I know what it’s like to be so hungry it hurts.

I spent a lot of years living on the streets.

In the end I was literally crippled by my drinking and drug use. I checked into the shelter I’d been at before. The only reason they let me in was because I couldn’t walk, but they were tired of watching me come and go and never getting anywhere.

Nobody was willing to waste their time helping me, so I finally started helping myself. I pushed myself as hard as I could trying to walk. After a few months I could get around.

But I started drinking again.

Then my wife died of an overdose. That lit a fire under me. A friend of mine said I could stay with him for a month but I couldn’t drink and had to go to AA.

Before I knew it, I had been there a year, hadn’t drank, and was getting my driver’s license after seventeen years without it.

Now, in spite of being a felon several times over, I am gainfully employed, I own my own house, I am getting custody of my youngest son.

To most people I look “normal,” even though most of my life I was a dirty junkie that they would cross the street to avoid.

I’ve been sober for years now and can only guess how much better it will get.