Why Baby Sea Turtles Run is a definitive story reveal of how my birth and "predetermined" destiny would evolve into a person who'd do almost anything to feed the addiction monster. A deeply truthful memoir that provides the duo-diagnosed addict a valuable guide for the steps necessary to acquire self-respect; the impetus to continually seek sobriety and successfully Live Life on Life's Terms". In my tell-all recounting of a complicated descension, I further seek to present a truth of the hypocrisies I lived in my depth of self-destruction, which would cause undue consternation and regret on many people who'd cross my path - many being loved ones.

On June 15, 1995, I awoke from a heavy night of using crack cocaine and drinking. I was scheduled to go into work, which was now a serious problem in terms of illegal absences. I looked around the interior of my rented room, into the mirror, and began to ball like a baby! After a while, I got down on my knees and begged my God for help and guidance. This sincerity and honesty was a new feeling I never had at any previous time in my life. I cried some more, and then began to shake uncontrollably; finally, it subsided as I started having rapid flashbacks of my addiction life and the terrible things I had done. I envisioned myself, toothless, homeless and on the streets of skid row, not as a Social Worker again, but a resident! I revisited my mother's funeral in Oakland, and that I got high the same night. The multitude of drug runs and sometimes deadly encounters with scammers and gangster dealers with bad attitudes. It was a total revealing and accounting of my life to that point, and it was absolutely revolutionary. It was then, I would began to travel a precarious road that often resulted in one-step-forward and then a regression into the darkness again. What I would seek had become indeed a war...and not just a battle.

There were narrow windows for me to see a future without chemical dependency, and I was fortunate to finally latch onto a desired long-term sobriety. And to be sustained, it must be a sobriety that continues to warrant a
conscious management, daily effort, and honest lifestyle as recovery is initially a personal decision; and then, it becomes a shared proposition between society, family, and friends. It longs for a spiritual connection that promulgates the effects of drug/alcohol abuse and begs for a methodology of treatment that battles addiction. The effective treatment of addiction is multi-layered and should be applied so the individual can successfully consume the benefits without the associative stigmas. It must bring together and not separate minds that are wired differently, but have a common interest and same final goal. That in the end, the addict's recovery becomes society's recovery; one rooted in compassion and clinical interventions that places human lives over capital gain.