Hi, my name is Octabian Fitzgerald Taplin. I was born May 15, 1974, and this is my story.
First and foremost, I am alcoholic, but I’m also an addict.
As far as I can remember from early childhood, I had always been drinking. According to my grandfather, there is an old saying in African History that “if you eat a lot of sweets, you should also have some alcohol, so it can kill the worms.” I used to be one of the kids that would sneak into my grandmother’s refrigerator, to eat sugar by the spoonful. I had digestive problems, so the solution was to give me alcohol and my alcoholism took off quickly from there.
I basically started drinking with my grandfather, but as a young child, my mom used to have parties, so I always had access to alcohol.
I remember my mom telling me a story about me giggling and dancing a lot and everybody was wondering why. I had snuck somebody’s cup, and I was drinking. I remember that whatever I drank at my mom’s parties was fun, but my drinking had really progressed by the time I got to middle school.
On top of my alcoholism, I was severely asthmatic in school. The school would often have to call my mom and every time I had to go home and use my breathing machine. We lived right across the street so I would go home on my own and I would drink. That was in the 6th grade. My mom, I don’t want to call her an alcoholic, but she was. She was what you call a functional alcoholic. One who could drink but also go to work, look nice, and handle herself very well.
When I would get together with other kids before school they would smoke weed, and I would drink. I hated weed, but also, I didn’t want to smoke because of my asthma. I used to feel that the kids who smoked weed had a problem, but I didn’t find anything wrong with drinking because my whole family on my mom’s side drank regularly. I thought it was a normal thing. I can remember one of my friends told me I smelled like alcohol, but I wasn’t offended, I was convinced that even the schoolteacher was having a drink before class. I remember having house parties in middle school when my mom would go out. We would drink and eat pizza and hang out and everything would be cleaned up before she got back. She never knew about these parties.
Throughout High School I often skipped classes with other kids to walk up Federal Hwy to Sterling Rd to a store called King’s Store. We got our chicken wings and fries from there, and then we’d walk to Winn-Dixie, which was across the street. I would steal beer from there. I would drink beer the entire walk back to school. The teachers paid me no attention because I was always a class clown, so they didn’t realize that I just was drunk. I would ask for bathroom breaks to the point that teachers stopped letting me go when I needed to. One time, I almost did not make it to the bathroom so my solution to that was to start skipping the classes that the teacher wouldn’t let me go. I eventually started smoking weed in 11th grade. I was a staff sergeant in ROTC and had a squad that I was responsible for, as well as running a weekly meeting to go over routines for parades and games. Eventually I started cancelling these meetings and telling the squad that I would rather go and get high. One time I went back to class late, with sunglasses on and my teacher sent me to the Dean’s office. I went to the office and made my glasses crooked and told the Dean that I had just got jumped by a member of Zulu Nation, which was a local gang at the time. Instead of scolding me for being late and clowning around the Dean expressed concern and wanted to make sure I was okay. He then offered for me to sit the class out and relax for the hour. That’s how I figured out that I could manipulate my way through high school, by lying. Everybody thought I was innocent, but the students knew what I was all about.
After High School I ended up attending college for broadcasting and journalism. My goal was to work for Oprah one day. At the time Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” was a popular song and I made it my drink of choice. I thought I was a functional drinker because I was in school, and I got a job at Publix in the deli department. I thought that I was like my mom in that way, but eventually I dropped out of school, and ended up losing my job at Publix for cursing out the meat manager because I was drunk. When I left Publix, I got a job at UPS. I would go from the clubs to work at 5:30 am stacking boxes and loading trailers. Alcohol would be coming out of my pores as I sweat and I would frequently get yelled at for not working fast enough, so I quit.
The first time I was arrested was because I was drunk and fighting with my mom. The police were called, and I fought with them. I was charged with battery on a police officer. I spent some time in jail and had a year of probation. A few years later I attempted to apply for a job at the Post Office, took the classes and was almost hired, but the background check did not clear me for employment, and I now feel like that was a turning point in my addiction because it felt like that drunken fight with my mom would follow me for the rest of my life.
The first time I used cocaine I loved it, and I was off to the races. Using every day and as much as I could. At the time, I was working with my cousin as a houseman at a local hotel. My cousin was the head houseman, and if he had extra work, he would call me in to clean rooms and do various tasks. He would also invite me to the bar to drink for free. Sometimes he’d surprise me with a bag of coke. I would flirt with the men that would come and go at the hotel and spend time with them in exchange for money. My using already made me a bit more promiscuous and I figured I might as well get paid for it. I learned that I could use my body as a source of income. I still thought I was functioning and doing what I could to make money for myself.
