Jill's Journal: An addiction so deep ...

On Monday, I sat among hundreds of high school students at Brandon Valley, and listened as Michael DeLeon told his story on what led him to a life of alcohol, nicotine and drugs. It was a powerful story, and one I am so thankful that the Brandon Community Foundation felt compassioned to fund and to bring here.

As you will read in the page 1 story on DeLeon, it’s only a snapshot of all that he endured as a young boy. His parents divorced. His uncles beat and tortured him “to make him a man,” a trusted adult counselor sexually molested him for three years. He dealt drugs, guns and ran with gang members.

And it all started for two reasons: Poor choices and poor decisions.

He was an impressionable young man, who was introduced first to cigarettes, then alcohol, followed by marijuana, which led to snorting cocaine, taking pills, shooting up cocaine and eventually heroin and meth.

His wife and children left him, with a promise only to return if he chose them over drugs.

He didn’t. At least not then.

It was just another bad choice, another bad decision that eventually led gang members to murder his mother on the morning of May 14, 1995, which was Mother’s Day.

I can’t imagine the emotions this man must go through every Mother’s Day. And here it comes next month.

A 12-year stint in six prisons and 22 cells, was the starting point for DeLeon in turning his life around, and when he was released from prison, he regained his wife and his family and founded Steered Straight, Inc., all for the greater good of helping others to make wise decisions and good choices.

DeLeon’s presentations have been known to bring kids to turn in their vapes. Following the two morning assemblies at our local high school, four students placed their vape into his hands without a question asked. Without law enforcement of school administrators involved. And now there’s a box for others to do so long after DeLeon has departed our commuity.

I’m guessing that a few more came out following his talk to our middle school kids. I hope there’s a box there, too.

DeLeon’s visit here came during the same time that a woman I know lost her life to addiction. Hers was with alcohol. She was once a very successful businesswoman, making plenty of money to care for herself and her sons following divorce. There were multiple DUIs, 24/7 alcohol compliances, multiple check-ins to treatment, family and friend interventions. Her children were even taken out of her care.

But nothing – not even the loss of her children – were more important than the vodka in the bottle.

I’m sad she died. Actually stunned. Her death was the result of not being able to say, ‘No more, no more.’

I can’t fathom the mindset she was in. I know that alcoholism is a disease, and one that many have conquered and many have tried to conquer and failed, just like she had.

Today, as I ponder on DeLeon’s words and the passing of a woman gone too soon, I pray that his message resonates, and that their stories bring others to say, ‘No more, no more,’ and that it leads us all to making wise decisions and good choices.