Today we’d like to introduce you to Matthew Ward.
Hi Matthew, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My name is Matt. I’m 34, originally from CT, but now live in San Diego. I was adopted from Fort Worth, TX by two amazing parents. I was given every opportunity to succeed. I grew up in a very nice town in Connecticut and I am now 34 years old.
I wish I could look back and pick out a specific traumatic event or something that I could pin my alcohol and drug abuse on but I cannot. I just loved the temporary escape from reality that substances provided. Alcohol and drugs were my best friend for about 16 years.
They destroyed every opportunity I had and after 8 years in the military in 2018, I found myself drifting place to place, addicted to crystal meth, and all alone. I tried to get help over the years with several treatments/detoxes but I never gave it 100%. I had met a girl named Janet who loved me but couldn’t watch me deteriorate any longer. My family was gone, I sold all my possessions and I was at a crossroads where I was going to commit to the streets or change for good. I went to the Lighthouse in Anaheim California for 60 days on 3/6/19.
When I got out of rehab I went to my third sober living in San Diego. I had no job and just a few bags of possessions with me. My girlfriend stuck with me and we actually just got married in downtown San Diego 7/31/2020. I have a full-time job at Confidential Recovery, an Intensive Outpatient Clinic in Miramar for people with substance use disorder. I recently got my license back after a couple years of not having it due to legal trouble and narrowly missing a lengthy prison sentence.
To keep all these positive things in my life and stay healthy my sobriety comes first no matter what. I have had to make hard decisions in recovery. I cut a lot of people out of my life. A lot of them were not bad people but they didn’t care about sobriety and I didn’t trust myself around them, we were on different paths. I am a member of AA, I have a sponsor, I work the steps, and I stay accountable and honest.
My future is always based on a 24-hour period. My wife and I have our first baby on the way and bought a home in Allied Gardens, San Diego in 2020. I also started an Instagram page called @aliferecovered. We share stories of sobriety and recovery from a hopeless state of mind. It is all about showing people that not only are they worthy of love they are capable of loving themselves.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
I got out of the military in January 2018. I moved to East County San Diego and my drug and alcohol addiction took off. I was quickly introduced to methamphetamine and I fell in love. At the time it was perfect, a fraction of the price of cocaine, and the high lasted way longer. I was living minute to minute, drink to drink, hit to hit.
I still had my phone at this point and I was talking to a girl named Janet I met online. The first time we met I was high on cocaine and alcohol and I drove to pick her up. We spent a few hours together and got to know each other, and I brought her home later that night. She knew I had a few drinks but that was the extent of it. After meeting a few more times she could see I was under the influence every time. Surprisingly, she invited me over to her house for dinner one night to meet her mother and father. She must have seen something in me I did not. I only had a couple drinks; I wasn’t pouring sweat like I usually was. They were great people and for a brief 90-minute period I felt a sense of normalcy in my life. It reminded me of family dinners back on the East Coast with my own family. Sitting at the table, looking and laughing at each other. Such good times! That was the past though, my family was out of my life. They could not watch me destroy myself any longer and I could not blame them.
My disease kept me up all night, every night. During the day I would try to sleep and recover from the night before only to then repeat the cycle. Some days I would stay up for days on end and I was slowly losing my mind and my sense of reality. The meth was taking hold of me and I was immersed in intense paranoia every day. I was always a guy who had serious fear of missing out, I was the life of the party, but due to paranoia from the drugs, I would not leave the house unless it was for a liquor store run or drugs. I had blankets and towels over the doors and windows, and only small glares of light would come through. It was just enough light for me to see where I was walking and how far the needle was going into my arm.
Janet came over one day and I scrambled to bring some light into the place so she wouldn’t be freaked out by my paranoid mental state. I found out a short time later that after she left that day, she told her parents she was done with me. She had decided I was beyond repair and she didn’t want to live a life of drugs and alcohol, and the crime that comes along with it. She was free of me, or so she thought. Her parents told her that Buddha came to them and said that she needed to see me again, that I needed help. A power greater than themselves was telling this family to not give up on me and they were listening.
Her parents, Mama and Papa as I call them today, are spiritual healers. They escaped Cambodia when Pol Pot was taking over in the 1970s. Pol Pot was the leading member of Cambodia’s communist movement, the Khmer Rouge, who committed genocide across the entire country. They were both in the labor camps and narrowly escaped execution and being worked to death. Unfortunately, many of their friends and family members were not so lucky. They eventually fled into Thailand, with Janet’s brothers and sisters, and after a short while, they were taken to the Philippines. In the mid-1980 they were granted transportation to the United States, became citizens, and had Janet who was the first and only American born.
