Finding the Motivation to Stay on the Long Road to Recovery 

Addiction doesn’t have to be final, but recovery is forever. It takes commitment, determination, and an understanding that you only need to take one step at a time. We’re sharing the stories of those who are on that long journey to help others find their way.

Damon Weinberg doesn’t know exactly when he became an addict. But he knows how many years he spent trying to break the power of addiction over his life. He recently talked about the path to addiction and his ongoing work to recover. 

Interview with Damn Weinberg, COO + Co-Founder of Power of Recovery

TG: We really want to understand from your perspective, as we know addiction is running rampant right now for a variety of reasons, but I want to understand your journey from childhood to how you even got into drugs and alcohol and how you worked yourself out of the grips of addiction...

DW: Sure, absolutely. So I know for me I grew up in a good home in a lower middle class neighborhood. We didn't have much but we had a good family. I have both my parents and 4 siblings, so, six of us growing up and like I said, we had a really good family. I know for me there was some things early on as I look back that I just kind of was never really that comfortable and I was from an early age sort of seeking ways to fit in if you will and find a level of comfort on, early on and started with kind of being a jokester and being a little bit of a Class Clown at times and things of that nature, but it also continued into other things, being in the lower middle class, feeling a little less than and not having some of the same stuff some of my friends and neighbors early on I started shoplifting and doing little different things like that. I also did legal things to help me make money having a paper wrote and things like that, but it was sort of Never Enough from an early start... 

TG: Right that's relatable for a lot of us. I mean, good family backgrounds, challenging family backgrounds. Kind of starting with that internal self-esteem kind of check what is gonna make you tick make you happy and then obviously testing right? So you just mentioned testing with legal things paper routes to make you make money and then testing with shoplifting to make you feel like you fit and it just kind of like a group of friends? how did it kind of start I guess?

DW: I feel like it's perspective. So my thoughts of how things looked is really what framed my behaviors and what I was doing so we weren't any richer or poorer than the next family but I felt and it looked to me like so I was doing these things and to be honest with you some of the friends were questionable but most of them were just neighborhood kids that small neighborhood everybody knew each other but one of the big triggers for me is around 15 years old. We moved out of the neighborhood that I grew up and I moved into a new neighborhood. So yeah, that became a trigger point.

DW: Hundred percent and for me I was still trying to fight it coming back to the old neighborhood while still trying to make friends with the new neighborhood kids. And that's really where it led into the first time of me picking up and for me, it just started with picking up, Marijuana, and…

TG: Okay...

DW: Like I said, the perception of me feeling like I didn't fit in and thinking that that was the way I was gonna fit in and it seemed pretty harmless at the time. Most of my friends were kind of testing or in the middle of using some substances socially, so it was acceptable and I don't know, it just sort of had a natural progression for me. it was starting with a couple of simple things like that in my friend group kind of moved into stuff and we sort of all moved together from there. It went to hallucinogenics, acid that stuff like that and what also follow me was the behaviors of the group so my thought process was I had already started doing some of the shoplifting different things and if we were all buying weed, we were all buying a substance. Why not be the resource for all my friends? So I started there... then between things like that, and also as far as the fitting in smoking pot and what that meant for me internally the false idea of the people I was selling drugs to were like friends of mine. It was just a needed being wanted to around again the misperception that I had at the time that I had no idea and…

DW: ...as I progressed and got worse and then finally came around to being in recovery. I learned that being my own self actually was much more attractive and acceptable and then being my fake self if I'm not attractive to you or I'm not accepted by you, I'm comfortable my own skin to understand now that's okay. I'm not going to be everybody's friend and not everyone is gonna want me around but at that time not knowing what I didn't know I was doing what made me feel better.

TG: Yeah, I mean I think everybody struggles with that. So it just growing up right like teenagers, your friend groups. You're trying to find your clique that you're running with you're trying to find out what you're comfortable with what you're not comfortable with that type of stuff. so that's very relatable and I think a lot of people can understand that. 

DW: Yes, so the work for so first of all, it was a couple of jackpots that I started hitting to before I even got to that before. I got out of high school. I wasn't good at a lot of this stuff that activities I was doing so the police showed up to the house a couple of different times for a couple of different things. Right? So some of the Red Flags with the early on but again I was unable to really quit. I maintained some sort of a job and employment pretty much my entire career from the paper route stuff all the way up through high school and everything working at Stop and Shop and then the main job. I was working for a sub shop a few years coming out of high school. 

