received Vicodin for the pain. This was her first abuse of opiate drugs and it led her to heroin and meth. For most of the past five years, Whitney has been homeless, living on the streets of Santa Cruz, California. Her addiction caused her to lose several jobs and to steal from homes and stores, where the hardware ...
Dec 06, 2018•19 min
Mike's parents divorced when he was eight years old. Their domestic violence affected him. He was drinking hard at twelve years old and looking for a group of people where he could fit in. He found Skateboarders and Punk Rockers were his people. Heavy alcohol use was his thing. Rehabs, jail, lost jobs did not help Mike. Now Mike is four months sober. Will his sobriety last?
Nov 29, 2018•38 min
Hayley was adopted as a baby to loving and caring parents. She did not party in high school; her early adulthood started well. At the age of 23, Hayley was awarded a court settlement after a car accident, and with the money she bought a home. This allowed her to live alone and to hide the volume and frequency of her drinking. Even her boyfriend didn't know she was doing cocaine so she could drink more alcohol. Hayley's downward spiral had started. She knew it was happening but she didn't want to...
Nov 22, 2018•19 min
Mike started using alcohol at age fifteen and progressed quickly to ecstasy, cocaine, norco, roxy and heroin. Mike was expelled from high school two months before graduation for selling marijuana cookies at school. After this, Mike sold loads of drugs to fund his own drug habit. He got into debt selling drugs and he felt sick every morning. This caused him to consider recovery. Now he is three months clean. He seems solid in his recovery but he could relapse at any time, just like any other addi...
Nov 15, 2018•18 min
Michelle is a single woman aged 29. Her parents did not provide a good environment for her and her siblings growing up. At age eleven, Michelle's uncle sexually molested her and used guilt to keep her quiet. Michelle was in denial that she had a problem with alcohol for a long time, until she had literally spent all her money on alcohol and had no source of income to buy more alcohol. Her honesty in discussing her journey is exceptional. Michelle has a positive attitude that shows the miracle of...
Nov 08, 2018•1 hr 19 min
Steve used marijuana as a gateway drug to alcohol. He started using marijuana at age thirteen with an older brother and some friends. By age fifteen, he got into alcohol. By age seventeen, he stopped using marijuana because it did not mix well with his heavy alcohol use. Everything Steve did had to have alcohol involved with it in order for him to find it fun. Steve was a functioning alcoholic until his mid-40s when his addiction caused his life to fall apart and he tried to drink himself to dea...
Nov 01, 2018•15 min
Meet Kendra, a thirty-four-year-old woman who shares her ten-year journey of back pain pills, heroin, homelessness and recovery. Kendra’s emotions are etched on her face. She is not the best narrator but her story is real, beginning with a car accident in her teenage years that caused her to suffer chronic back pain. The medications eventually progressed, and soon she was using and abusing pain pills and heroin by the time she was 24. Kendra soon found herself homeless and has attempted recovery...
Oct 23, 2018•15 min
Marty, a 31-year-old male, talks about his real-life experience with heroin addiction and his journey of recovery. He is a client of The Gault House Sober Living Environment in Santa Cruz, California and he bravely shares his inspiring story of overcoming the tough experiences and the mental battles with addiction. Starting with being diagnosed with cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, he talks about how that nihilistic view affected his decisions. He lays down the path to progression in taking pills and d...
Oct 09, 2018•54 min
Born to a teenage mother, Aquia, an African American female who is now 23 years old, started abusing alcohol at age 12 when she felt her mother loved men more than her and her brothers. That opened the door to drug abuse. Aquia started using Methamphetamine at the age of 18 and was living either on the streets or in jail. At age 22, Aquia was using heroin but all of her drug and alcohol use came to a stop when she came to Santa Cruz to get recovery. Now Aquia is living at Gault House in Santa Cr...
May 08, 2018•42 min
Ivy’s recovery from addiction was a long journey that started when she first got hooked on alcohol at the age of sixteen. Her relationship with alcohol led to cocaine and an abusive boyfriend who got her pregnant with a son. Soon after, she developed breast cancer which gave her unlimited access to pain killers. She reached such a low point in her life where her only options became ending it or getting sober. She opted to join a sober living home where she got a lot of support from people who un...
Apr 24, 2018•29 min
Insecurity is often the factor that leads to addiction and abuse of drugs. Growing up with Tourette’s, Clara found that smoking weed was an outlet from her illness which then lead to drinking and getting addicted to alcohol. At the age of 20, she knew it was becoming a problem when she cheated on the perfect guy and stole money from her parents. She got tired of being angry with herself and the people around her and chose to work the 12 Steps of Recovery. In her early days of recovering from alc...
Apr 17, 2018•13 min
Overcoming and recovering from an addiction is never easy. That is, if you keep choosing to do it alone. There are many individuals who travel down the road to recovery who need your support as much as you need theirs. A sober living environment isn’t a treatment facility. Rather, it houses a family of individuals who are serious about overcoming and recovering from their addiction. While it may sound like a shortcut to recovery, a sober living environment is a place for people who are clean and...
Mar 13, 2018•9 min
Curiosity plays a big role in every aspect of our lives. Stefan’s heroin addiction began with him being curious about drugs. He knew that he needed to experience the drug so that he can get the knowledge he was craving for. Although his addiction began with drinking a bottle of tequila at the age of twelve, this had negative effects on Stefan so he turned to smoking weed. This opened doors for him, one of which was shoplifting. Now, Stefan the House Manager at Gault House in Santa Cruz. Learn mo...
Mar 06, 2018•1 hr 36 min
Addiction comes to some of us like a wave of an innocent hand, or a margarita on our 15th birthday. Amanda’s spiral of addiction started like this and her wanting to fit in fueled it. The anxiety of going from high school to college made things go out of control when she started to cash out $70 for a gram of cocaine whenever she could cash it out. Amanda shares honest stories of being an addicted to alcohol and cocaine and her wonderful recovery.
Feb 27, 2018•29 min
Alcohol addiction starts when everything goes black after that first drink and all you want is to keep drinking even when you know that it’s the wrong thing to do. Food addiction is the same. Any kind of sweet was the new alcohol for recovered alcoholic Michelle Goldberger. Her craving for food was insatiable until she started working the twelve steps at the COR Retreat Center. Even with a 60-pound weight loss, she still battles with food addiction. The desire to eat a lot is gone with the help ...
Feb 20, 2018•40 min
