Todd's Story

Life before A Better Way was pretty decent. Growing up as a kid, I had great step-parents, great real parents, great brothers, sisters. There was no alcoholism, really, to speak of. I mean, everybody kind of drank socially and never really saw outbreaks of anything, no abuse, nothing. Really, I was pretty darn normal growing up as a kid. My addiction and abusive behavior pretty much started and has always been beer. I always say, I'm not an alcoholic, I'm a beeraholic, because I never drank anything else but beer. May do a shot or something once a year to celebrate somebody's birthday or something, but it was always beer. It was always Miller Lite, or it was just a beer. And cigarettes, cigarettes and beer, that's what got me going. I never thought I had a problem because I didn't start drinking until 5 o'clock in the afternoon. Would stop at 10 o'clock, eat my dinner, go to bed, wake up the next morning, not really feel hungover. But as life progressed, you start feeling that something's wrong and you start feeling not as productive. You're not getting as much rest as you thought you were. Just moving throughout the day. Really awoken to my need for help through Julie. Julie's my ex-wife. When she said, I can't do this anymore, I can't be with you anymore. You refuse to go get a job, a real job. You refuse to not drink as much.

You don't care about your health. You don't care that you smoke. You don't care that you have a cough. You don't care, you don't care, you don't care. And finally it got to me, and I was like, wow, I guess I really don't care. And from that is where I learned about A Better Way. Through a friend of the family, a friend of hers told us about A Better Way. She sent me the website. She sent me the information I needed, and I sat on it for a couple weeks, two, three weeks. And just went on through my, do I really, am I really needing this? Do I really want this? I'll go try it. I mean, I'll appease her, and I'll go try it for a week or two. And next thing you know, it's been 18 months. My first day at A Better Way started off about 6.37 in the morning coming down from Marietta, Georgia. Stopped off at a little convenience store to have my last Red Bull and my last cigarette before I actually arrived here. And when I arrived here, to my surprise, I tested positive for alcohol and tobacco. I was like, well, I hadn't drank since last night. How long does tobacco stay in you? And then I realized, wow, these guys that were intaking me were serious about this thing. And I had to get more serious myself, I guess. Scary, again, coming down to the scary part, giving up a lot of the stuff that I thought I was going to be able to bring with me, I couldn't bring with me. So I ended up with a few shirts and a few socks and pants and underwear and put it into a bag and trekked on up over to Grace House

and got me settled in and walked around the corner and there was a bunch of guys, 10, 12 guys, all washing vans. It was a beautiful spring day. And it was about 75, 80 degrees, and they were washing vans, vacuuming it out. Next thing I know, somebody gave me a rag and somebody gave me a vacuum and I just, like, integrated right into the group. I mean, literally, within a couple minutes, it was, what's your name, Todd, where are you from, Marietta, and then, boom, just right on into brotherhood, man. It was kind of crazy that within a matter of moments, I was like, okay, the structure here at A Better Way takes a little bit of getting used to. You know, when you're going through your mess or you're just dealing with everyday life, you're not getting up at 4.45 in the morning. Most of us weren't. And rolling your eyes and wondering what the heck you're doing here. Why are you really here? I don't have, my problem's not this big where I'm going to have to go through this. And then you have to get up and then, you know, you've got to read the Bible and your eyes are foggy and you don't have a Coke, especially if you don't have a caffeine, a coffee. And you kind of make it through that and then it's time to go eat breakfast. And I don't eat breakfast at 5.15 in the morning. I don't eat anything until noon. So you get on that wagon of not liking it and hating it, not liking it, anticipation of this and you know what's going to happen. Looking forward to something wasn't always a good thing. You don't always look forward to First Circle Study Hall. You don't always look forward to it in the beginning. After a while, because of things that have been, and I'm not going to, I really don't want to use taken away from you,

