When I first showed up at the Last House I was a broken, haunted person that saw no possibility of
turning my life around. I sure as hell did not think the Last House or AA had any shot at helping me.
Dustin gave me some advice during my first few days that has influenced how I approached my
experience here. First, show up even when you don’t want to, even if you do it for someone else, you
will eventually learn to do it for yourself. And second, stick around long enough to see what it’s like on
the other side. So that’s what I did, far from perfectly, but I was present even when I was tired, fed up
and angry. And I did the work even when my first instinct was to dismiss it all because I was hung up on
the concept of God. My spiritual experience is definitely of the education variety, but the result is just as
striking as any white light experience I can think of. My time in the Last House has been the most
positive and radically transformative experience of my life.
I can think of no better way to show the change in me than comparing my life now to my life at the
moment of my last drink. That last drink was a shot of Jim Beam I begged my mother for so I wouldn’t
have a seizure on the way to the hospital. The look of fear and pain in my mother’s eyes I will remember
for the rest of my life. In the end I drank to hurt myself, but right then I realized I was hurting everyone I
care about in the process. Today, instead of hurting those I care about with the way I live my life, I try to
help people. I no longer avoid my family out of an overwhelming sense of shame. Instead of the small
and lonely world I once lived in, I have a community of people I genuinely care about and who genuinely
care about me. And the crushing self-hatred that once had me on the brink of taking my own life has
been replaced by real self-love.
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