Thirty-three years later I came into their lives. Janet returned to where I was living, one last time, and offered me a place to stay with her and her parents. I didn’t know what to say. I was headed to an early grave or prison if I did not accept this opportunity, I just knew it. I said yes, I chose life and the potential for a new beginning. I would take a leap of faith and accept this chance to essentially seek refuge just as her parents once did. I had a lot of legal trouble in early 2018 and I narrowly missed a 6-year prison sentence. I had sold nearly all of my possessions but I moved in with a ton of personal baggage. Not only did I have court appearances and an 18-month DUI program with no car, but I was still paranoid from the drugs leaving my body.
I started learning and understanding the importance of Buddha, little by little, which was the higher power and lifeblood of the family I was living with. With Buddha’s help, Mama and Papa showed me how to live again. I learned to fold clothes again, to make my bed, to eat at a dinner table with good manners. They gave me a buddha necklace for good luck during court appearances, food when I had no money, and love that I had not known for years.
My mother and father started talking to me again after I was 6 months sober. They flew out to the West Coast September 2019 to see me and meet Janet and the people that gave me a new life, Mama and Papa. I had not seen them for 3 years and it was emotional to say the least. They saw their son again, the one they raised. I wanted this new life, I just needed outside help to achieve it. I married Janet in July 2020 and am now a son-in-law. The universe has a funny way of placing extraordinary people in our lives just at the right time, it is up to us to recognize when that gift is in front of us.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I left rehab in May of 2019 after completing 58 days of treatment. I left with no job, hardly any possessions, no car or driver’s license, no work history for 18 months, two recent DUIs, and a narcotics conviction. Needless to say, I was nervous about my future and finding a job. Even with all of the uncertainty, I knew I was smart, capable, honest, and possessed a great work ethic. I wouldn’t let alcohol and drugs define me for another moment.
The treatment center helped set me up with a sober living house before my exit. A sober living house is a house with typically 5-15 people who are all working on getting sober or strengthening their recovery. All individuals are at different stages in their life. Some are fresh out of treatment like myself, some are forced in by parents wanting to teach them a lesson, and some use it as a place to get off the street. It can be tough. As soon as I moved into my new sober house in San Diego, I felt a sense of relief.
When I was in the military, I was in charge of the painting work-center for F-18 aircraft and support equipment. I knew I had experience with this type of work and the pay was pretty good. I jumped at it. I had no license or car to get to work so I was taking the bus or Uber and Lyft. It wasn’t long before I started noticing my boss was a heavy drinker and pot smoker. I knew it was not a good environment for me since I was early in sobriety and I left there after only two months. I had a gym membership at 24 Hour Fitness during this time and I was working out a few days later and got a call during my workout. It was an agency owner at an Allstate office near me. He saw my resume on the Indeed website and asked me to come in for an interview. I said yes, I was interested, and I would be there this coming Thursday at 9 AM for an interview. I was psyched.
I had a jacket and tie for the interview with a pair of slacks and dress shoes that I borrowed from housemates. I was ready. I even printed my resumé out on special resumé paper. I was very early for my interview. The military taught me the importance of being on time. He had me wait in the waiting area and when we talked it went great. I let him know my goals, answered all of his questions honestly, and told him a small part of my current legal situation. I could tell he was a bit hesitant but I told him to bring me on and don’t even pay me for the first two months, I wanted to prove to him I was an asset. He called me a few days later and hired me. He did also let me know that I still had to do the background check with Allstate. I was not out of the woods. To my surprise, the background check cleared me due to only having misdemeanors and no financial-related crimes. My boss knew I was sober, in recovery, and that I had a very checkered past. That didn’t matter to him, he knew the Matt Ward that came in early, left late and was ready to work and bring in new business when he was here. I worked my way up to head of sales department and won us National Conference level for sales in 2020. Amidst the chaos of the pandemic, we were still able to hit top 12% of Allstate offices in the nation.
Come 2022, I started realizing after some success that my true passion lay within the recovery field. I left Allstate on great terms and started to pursue my passion. I got a job as a Case Manager at an Intensive Outpatient Clinic for individuals with substance use disorder. I am also on the outreach/business development team. The photo at the La Mesa police department was an event I was able to speak at discussing the importance of trying to get people into treatment facilities instead of jails and institutions. Through hard work and determination, I am building a life for myself that I don’t have to escape from with alcohol.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc.?
The book of Alcoholics Anonymous and meetings were and still are instrumental in my success. The first 164 pages showed a new program for living when no one else could. It helped me become aware and remove my selfish, self-serving ways.
Because of this, in July 2020, I created the page @aliferecovered on Instagram. The mission is to share stories about struggles that people are going through or have gone through. I watched a lot of people either relapsing, dealing with domestic violence, or having suicidal tendencies due to the pandemic. I wanted to provide a platform that people could go to and see that they’re not alone. Working with others and sharing their stories gives me inspiration daily.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @aliferecovered
