02 Sep My Return to Freedom
By Joshua Fierro (Class of 2019)
Let me start off by saying that I wasn’t always a convicted felon. I once had somewhat of a normal life. By normal, I don’t mean perfect by any means. I come from a family of addicts. I was born and raised in Los Angeles and have been here my whole life. I didn’t have as rough of a childhood as a lot of kids had. I always had clothes on my back and a meal to eat even if it was through welfare and food stamps. I was really into sports growing up and living near Venice Beach I spent a lot of time there. My dad put me into junior lifeguards there and I loved it and began swimming a lot. This continued into high school where I became a varsity swimmer and a star athlete. After graduating high school, I got a job with the LA County Fire Department as an Ocean Lifeguard in Venice and Santa Monica. I had everything going for me. The perfect job, the beautiful girlfriend, and a great life. It was at this point I first started my drug use starting with drinking and Xanax. This would lead to cocaine and meth. Quickly my life started to spiral out of control. It started with a DUI arrest when I was 19 and continued with small arrests for petty theft and vandalism. Then, at the age of 25 I hit the big leagues getting arrested for residential burglary. The judge didn’t care about the person I was before I started abusing drugs, he cared only about that crime that I had committed. He threw the book at me and gave me 3 years in prison with a strike to go with it. During that time in prison I found a new substance that I couldn’t get enough of called heroin. I would constantly have my family send me their hard-earned money to buy heroin in prison. Forget about rehabilitation, I found a new substance to ruin my life with. I finally paroled and figured, well, I could just stop using now that I’m out. Of course, that wasn’t the case. My habit got worse and worse to the point I was giving my parole officer fake urine to pass my tests. I did finally get discharged from parole after 3 years by some miracle, but by that time I was homeless on the streets and committing crimes just to get a fix to take the sickness away. I had lost all the weight I had to where you could see my rib bones. It didn’t take long until I was picked up on another charge, this time for grand theft, and I was back on my way to prison for a three year with half term. By this time my family had enough of me and had given up on me ever changing my ways. Needless to say, they refused to send me any more money, but instead they send me something better. They sent me hope. This hope came in the form of an NA Basic Text and a Just for Today book. I had nothing else going for me, so every day I read those books. Every day the message in those books began to become more and more clear to me. Those two books stuck with me through County Jail and through prison. It was with me through two major prison riots and it was with me in solitary confinement. They never left my side and they were a constant source of hope for me. I started attending any meetings I could while in prison and when it was getting close to my time to parole, I started writing to a treatment facility called CRI-Help in North Hollywood. I got it hooked up to where I could parole straight to this facility from prison and by that time, I already had 15 months clean. For that four and half months I was at that facility I discovered a new way to live. I learned about the emotional underlying issues that were the root cause of my addiction. For the first time in my life I got a sponsor and began to work the 12 steps with my sponsor. For me, it’s not about working these steps but about actually living and breathing them in all aspects of my life. I learned about the spiritual principles such as honesty, open mindedness, and willingness.
I completed residential treatment at CRI-Help and then I completed CRI-Help’s outpatient program as well. I ended up doing so well at CRI-Help that they offered me a job there. I couldn’t believe it. A multiple-time convicted felon like me helping other addicts get clean. I have been out of prison for little over a year and I have a full-time job, a car, a place to live, and my family back in my life. I’m also a full-time student in college working on getting my certificates to become a certified counselor. This past semester I earned straight A’s and I made the dean’s list. It’s not the material things that I’m most proud of, but the freedom that the 12 steps of Narcotics Anonymous has given me. It’s the opportunity that CRI-Help gave me while still sitting in a prison cell. They gave me a new home to come to when I paroled, and I never left. I recently celebrated 2 years clean in January of 2020 and if nothing else, I want you to know that a new way of living is there if you want it.