Self-medicating

“The first time I ever had alcohol, I actually was trying to kill myself,” Tracy recalls. 16 at the time, he had grown up in a home with no alcohol, but when his mom’s boyfriend moved in, he brought alcohol into the home as well. “Things were going bad and I'd never tasted alcohol, but I knew what it would do. Instead, I ended up in the hospital.”

The next time Tracy drank, he binged hard. That led to a lifestyle that continued throughout his early adulthood. “I would binge, and then I wouldn't drink for long periods of time, then I would binge,” he says. “Alcohol has always been there as a way of self-medicating … through either anxiety or depression ... but it's a double-edged sword, because it causes anxiety and depression, too.”

During his 40s, Tracy began drinking daily, eventually isolating himself in a cabin in the woods. “I wouldn’t see people for months on end,” he remembers. “I'd burnt every bridge, run out of all my money, had no options, and I'd hit rock bottom.”

“I only had one option”

Tracy came to the Mission. He graduated from his recovery program and began an internship before leaving to take care of his father, who was dying of cancer. He relapsed. “It took me three and a half years of that relapse to finally be broken down to the point where I only had one option, and that was God,” he explains. “That was calling out to Jesus for help again. Because I was at my wits' end, I was ready to go out into the woods, spend one last weekend of drinking, and off myself.”

This time was different

Tracy returned to the Mission. “It was either death, or it was surrendering and falling back on the mercy and grace of God that had done so much for me the first time I'd gone through the Mission,” he says. 

This time was different. In completing his recovery program, and interning with the Mission at Capitol Hill, Tracy learned the importance of living in community. “I can't do it alone,” he says. “I need community. That's really the big thing I've learned throughout this second time through the program is that I need to lean on others ... God's been faithful by putting people in my life that I can emulate, that I can trust.”

Today, Tracy looks forward to what God has next. “I used to wake up in the morning and say, ‘Why am I even alive?’ he says. “Now, I wake up each morning grateful … I go, ‘God, what do you have in store for me today?’ … No matter where I go, it's going to be this walk with Christ and me … I'm just going to have faith.”