'I Had to Get Some Help'
POSTED NOV.1, 2006

Joseph Veve, 46, was a drug addict when he came to the New York City Rescue Mission in October, 2005. After a year in the Residential Recovery Program, Veve is off drugs and works in the pastry department at Fresh Direct, saving money for an apartment and aiming to become a chemical dependency educator.

Coke was my drug of choice. I’ve been doing coke for 30 years. I come from a long line of people who slowly but surely killed themselves. I had an aunt, she had cirrhosis of the liver and she used to take her medication with a shot of liquor. How’s that for addiction? Everybody I knew got high. When I was like 12, 13, I honestly thought that everybody in the world got high. I’m a classic case of a product of my environment.

The thing with me is I always worked. I been working since I was 11 years old. One of the good things about…well, let me rephrase that. One of the things about sniffing cocaine is that you can do it almost anywhere. I used to say, I gotta go into the walk-in, I gotta get some chicken. Go back there and just sniff a gram or two. You find work that allows you to get high, drug-friendly jobs so to speak.

Once you become aware that you’re an addict then you struggle with maybe I am, no I’m not. And then you struggle with maybe I should get some help and then you’re like the hell with that, I’m getting high tonight. By the time you know it, you’re in your mid-30s and you haven’t done anything or accomplished anything.

From like July to October last year I was sleeping on the trains. I’d lived on the street in Miami before. It didn’t matter at that time. But here it was cold and I’m older, a little wiser, and a lot sicker. I knew I had to get some help. I just said I’m not gonna be alive too much longer if I continue like this. At the Mission, I was up at 4 a.m. every day. I was the breakfast cook for 125 men, and then I had classes, and there were deliveries coming in. So it’s a pretty full day. At first you wanna leave all the time, but after a while something starts happening.

Part of the treatment is the transient guests. Because you see them come in day in and day out, twisted. You talking to them and you getting drunk just off their smell. Oh man! I don’t wanna be 55, 60 years old like some of these guys. I can’t see myself much older than I am now, doing this. It’s hard now and I still got some fight left in me.

Addicts are the only ones that can treat each other. You don’t know what it is that I think about if you’re not an addict. You don’t know where I’ve been, you don’t know where I’ve walked. Only another addict knows that. The counselors can help guide you but we’re the only ones that can help each other. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

I’m spiritually grounded now, and I’m very active in my church. Before, them brothers in the church, the only thing they could do is let me drink some of that wine they got! I had no spirituality. That’s part of your addictive behavior. That’s something that would have gotten in the way of me getting high.

I think about coke every day. I’ll think about it less and less as I progress, but it’s gonna always be there. When I’m tired, like after the eighth or ninth hour of working, I say damn, I could use me a sniff right about now. But then I think, I’m not gonna go through this anymore. I’ve already decided that. I’m doing some pretty worthwhile stuff now and it feels good. I don’t need no drug to make me feel good, or make me think that I’m feeling good. I’ve got this chance now. I’m gonna make it work.