Alcohol and Drug Addiction

After wasting several substance addiction decades, he sought help to “get clean” and became a credible counselor to prison inmates for 30 years.

JA was born in Missouri. His father was a carpenter, his mother worked in a restaurant. His parents divorced when JA was seven years old, his mother citing her husband’s “extreme cruelty and gross neglect of duty.” including once having shot the family dog “to teach a lesson.” 

GOOD DECISION – EXIT AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP

JA left home at age 15 after a violent fight with his father, first settling in Los Angeles and then enlisting in the Army, where he served as a cook. 

BAD DECISION – JOIN A GROUP KNOWN FOR ADDICTION AND VIOLENCE

After his military discharge, he began to drift, living without a home for stretches of time and joining a branch of the Hell’s Angels, a notorious motorcycle gang frequently involved in drugs and violence. 

He moved briefly to New York, got married and traveled with his wife to Canada, where he was arrested for beating and robbing a man, for which he was imprisoned. Upon his return to the US, he threatened a man with a hunting knife at a bowling alley and again was imprisoned. 

GOOD DECISION – SEEK HELP FOR ADDICTIONS

After several hundred arrests and being homeless for many nights and observing friends die too young from their same addictions, JA decided it was past time to get sober and independent of drugs. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous (“AA”) and regularly attended its meetings. He and his wife decided a change of their home area would help their new beginning so they moved to a rural area where JA could get away from people of bad influence, where he could “reinvent” himself as a husband and hourly wage earner. 

GOOD DECISION – USE YOUR EXPERIENCE TO HELP OTHERS

JA’s “sponsor” at AA encouraged JA to join him visiting prisons in New York and New Jersey to counsel inmates. This became JA’s passion, helping to pull men out of the mental pit he had once occupied himself. During the covid pandemic of 2020, into 2021, JA continued to counsel incarcerated men via Zoom. “I’ve been drunk, and I’ve been sober,” he liked to tell the prisoners. “Sober is much, much better.” (from NYTimes obit)