DW: We found a lot of relief after shift with each other by using substances of some variety. And so it really just continued for me and it is basically a natural progression again, I know they thought people don't necessarily like that when some people don't like saying marijuana as a gateway drug, but it was for me. there was no big aha moment. It just slowly went down the scale and slowly went up the scale of these simple less dangerous. says leading into trying some of the more dangerous substances and the stuff that eventually let brought me to needing money, at some point in the years and I was probably a late bloomer for some other drugs, but post High School working in that sub shop, the progression went from marijuana and alcohol then we moved onto hallucangenics. We then started getting into the harder substances like cocaine and even some of the opioid base substances of pain pills...which is my generation's era- the pills, we did it, I enjoyed them and it went from that weekend warrior stuff to stretching into Mondays and starting on Thursdays and then it got a little worse.

TG: Interesting. So what brought you to your knees? The police had already come you're probably getting hit with some petty theft things you're now kind of in the system, they're watching you, you're in the system so it's like, okay, how do you kind of come back from that? and what made you say- Hey, this is seriously like the time just to do it?

DW: Yes, so I was having some different stints with probation in court cases and things of that which would stretch over time and it was in that place it was there where eventually I made the turn. I'm of the Oxycontin generation. It was us that was I will think so initially the opiate family that was being introduced to me was Vicodin and Percocet and things that nature and again once they eventually made that turn and tried it I kind of figured out I loved it and I developed a habit pretty quickly and like I said still being a guy that was trying to make some money off of it and quote-unquote be that but be a dealer or whatever, when the OC started coming around the Oxycontin coming around I was navigating some deals and stuff like that to make some money in this and that and then one day I found myself without the ability to get my hands on some of the Vicodin and the Percocet and one of the guys that I used to sell the OCS to in bulk was like, why don't you just do one of these and now It was so bad so fast.

DW: ...and the drop was hot and fast and that's like when everyone around me at that point really sad and noticing the people I worked with my parents it was no way to continue to hide it and eventually it led to losing the job and then being unable to support my habit and stealing Robin is down and from that it was really the people of my last name that I heard the most it was my parents that took the brunt of it really my family that took the barn of it at that point.

TG: I feel your story through that so your parents now you've lost your job you're robbing and stealing from your loved ones. what happens next? Are they telling you to go get help Are you just saying you need help because you want to just get them off your back. what does that look like?

DW: So I don't think I was ever really ready for help. I did try a couple times to try and figure out my own it wasn't working. But what really happened was that I hurt my parents so bad. They couldn't keep me around at that point. I was back living at home with them and stealing from them and where can a different dead-end job at the time and my mother showed up in my work one day and she was upset and I went outside to talk to her and she took my keys to the house and said, I had been writing bad checks out of the back of the checkbook in and they went mortgage payment one day and the bank account wasn't in the shape that it should have been and my mother figured it out pretty quickly and just basically was like Hey, I don't care where you go, but you can't stay here anymore. Thankfully my sisters and my brother let me stay, it was raining that night. I remember she let me stay at her house that night the next morning my other sister, my brother, and the significant others had an impromptu intervention before they were a thing...

DW: They said you can't stay in any of our houses, Mom and Dad aren't even talking to you. They want nothing to do with you and that would get my journey that was in May of 2006. My actual clean date is October 13, 2009 this actual real journey of trying to get clean is going through some detoxes and…

TG: what happened next?

DW: I began in 2006 and it happened very quickly after I got thrown out and they told me hey, you can't stay here. we make calls I got into the first place ever went to which was on East Street and in the old time hospital and it began my journey and again I'm talking about a three-and-a-half year period of it started to when I got clean for the last time so there was some different stretches and all the stuff that they were worried about for me. I never even thought about it and the impact I was having on them with their feelings and everything. So yeah, It was a tough journey earning back trust, but it also gave me the motivation that I needed to be real. I knew I wanted help,I knew I didn't want to live the life I was living. I had no idea about a way out though.

DW: I had some relapses at that point for the most part up until about August/September of 2009. I was either In a program or if I reused I had a relapse...I had a short relapse and would go right into treatment. In late August of '09 I was in a program and I had a relapse that was the last run that I went on, but the first one that I had went on really since I tried starting to get clean and where I survived. It was only a few weeks before I was really miserable immediately and I was looking for help and… so kind of thought or closing commentary if we can not get ourselves into addiction positions, but that's hard right that's the growing up today, and even more so with social media and the distractions and the way that Kids and folks are communicating. it's hard for people to sometimes feel like they fit in or feel belonging or feel loved, but what would my advice be if you are in a position like I was and how to get yourself out?

DW: Somebody is there to help, all you have to do is ask. It's hard, but if we can get clean and live the life we do now, you can too.

Conclusion: There is no single path to recovery, but they all start with taking a small step toward changing the future. If you or a loved one are struggling with addiction and want to know more about the potential for recovery, please reach out today.