"Eternally Grateful"
May 17, 2023
Four years ago, Joe almost died. He was rushed by ambulance to the hospital. His pancreas was on the verge of exploding. The emergency room doctor told him if he had waited another day, he would be dead. “That was an eye opener for me to say the least,” Joe said. A week earlier, he got into a heated argument with the woman he was living with, so he left his home with nothing but the clothes on his back and all the cash he could carry. For the next week, he holed up in a hotel and nearly drank himself to death. “I probably would have, if I had more money,” he admitted. But he wasn’t exactly drinking liquor or beer. He was drinking mouthwash. The woman he was living with before he moved out had introduced him to drinking mouthwash, because it was so inexpensive and easy to access. “That was the beginning of my rock bottom,” Joe explained. After a weeklong bender at the hotel, he started feeling sick. The manager of the hotel took one look at him and called 9-1-1. “At the hospital, they took every fluid out of my body and tested it,” Joe recalled. Eventually, he was diagnosed with acute alcoholic pancreatitis and stayed in the hospital for seven days. After that, he checked into rehab…on his birthday. Ironically, it was on his eighteenth birthday, forty years earlier, when he took his first drink. He never had much adult supervision growing up. His parents were in their forties when he was born, so for the first three years of his life, he was raised by his older sister, who was only sixteen. His siblings were both grown and out of the house by the time he was in kindergarten, so he was raised for most of his life as an only child. “I was on my own for most of my life when I was growing up,” he explained. “It made me become very resourceful for myself. My parents didn’t want to be bothered, so I found my own way. And I found ways to entertain myself.” He worked hard at school and was a good kid, but when he turned eighteen, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. He couldn’t afford college. So when his best friend showed up on the night of his birthday with a bottle of whiskey, he went along for the ride. They spent the night in a cave in the woods and got completely drunk. “That was my first step down the road to alcoholism,” he said. After graduation, Joe joined the Air Force and served a full term of active duty working in electronic communications, maintaining cryptographic equipment that scrambled and descrambled highly-confidential print messages and voice communications. To do this work, he had to gain top secret security clearances. “I could have walked into the White House and shook hands with the President if I wanted to,” Joe said. After the military, Joe floated through a host of other jobs including security at a college campus, being a mechanic at a quick oil change shop, a fabricator at a steel manufacturing plant, and a salesman for an insurance company. He also got married at one point. Tragically, his wife passed away from ovarian cancer only a few years into their marriage. All the while, Joe was using alcohol to escape the everyday problems and stressors of life. “I was basically killing myself for forty years,” he said of his alcoholism. “I felt like the alcohol helped me function, but in reality, it was hurting my functionality. I felt like I could do things better, but really it made things worse. It was hiding emotional pain – from my upbringing, from life in general, but it’s the aftermath of drinking where you pay for a few hours of feeling good. The problems you are trying to hide from are still there. The best way to deal with problems is to hit them head on.” After rehab, Joe finally decided to hit his problems head on. With nowhere else to go, he came to City Mission and lived for nearly four years at our Crabtree Kovacicek Veterans House. During that time, he transformed his life. He got himself sober and connected to veterans’ services. “City Mission gave me an opportunity to take a step back from the world, to concentrate on myself and get my life back together,” he said. “Get the mental health treatments I needed. Go to meetings. An opportunity to refect on myself and stop beating myself up like I was 40 years.” At our Veterans House, Joe was surrounded by men he could talk to who understood his struggles and could relate to his problems in ways he had never really experienced before. “I can discuss veteran problems with the guys here that other people just don’t understand,” he said. “And I feel a lot better about being a veteran now than I did before I got here.” In additional to case management, recovery services, and emotional and psychological support, City Mission helped him with the fundamentals of independent living, like getting his Driver’s License back. “That was a big step for me to independence,” he said. “I didn’t like having to count on other people to take me everywhere. Tomorrow, I’m even going to look for a car of my own.” The Mission also helped him get a job that he loves at a local manufacturing plant. “It’s the kind of work I was born to do,” he explained. “They like me, and I like them, and I like the work I’m doing.” Now, Joe is working on moving out on his own, but he will never forget what the Mission has done for him to turn his life around. “I am eternally grateful to the Mission for giving me the time and resources to get myself back together again,” he said. I’m not stuck in my past anymore. Now, I just focus on what I have to do next.” Joe is not alone. Nearly seven percent of Pennsylvania’s veterans live in poverty, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates there are nearly 1,000 homeless veterans in Pennsylvania alone – though the number is likely much higher, since veteran homelessness is complex and difficult to track. City Mission is proud to provide food, shelter, resources, and hope to those who served our country. They served us. Let’s serve them. If you are or know a veteran who is homeless or in need, please call City Mission at 724-222-8530. If you would like to donate to our ministry, please visit https://give.citymission.org/for/citmis/info/preheader
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