Redefining Recovery | Tom Gill | TEDxRutgers

before I had a chance to wake up on the afternoon of July at the 11th 2014 I knew that something was wrong there was a scent wafting through the air coming into my nostrils of sickness and death and it was all too familiar so I shook myself to get myself awake I looked down at my right arm and I saw an IV and on my left arm another and my heart sunk because I knew exactly what had happened again see I'm somebody who had struggled with drug and alcohol addiction for years and it seemed that no matter what I tried to do I just could not get myself past this problem I started to feel hopeless I felt that no matter what I was just going to be trapped in this life this vicious cycle of getting better for a little bit than getting worse and so on and back and forth then a doctor came in and asked me how I was doing and I told him I was fine but I wasn't fine the truth is I could see my life of the last 22 years could see what I was like prior to using drugs and alcohol and just how far down I had fallen I had gone from having a lot of academic potential to having none from having good relationships with my friends and family to having none and from feeling positive and good about myself to that moment where I felt like there really was no hope but for some reason that day I decided that maybe I could just try this one more time maybe I could go down to rehab institution and and maybe they would tell me something that I could learn so as the day's wore on before before I left that there was a tiny glimmer of hope that started to emerge and I could see it I started to feel as if I really would never use drugs and alcohol again that there was this concrete resolve that was hardening in the back of my head so I hopped on a plane and I flew down to Baton Rouge Louisiana now I wish I could just end the story there and tell you guys that I went down there I got my life back on track and I've been better since but unfortunately that would be missing the main point of the story you see after I got off that plane immediately I felt as if a part of me was missing it was strange I felt empty there I was having put down drugs and alcohol and all of a sudden I felt empty and the reason why was because for so many years that was my relentless pursuit in life that was what I woke up in the morning thinking about everyday what drug where was I going to get money to buy drugs and it's what I plan to do in the evenings so with that eliminated in my life I felt like this this drive that I had had was just gone and I felt empty lost and hopeless and as I went through the through the rehab program things started to deteriorate and to become worse I started becoming irritated and angry I would lash out at people and there was this perfidious and pernicious voice in the back of my head that was just was talking to me and it was telling me you don't need this place this place is not for you you should leave and even worse that maybe things before were so bad now that might sound crazy but the truth is it's a known psychological phenomenon right my life was atrocious before why was his voice telling me things were okay it's a phenomenon that when we tend to remember things in the past we oftentimes think about we remember the positive things would forget a lot of the negatives in one word it just sums up into as nostalgia and it was really eating at me the more time wore on the more powerful this voice became and the more I actually started to believe it and then one day when I was particularly angry and upset I was sitting outside and I had perhaps the most important conversation in my life with a counselor there he came up to me and he said you know Tom I've seen hundreds of people go through this program and I've seen hundreds of people leave and the truth is most of them just don't make it and I Rico it for a little bit because I knew that I'd never wanted to go back to drugs and alcohol again but this guy who sort of had a point he was telling me that most people when they go through these pro they just don't change anything about themselves if you don't change anything about yourself you go back to doing the same behavior you did before so it was less I was a little nervous but I asked him what he thought I should do and this is what he told me he pointed over to a young man who was sitting a few couple dozen feet away they told me to look at him so I did the boy was sitting over there it was his first day he was still physically sick from withdrawal and his head was in his hands he told me to go over there and try and cheer him up I sort of jumped back I said it how can I do what can I do that a council or a health care professional can the counselor laughed at me and just told me to go over and just just to talk to him so I walked over and I just sat down and said hey dude how you doing I wish I could tell you that there was something profound that came out of that conversation but there wasn't we just talked about sports for five minutes but as I got back up to walk over to the counselor to tell him what had happened on my way over I looked back at the young man and this is a guy that was practically in tears before and I saw him cracked a little bit of a smile and that warmed me up inside some it's hard difficult to explain why or how but it warmed me up inside so much and it seemed all the sudden that that feeling of emptiness that I had had before was somehow filled with the feeling of making a positive change in someone else's life just doing a small little gesture like that because the moment I realized it now but the moment that I was able to take my problems and cast them to the side and focus on somebody else for just a few minutes I my problem seemed to disappear so a few days later I left the rehab facility we armed with the tool in my back pocket then I knew that I could use whenever I needed it it was a tool that gave me some meaning and some purpose in life now I'm not saying I got up and I moved over to Bangladesh to live amongst the the homeless there or I joined the Peace Corps but it's just been a date on a day-to-day basis doing the little things that can help me both for get about my problems and make small incremental changes in the world so for example something as simple as seeing a woman who appears to be a single mom as a waitress giving her an extra tip not cutting someone off to jump on the subway let because I can wait five minutes and they're obviously in a rush but just doing little things like that on a day-to-day basis it's been amazing the changes that I've been able to make in my life and how I've seen my life go from feeling empty and as if I had nothing really to live for to moving slowly in the in that positive direction but but in the end I don't really want this story to be so much about me because there are so many people out in the world that either struggle with drug or alcohol issues or know somebody who does and and this was this was quite a large problem a lot of these people feel and myself included like there really was no hope that they had tried everything rehab therapy wilderness AAA you name it had tried all that and it just hadn't worked but I want people to know that there there is hope that it is possible that the tip that I found which is doing positive things for people on a day to day basis really has worked for me I don't really have a good explanation for it but I like to think of the world's my actions on a scale on one hand there's everything I've taken from the world take money take the other people's emotions and on the other hand there's everything I give him back for so long it was disgustingly imbalanced towards the take-take-take and giving almost nothing then over time as I've been able to try and tip and make these scales even I've actually been at peace with myself and once I'm at peace with myself I can like I can really do quite a lot because there's a lot of potential that's bubbling up and ready to burst out of a lot of addicts and alcoholics I was just introduced to somebody who wants to become a professional skydiver I I'm also training for a marathon currently love doing extreme sports I went from being practically a failing student to graduating summa laude from Rutgers went from having very little money to now working a very job in New York City and most importantly going from having no relationship relationship friends and family really didn't want to talk to me just thought I was a lost cause to now having those positive relationships in my life so really the thing that I hope that at least somebody in this audience can get out of this is that for the person who struggles with drug and alcohol problems that no matter where they have been in the past and I remember the night before I went into the hospital I was sitting in the back of a back of my house I was shaking I was shivering I was sweating bullets as I was desperately trying to smoke as many drugs as I could if I could go from that everything wrong in my life and that to where I am today I just hope it gives some sort of hope and inspiration to other people who feel who are going through the same issues thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 35,383

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Adventure, Life Development, Rebuilding, Recovery

Id: k7T01kJlnk8

Length: 9min 50sec (590 seconds)

Published: Fri May 13 2016