Cleaning Up Litter Helps Recovered Addict Find Purpose

VIDEO – CLEAN and SOBER –

Oct. 30, 2024 – “Boredom is a relapse trigger,” he said. “And so, it just comes from my personal experience that you have to have find a purpose and stay busy.”

This initiative is also healing for Guhl after struggling with addiction himself.

“When I was using, nothing else mattered,” he said. “Everything was about getting the drugs, whether I had to steal, whether I had to do whatever I had to do.”

Guhl started using drugs in his 30s before things escalated.

“Started out just liking to get high, and then moved on to having to stay high in order not to be sick,” Guhl said. “Then it just transformed to unmanageability.”

Guhl overdosed twice and nearly died until, he said, a run in with the law saved him.

“So, I did not recover by choice,” Guhl said. “I got a charge. I was on probation. I, of course, continued to use. And probation basically started putting me in jail. They basically just kept me in jail until I became agreeable to treatment.”

He’s now eight years clean and finding purpose in cleaning the environment and helping others as a chemical dependency counselor, spreading some hope everywhere he goes.