A little about my story and what got me started with Face of Addiction.

Face of Addiction

Hello and welcome to my blog ! 

My name is Jack L. Timmons III and I am the creator, founder, author and developer behind the Face of Addiction .

I decided to create this blog during a time of my life where struggle was at the forefront of each and every day. I had recently lost my job as a construction materials technician where I had literally just completed my ACI certification and thought things were looking up , and then disaster struck. 

It was the week after Halloween and I was doing everything I could to fix a few things where I had been having issues with work. I was making sure I was on time to all my jobs and getting everything situated and back to normal. I was actually doing some soil density tests at a local Junior High when I got the notification of a schedule change at work . The change included a staff meeting at the office and it was scheduled for immediately after the job at the school was completed. I had ended up breaking my pin that is like a concrete stake that we used to make the hole for our density gage to be able to take the test. At this point I called my project manager and notified him of the situation and he said just come to the office to grab a new one the staff meeting should only take about 20 minutes and I could get back to my days schedule. 

When I  arrived at the office for the meeting I found out that it was not a staff meeting they wanted me to go and take a random drug test due to the recent issues with time management and not making it to jobs on time. I explained to my project manager that I had made the necessary changes to ensure it wasn't going to happen again. I also explained that I had made a mistake and on Halloween I had taken some Jello shots from one of the houses we had come across while trick or treating and then I had bought a bottle of crown and was hoping that my honesty on the matter would help me out in the situation and get me out of doing the random because if I did take it the results would land me in jail and I would lose my job anyways. 

My project manager then told me that if I didn't take the test that he would have to ask me to voluntarily quit immediately. He then told me that if it had been drugs that I was struggling with they had services that they were willing to offer me so I could keep my job but since it was alcohol they had no other options to offer other than to quit. 

At that moment, I couldn't believe that being honest actually punished me.  

I now had to tell my kids and family that I lost my job . After breaking the news to my family I noticed a massive increase in the tension at home that was already there because of issues with being behind on rent because of my nephew robbing my mom of over $7,000.00 and her not pressing charges to guarantee that she got the money back. This left us struggling to catch up on top of me now being unemployed and unable to contribute at the time .

I continued my job search for days and then days turned into weeks and weeks into months. It was really starting to affect my confidence and led to me being in a massive depression. The depression made the situation that much worse. 

One evening I was on the back porch having a cigarette when I heard some yelling coming from inside the house. I walked over to see what was happening and noticed it was my oldest daughter yelling at my moms husband . I kept my distance until I seen my moms husband slam the kitchen table , where my granddaughter was sitting and eating dinner , the table bounced off the back door and come back and hit my granddaughter . 

At that moment I threw my cigarette and slid the back door open in a rush to get inside and tell him to step outside and pick on someone a bit closer to his size. I was in a rage ready to kick his ass not only because the table hitting my granddaughter but also because he was screaming at my daughter talking shit about me and she was just defending me and with all rights to do so . My mother snatched him up so fast and drug him down the hallway to their bedroom before I could get to him. I feel she like it was because she knew I was not playing and had told him if he kept screwing around I was going to give him a reminder why he did not want to talk to me or my children with the disrespect that he had been. 

18 years prior I had put a beating on him over a misunderstanding about something he had said about my mother and unfortunately E & J brandy was involved and things got out of hand and it took 6 guys to get me off of him because I had blacked out. 

I  warned him and told him you think you got it bad last time , fuck around and find out what happens when I'm sober. 

I think that scared my mother or at least made her realize she had better intervene before I got the chance to get ahold of him because I meant business and was on my way through the door to get busy.  We exchanged some words about me not paying my way and I reminded him about the several years when I was a minor where I paid their rent and bills and the entire time all they did was get high. That did not matter to them and they said it was irrelevant. The situation was no different except I wasn't just getting high  and was actually trying to find a job . 

The result of this led to me and my daughters and my granddaughter being kicked out and having nowhere to go. The first few days we all stayed in our vehicle while doing door dash to be able to eat and get gas and smokes. 

A good friend of mine let us stay in his camper at his parents place for a little over a month . I thought that I would have had a job again and had something else figured out by then. That was however not the case and we were asked by his mother to find somewhere else to stay. 

I had been talking to my brother who lived one street away and let him know that we had to find somewhere else to go. I asked if he minded if we stayed a few nights just so I could get something figured out. 

After about a week my brother and his wife were talking to me and said that it appeared to them that it might be a long term arrangement and that they were ok with it as long as I was able to contribute around the house and with bills and stuff which was never a problem. things were going good for a while and then I started noticing that my belongings were being gone through and things were missing so I put up cameras in my room and garage to monitor my stuff. 

After putting up the cameras I noticed a mood shift amongst the people in the house like something wasn't right. My brother and his wife and kids were all very distant and just stayed in their bedroom for the most part. This continued for about a week and then they finally started coming out of the bedroom and socializing again.

At this time they explained to me that they had been talking to their landlord and that someone had called code enforcement and we had like a week to have everything picked up out of the yard. They said that the landlord was going to be making an appearance at the house to make sure everything was picked up and that no unwanted guests were at the house. 

At this point I was already thinking that something just wasn't adding up however, I began moving all of my personal belongings from behind the garage in to the garage and organizing it on the shelfs to make room for everything. I had to push their vehicle out of the garage that I was currently doing head gaskets on for them to help them save money and to help towards my contributions to the house as I do not expect anything for free.  