My using brought me to a place where I associated with people who conducted fraud and robbery I made good money, and at the time didn’t think about what I was doing. Even when a friend of mine stopped me and told me that I was on the news, and the police were looking for me as a potential bank robber. I immediately started to run, which led me to a car accident in a rental car, and my face and name was all over every news outlet. I felt like I was America’s Most Wanted. While I was in hiding, I had to sneak over to my mom’s house to visit her late at night. It was hard. I loved my mom so much and I hated not being able to see her. I knew I had to do something, so I sought advice from a friend, he told me to get myself a bondsman.
He said, “when you get your bondsman, you just tell him everything and pay him. You will be able to go to the courthouse, and turn yourself in, but you will not get booked. You will be able to get right out.” So, I went there. I did that, and I did not do jail time. I did, however, continue to rob banks and was eventually caught a few more times. I received an additional pardon, which really did not give me a whole lot of consequences. Eventually I had agreed to turn myself in after a final sentence of 10 months in jail, but it was after a 3-day drinking binge. I slept my first 2 days in jail, and was shaky from withdraw. I was eventually assigned to work in the kitchen. The main dietitian knew how sick I was feeling without any alcohol so she would sneak in little bottles of liquor for me as a treat.
My mom ended up getting meningitis and started to focus on her health a bit more. She stopped drinking. I was amazed by how she was able to just stop. I knew my mom had been going back and forth to the hospital and going to the doctor’s office. I knew something had to be wrong, and I never wanted to go to her appointments with her. My mama ended up having cancer, but she never told me. My mom always tried to protect me because I was the baby, and she and I were close. My cousin came over one day to cut her hair off, and that was when I started to put things together. I really thought my mom would be alright because there were people that beat cancer all the time. I knew my mom was strong, I knew she already overcame meningitis, and she quit drinking all on her own. I felt her slowly pulling away from me when she helped me go on a trip to Virginia and then also to visit a friend in the Carolinas after her mom passed away. My mom also kept telling me that I needed to learn how to take care of myself because my dad and siblings would not do it. My mama didn’t want me to see how sick she was getting. When I got home, I spent most of my time drinking, and not realizing my mama was dying. She died in her bed while I was drunk in the living room.
My mom’s death devastated me, and my drinking became worse. My mom had not even been buried yet and I got into a fight with my sister. The family went to rent suits for the funeral, and I was told that no one would help me pay for mine. I was blessed to have a friend’s support at this time. I was not welcome to ride with the family in the funeral car, I had to find my own way there and at the time I don’t think I cared. I was drinking. Today, I can barely remember the funeral. Some people say I had blocked it out because of trauma, but I am not sure.
After my mother’s passing, my sister told me that she and my dad were moving and that I was not welcome to move with them. This resulted in an argument, police called, and a restraining order filed against me. After the family moved, I stayed in the house for a few days while the power and water were still on but had to leave eventually. That was when the couch surfing and homelessness started. I’d stay with neighbors, friends, and extended family. I started to smoke crack, and my cousin asked me about going into a treatment program. I had heard about BARC from someone before, but never considered calling. I called them from my cousin’s house and although they did not have a bed for me at that moment they told me they would have a bed for me on May 17, 2020, two days after my birthday.
My cousins planned a birthday/going away party for me on the 16th and I had a large bottle of gin ready to go for the party. I had already started drinking when BARC called and told me they had a bed for me. I was already so drunk I gave them the address of where they could deliver it. They had to explain that my bed for treatment was ready and if I did not come that day, I would lose my spot. So, I left the party and went to treatment the day after my birthday. What a blessing! When I first got there, I slept a lot.
I will never forget sitting on the side of my bed at BARC in tears because the shakes had set in, and I just kept saying that I could not do this. Someone reminded me that it would get better. God put me exactly where I needed to be, with people that I needed to be with. I was so weak and shaky that the techs had to help me eat and walk me to the tables. This experience started to strengthen my faith in God and each day I got through I woke up a little better. Even after detox and in IRT I needed assistance due to my shaking. I completed 30 days and called my cousin to tell her I was ready to come home. My cousin said the clinicians suggested that I stay another 30 days, and she agreed with them. So, I continued with my treatment plan. After 60 days I called my cousin again and she said the therapist recommended I go to a recovery residence as the next step in my treatment plan. I tried to fight my cousin on this because I just wanted to go home, but then I was shown a picture of Fellowship RCO’s Recovery Residence for Men and the thought of living on a lake made me think twice.