but removed out of your normal lifestyle that you normally would do, that's all gone. You're focused on the lifestyle that's here at A Better Way that, you know, you're broken and you need to get fixed. The way to fix you is to kind of break you again and by that I mean restructuring as part of what I feel like is what I needed for me is to restructure my everyday lifestyle and not just getting up and going to work but the way I focus and think about God. I mean everybody thinks about God. Nobody thinks about God any more than the guys at A Better Way with praying seven, eight, ten times a day, praying it in, praying it out. It took a little bit of getting used to when you're in a crowd or when you're with people or once you get to a point in the program where you are able to go out and eat somewhere or go somewhere with other people or you're going to the fair somewhere and you actually sit down and pray and you know it used to be like I would never pray in public. Are you kidding me? Now it's like I don't care. The structure here at A Better Way actually when you think about it is it's very simplified. There's a rhyme and a reason for everything. The reason you wake up so early or the reason you go to bed early. There's a reason you have prayer circle on certain days and the reason you go to church on certain days. So the restructuring was a big part of who I am now I believe. The brotherhood and camaraderie that you gain with knowing a lot of these guys is that you realize that you're not as messed up as you thought you were but yet you're more messed up than you thought you were. There's a guy there's a lot of guys here that have had it a lot worse than you have. There's a lot of guys here that haven't had it as bad as you had it and with making say making friends which you don't make friends here. With the guys you get to know here at A Better Way and hearing their stories and what they've gone through and their families. It kind of makes you think at night and it makes you pray. Pray for the guys that you know one of them's going through this or their mom's going through that. That it makes you think of things that you've never really thought about praying about before. Having so many guys to pray for. When I went on the Florida trip I was looking forward to it but it wasn't going to be for me that big a deal. I've gone to Destin. I've been down in that area a couple times a year for the past 10 years. To me it wasn't really going to be that big of a deal. I wasn't really looking forward to it but because of the other guys and the brothers that had never seen the beach and had never seen the ocean and never had the sand between their toes it was I was more excited for

them. Although when I got down there I totally flipped. I didn't want to leave and it wasn't because of what was going on down there as much as it was learning more about Brother John and more about the reason he brings guys down there and the 12 that he brings down there are the 12 you know kind of like the 12 disciples and everybody is so different and everybody at some point has been broken and being able to see the people that have that are being healed at that time and knowing and that the stories from the time you get here until the time you leave the stories change so much from being broken distraught an addict to you're here half the time and you all of a sudden people aren't complaining as much about their old life. They're looking forward to things coming up in their life or their family or meeting their kids again or seeing their mom and dad again so that Florida trip really kind of brought all that together. At the time when I went I was there right about I think I went right about it a year so I'd had a lot of time here to meet a lot of the guys and and be there with you know really kind of buddies hanging out at the beach. It was pretty cool. It was cool seeing a lot of the guys being baptized for the first time. I had actually been baptized when I was 14 but I always kind of joke around that it must not have stuck because I wasn't as good of a Christian as I thought I was going to be after after I got baptized and realizing that that God's with you and Jesus is with you throughout your life and just to reconfirm that and and being baptized for me again really was I don't want to call it life changing but there was something in it that was a pureness that came out of it and you know being there with brother John and the other guys was definitely something special. I didn't I really screwed this one up. It just doesn't mean anything to me that much but being baptized when I was down in Florida with the guys and all of us really being baptized there on the beach is something I will certainly never forget. Seeing the guys come out of there with the smiles and the happiness and that shaking of arms and whatever really hit my heart when I came out. I was just getting ready to go in and have a cancer surgery and I felt like That was that I was going to be okay. My brother John said, you're going to be okay, man. When I came up out of the water, I knew I was going to be okay. Betterways has been a lifesaver for me in more ways than one. I think it's saved me from potentially dying of cancer. I was diagnosed with cancer while I was here, lung cancer.

Through Healing Bridge, they found a spot on me that they didn't like. They sent me on to City of Hope. We went in, we did surgery, got rid of that, and I'm cancer-free right now. But if it wasn't for Betterway, I don't know where my body would be right now. Because I'm not the kind of guy that would just go into the hospital and get a random check. I probably would have come up with some other symptom or disease or something that would have way surpassed what I had in me and would have turned out much worse. Betterway for me is a lifesaver in more ways than one.