I'm still experiencing recurring dreams of relapse despite having been sober for seven years.

Mohammed is someone I know from Narcotics Anonymous meetings. His journey to sobriety gave many of us hope after all this darkness. Mohammed remained sober for 16 years. During that time he built a life, got work, married, and cared for his elderly mother. He discovered his passion for music and started playing drums. He was a productive person in society. He was clean.

The next time I met him, I was shocked to see the state he was in. I convinced myself he could not be the same person. His face bore the signs of hopelessness and helplessness, and he could not walk without the use of canes.

Mohammed’s mother had died which spiraled him into depression. His wife left him, and then he
left his job. Everyone close to him grew further away and he went back into drugs once more to
escape his feelings. It was a temporary escape that wiped away 16 years of progress. Then one
time, after getting high, he fell and hit the ground with such force it put him in a coma for three
months. When he woke he was paralysed and couldn’t walk.

 

He was alone and could hardly feed himself. His days passed watching movies and looking at
pictures of the life he once had on his old computer. There must have been some fateful reason our lives came together under these circumstances, so I asked Mohammed if he would collaborate on this project. Especially because after all this, he still wants sobriety. We all face moments of emotional and spiritual doubt and with it feelings of failure. Struggling with these emotional extremes, we easily choose to use drugs and fall back into
the cycle of relapse.

Can Mohammed, now 47, be able to regain his life a second time after losing everything?