When I got to Fellowship RCO’s Men’s Recovery Residence, I met Wayne to do my intake. Wayne was reviewing my medication as part of the intake process and noticed I was prescribed medication for seizures. I shared that I had no seizures to my knowledge. Wayne explained to me that because of the severity of my alcoholism that I was prescribed the medication to prevent the seizures as a precaution to my recovery. He helped me understand things about my recovery that I hadn’t really paid attention to in treatment. When I was at IRT I also learned that I was only 140 lbs. I didn’t see myself as too thin, but I did realize that I always had to buy new clothes.
It took a little time for me to adjust to living with 3 other men. I consider myself a clean person, and for the most part my roommates appreciated the work I put into making our house a home. There were some personality clashes, but I did learn some important lessons of communal living. When I first moved into my apartment, my roommates worked together to share chores and go grocery shopping together. We would cook for each other or together and I started to feel a sense of belonging that I had not felt for a very long time. After awhile I was moved into my dream apartment and my roommate ended up being someone I knew from High School. Fareed and I had been friends for a while in school, but our lives took us separate was. I was excited to reconnect with him and be on this recovery journey with someone I knew from my past. We looked out for each other, we laughed until we cried, we went to meetings, and everything seemed to be going well until my house manager told me that Fareed had a reoccurrence of use. Eventually my friend lost his life due to an accidental overdose. Fareed was the first friend I lost in recovery. It makes me sad to reflect on the past 4+ years and how many more have been lost since.
Dealing with death is very emotional for me in general, but losing people in recovery due to this disease is the worst feeling. You can see someone doing everything they need to be doing one day, and they can be gone the next. It makes me fight harder for my recovery, helps me stay closer to God, and connected to the community I belong to. Fellowship RCO gave me a family when it felt like most of my family didn’t want me. I’m grateful to my brother, cousins, aunts, and uncles who helped me find recovery and could see that I have a disease. Only recently have I started to reconnect with my father and sister. I had to work through a lot of emotions around my immediate family because of my abandonment issues after my mom passed away. They left me homeless. She tried warning me that my father was not going to take care of me. I didn’t understand what my mom was trying to tell me, until after she was gone.
Recovery has allowed me to forgive and work through a lot of these feelings so I can have a relationship with my family, but I also know how to set boundaries today. I’m not willing to let anyone steal my joy. My mom’s side of the family made my mom a promise that they would help me find the life I was meant to have, and I know she is looking down on all of us with pride for the parts we all had to play in getting me sober. I know she is proud of me. My mom is an inspiration for my recovery. She taught me great lessons before I made the decision to get sober and one of them was “you can do what you want to do. You don’t have to stop doing something just because I don’t.” Now in my recovery, I say the same thing. People can drink around me. I don’t want to live in a bubble. I still enjoy going to clubs with friends to dance, and I don’t concern myself with thoughts of drinking. I have more fun with a sprite, or a virgin cocktail.
I attend community events; I participate in service projects, and you can always count on me to add a little flare and a lot of laughter to your day. At Fellowship RCO I am not seen as a gay, black man in recovery. I am a member of the family. I have been taught that I am no less or more important than anyone else. I owe a lot of thanks to Sara Barkley and my former house manager Manny Mesa. They offered me lots of support when I was transitioning between jobs, emotions, and life on life’s terms. They always made me feel seen and helped me walk in the solution, offering side jobs when I needed to figure out how to pay my rent. It kept me motivated to keep pushing forward.
I have learned in recovery just how resourceful I am, and I no longer need to ask for those side jobs to help me with my rent. I have created my own network of employers and side jobs to help me maintain the life I enjoy living. I have purchased my own car, which gives me the freedom to spend more time in nature by myself, to meditate, and communicate with my Higher Power.
I have been on probation 4-5 times and spent time in jail a few less times, when I think about it now, it is a nice reminder that my Higher Power was always trying to help me. It was like God was walking with me. I had some consequences, not as many as maybe someone may think I should have had, but I know now that I spent most of my life with my disease. I’ve lost jobs, I’ve lost friends and have been abandoned by family. I have loved, and sometimes that love came in the form of abuse, neglect, and chaos, but I have been loved also by a nurturing mother, beautiful members of my extended family, and friends when I did not know how to love myself. The last thing I want to say is that We Do Recover, and it is far better than you could ever imagine!
