Real stories, from real members of this community.

My name is Zizo and I'm 41 years old. For 26 years I drank alcohol to numb the pain inside. I thought that forgetting for a few hours was a solution but years later I realized how alcohol was destroying my life. I lost jobs, money, family and almost lost my children as a result.

It took years of trying, so I had to stop on my own. I knew what the problem was but didn't know how to get out of the vicious cycle. At some point I was drinking everyday just to face the day. I'd hit so many rock bottoms to even count.

But one day I made the decision that I no longer wanted to live the life of alcoholism, being called derogatory names and losing myself in the process. I had become something I didn't recognize anymore. I joined a recovery program, did therapy to heal the emotional wounds.

Now I'm 730 days clean and my faith is what keeps me. I thank the Lord for his grace and for carrying me thus far. Thank you 💗

I don't think my story can be explained simply by saying, "I became a drug addict and then I got sober." There was a whole person underneath that story. I grew up wanting what I think most of us want: to be loved, to belong, and to understand where we fit in the world. I was a sensitive, imaginative kid. I was a nerd. I liked thinking. I was creative and academically capable. But I didn't always feel like those things had much value in the world I was growing up in.

I was looking for belonging. I found some of it in the wrong places. Alcohol and drugs were around me from a young age, so they didn't initially feel foreign or dangerous. Drinking was normal. Smoking was normal. Eventually I started experimenting myself. By my teenage years, substances, parties, street culture and the need to prove myself had become intertwined.

But here's what made my life so complicated: I wasn't simply a kid who didn't care. I was still trying to build something. I studied. I qualified as a sound engineer. I pursued music. I became a battle rapper and, at one point, my career was actually taking off. I could walk into a room and command attention. I had talent. I had ambition. I had dreams.

At the same time, I was becoming increasingly destructive. My grades suffered. My relationships suffered. My behaviour changed. Drugs and alcohol became ways of escaping things I didn't know how to deal with. I became angry. I became violent. I got into fights. I got arrested. There were periods when I was running from the police. There were periods when I got clean, only to start using again. I became very good at functioning while falling apart.

Eventually, I wasn't using substances because they were making my life better. I was using them because I didn't know how to live with myself without them. By 2016, I had reached what I now describe as the worst year of my life. I nearly died from an overdose. I ended up back in psychiatric care and eventually entered Elim Clinic. And something happened there that changed the direction of my life. I got clean.

But getting clean was only the beginning. On 28 August 2016, I gave my life to Christ. My faith became part of the foundation on which I started rebuilding. I had to learn how to think differently, respond differently, deal with anger differently, take responsibility, and live without constantly escaping from myself. For the first time, recovery wasn't just about what I was stopping. It was becoming about who I was becoming. And that surprised me.

Because I never imagined that the person who once needed treatment would eventually work in recovery. After treatment, I started rebuilding my life. I worked, studied, served in my church, pursued music and continued growing. Eventually my relationship with Elim developed into an opportunity to work there. What started as something that wasn't even supposed to become a long-term career became a huge part of my life. I trained through the peer model and became a Recovery Support Professional.

I've worked with people in groups and individually, facilitated programmes, been involved in pastoral care, spoken in corporate and government spaces, travelled around the country, and stood in rooms I never imagined I'd enter. But the biggest change isn't my job title. It's that my past became useful. The experiences that once made me ashamed became experiences I could use to connect with somebody else who was struggling. I know what it feels like to be the person sitting on the other side of the table. I know what it feels like when somebody looks at you and sees only an addict. Today, I get to look at people differently.

And sobriety changed more than my relationship with drugs and alcohol. It changed what I believed my life could become. I thought recovery meant getting my old life back. Instead, I got the opportunity to build a completely different one. I came into recovery as someone who needed help. I eventually became someone who could help others. And I'm still becoming.

Codi van der Merwe aka YahBoy Codi