Navigating sobriety as a teen: ‘They told me I was going to die’

WATCH – No one has to die –

Sept. 4, 2020 – This time was different, though. When Leahy was going through patient intake at the hospital, he told the doctors what he had taken — the remnants of a bottle of liquid Percocet along with some other drugs — and he was rushed to the ICU.

“They asked what I took and I told them, and they told me that I was going to die,” Leahy said. “I had accidentally taken 8 grams of Tylenol at once [from the Percocet].” Thankfully, Leahy survived the Percocet overdose, but his three-day stint in the ICU was just the beginning of what is now a lifelong journey.

After getting discharged from the hospital, Leahy was sent to a treatment center where a staff member suggested he try something different.

“I took that pretty seriously,” he said. “I had really thought about it and everything I had tried up to that point clearly hadn’t worked ‘cause I found myself in the same situation again and again.”

That staff member’s suggestion was for Leahy to wait a month until he turned 18 years old and then give an adult program a try. And that’s exactly what he did: After riding out his final year of adolescence in detox, he did four months in an adult program, then spent another four months in a more regimented program where he attended AA meetings and worked with a sponsor until he was deemed capable of handling himself in his old environment.

After graduating early from that final program, Leahy returned home and surrounded himself with like-minded sober people.