The whole week I worked at getting everything picked up and cleaned up as asked . I would get up and take my daughter to the bus stop and then go home and work on it. The second to last day I was working at it and something told me I needed to leave and I realized what time it was . I was supposed to be picking my daughter up from the bus stop after school. 

I quickly shut everything down and jumped in my vehicle and went to my daughters bus stop. After sitting there for about a half an hour I decided to message my daughter and see where she was because she hadn't arrived yet. She informed me that her friend had given her a ride home today and that she was pulling up to the house now but there was cops there and asked if I knew why. I had no idea , and told her to call me when they were gone so I could come back and finish up with all my stuff.

The next morning , after I had taken my daughter to the bus stop I was in the back of the garage trying to finish up the last of my stuff and was going to be able to finish it all before the end of the day just in time for the landlord supposedly. While grabbing a load of things from behind the garage to take into the garage I heard some one hollering and didn't really think anything of it until the voice came from the side of the garage and was hollering my name. I quickly replied , "Yeah" after hearing my name. A police officer stepped into view and said someone had called and said that there was somebody here that is not supposed to be here and they wanted them gone saying that I was trespassing. I told the officer that I was living there for the last couple months and that I could go inside and get my brother to confirm that. He said that either way I had warrants and that they were taking me to jail regardless.

I asked my brother right then if I was allowed there and he said yes. So all of this was making no sense to me until later on that day while I was in the holding tank at the Salt Lake County Jail. 

When the officers were arresting me I had asked them if I could leave my coat with my brother because I wasn't going to need it in the jail. They said yeah that would be fine. 

I quickly removed my coat and handed it to my brother and told him that there was something in the pocket that belonged to someone else and that he would probably be by later on to get it. I was referring to the half oz of weed that was in my pocket.

Well, while I was moving my belongings I had come across a case of mine that I used to keep my dope in when I was using. I was trying to throw it away when the cops had gotten there so instead, I had just slid it in my pocket of my coat not really thinking. That  was why I was trying to get them to allow me to leave my coat with my brother not thinking that it would land me in the position that it was about to later on that day. 

After 16 hours in jail processing they finally decide to release me on overcrowded release. I tried to get ahold of my brother who had suddenly just quit answering my calls a few hours prior to my release. He still would not answer. Finally they released me and I get my phone turned on to find a message in my phone saying that they had found my dope in my pocket and that I was no longer allowed at their house I had to find somewhere else to go. I tried and tried repeatedly to get him to answer the phone without any luck. 

I already thought it was a cowards way of going about it especially since he wouldn't even talk to me and give me a chance to explain myself. Come to find out him and his wife had gone through my coat and taken the weed and lied to my buddy when he showed up to get it saying I didn't leave it with them. This made me irate because I specifically told my brother that was in my pocket and now he's calling me a liar to my friend.

I made it to his place after a long walk and waiting in the cold for my friend to pick me up. I tried to go in the house only to find the door locked and that was strange because they never lock the door. My daughters come to the door and came outside and told me that I wasn't allowed inside because what they had found. They grabbed me the keys to my vehicle and a few things out of the house and I left with nowhere to go and extremely angry because 
I had figured it all out right at that moment.

It was my brothers wife that had called the cops on me and had them come arrest me because she was mad that I put up cameras to watch my belongings making it to where she couldn't just help herself to whatever she wanted and then just lie to me if I asked about it . So now she just wanted me gone. The thing that got me was hell all my brother would have had to do was talk to me about it like a mam and I would have respected him for that and left without incident. 

Instead, they thought me going to jail was going to have me in there for like 2 years and I have no clue why they thought that because I was basically finished with everything I was supposed to do except for paying $600 for my one on one sessions recommended by the treatment center I was referred to by my probation officer and was supposed to be covered by Medicaid but was not due to my daughters mother being vindictive and reporting me for fraud having my case shut down and screwing my entire situation up.  

So this is how my sobriety was going for me at this time I had lost my job and 3 places to stay and was now left homeless and had children who didn't want anything to do with me because they believed that I was using even though they knew that I wasn't because they were always with me. 

So this is basically a shortened version of how the last year of my life has gone and that was because everyone assumed that I was an addict who was actively using however I was not and because of my past I could not get anyone to believe me even though I was taking random drug tests on probation. 

So in the face of addiction , my life was rather simple I had everything I needed and nobody was complaining other than me not having a job. They wouldn't say much though because they had plenty of drugs because I made sure of it but when I was in jail prior to being kicked out they got busted because they left their bag of dope in the bathroom and the kids found it and took pictures of it and then ran to the school cop and told them creating a bunch of chaos and prevented me from being released from jail for another week. 

The minute they had to be sober everything changed because they had to face reality and realize that we were in a hole that we probably wouldn't get out of and instead of taking accountability for it they tried to blame it on me and I was not having it. I owned up to everywhere I made mistakes and knew I had things to work on but I wasn't about to take the fall for everyone else's bullshit especially when I was the one who caught the crap happening and they didn't listen and then did nothing to get the money back.

In life , and in addiction accountability is crucial and extremely important. Yes it sucks having to face the music when you own up to something you did wrong or somewhere you messed up . When you are accountable for your actions it makes it far easier for you to be trusted.