My name is Michael Murgitroyde. I was born in Philadelphia in March of 1965. For the most part, I had a pretty normal life. After the death of my grandmother in 1977, I tried smoking marijuana for the first time with a friend of mine. I got very sick and swore I would never do it again. The next week I went back to my friend's house and asked if we could smoke again. I smoked for a couple of years and tried drinking on and off but didn't really like drinking. When I was 17, the same friend introduced me to methamphetamine. I started out by snorting it while everyone around me was shooting it. It wasn't long before I too began shooting meth. It gave me a feeling I had never felt before.
For the next three years I shot meth on a daily basis, sometimes more that once a day. I found that when I did meth it was easier to drink so my drinking kicked off as well. For about three years I ran the streets of Philly not going home, staying with friends and getting high. I hung with people mostly older than me and I was the youngest and smallest of the group, but I found that I could shot as much meth as the older guys. This went on for a few years to where I ruined almost every vein in my body.
In 1985, I went to my first rehab in upstate Pennsylvania, Clearbrook Manor. The day I went to rehab I lost my job the week before working for the Pennsylvania Turnpike for stealing to support my habit. I felt that their money was my money but they didn't see it that way. After 30 days in the rehab, I came back to Philadelphia and got high the same day. That was in November. At Christmas time, I went out and didn't come home for two days and stayed with a friend of mine getting high. I never finished high school, I didn't care what anybody thought, all I knew was that I was hurting myself.
When I was in high school I had a girlfriend who got pregnant and had a boy. We split up before he was born and I never met him. When I was 23, I met another woman, she had no idea about my addictions and within six months she was pregnant and we decided to get married. When I got married I had no job and had no intentions of giving up my habit. We had a daughter. A year later we had another daughter. In between my daughters I went to rehab for the second time in Maryland. My wife came to see me in rehab for my birthday and told me that I didn't need to be there. I told her she was right and I left. By this time I stopped doing meth but drank on a daily basis, smoking pot and snorting cocaine. The marriage ended after three years and my wife moved away with my children and I never saw her again. This gave me more of a reason to drink and drug.
I went through another few girlfriends, moved in with a girl and all we did was drink and get high for five years. During that relationship I went to rehab for the third time in the Pocono mountains to a place called Hidden Brook. The day I left there I got on a plane and went to Florida to another rehab called Alternatives. I stayed there for two months and came home and moved into a sober house. I left there after a month and started smoking pot and snorting cocaine again.
It was at this time that a friend introduced me to crack. It took away all my pain, especially the mental pain. In May of 1998, I started what was to be my last run. At that time I was 190 pounds. By August of the same year I was 130 pounds and just about dead. My father and brother took me to a monastery in upstate New York called St. Christopher's Inn. It was a men's homeless shelter. My brother told me the day they dropped me off that if I left there not to come home because there was nothing there for me. Every time I went to rehab my father would tell me leave your secrets, your secrets are what keep you sick. All the rehabs I have been in I had always come home with secrets. At St. Christopher's at the end of 90 days, my secret and I had parted ways.
It was suggested that I go to a sober house on Long Island in New York and go to outpatient treatment. I did six months of outpatient treatment and was on welfare. When the treatment center was opening a new sober house, I applied for the job with seven months sober, not thinking they would hire me, but they did and I became a House Manager.
Within a year I helped my company open a second house, which I ran, and six months later opened a third house. Since then, I graduated High School and went to school and received my Barbers license. In 2005, I finally got my driver's license back after fifteen years of not having one. To this day I shouldn't have my license back until 2014 but I did the right thing and got my license back.
Today, I have a good life. I go to meetings, have a commitment and a sponsor and practice the steps and principles of Alcoholics Anony mous. All All my life I thought if I could only find something to make me happy I could stop getting high, never realizing that if I just stopped getting high I would be happy. If you are struggling and reading this, don't give up. Seek as much help as you can, as many times as you can. Getting it on the first time is a gift. I wasn't that fortunate.
Today my son is in my life and I have recently been speaking with my oldest daughter. Her sister doesn't want to speak to me yet but it's alright, maybe in time. I have been blessed my past, soon to be eight years of sobriety. It is beyond my wildest dreams. This from someone who didn't want to get sober and just wanted to die. God had different plans for me which I am grateful for. Everything I now have, or achieved or become is all because of God and AA.