“I started drinking and smoking weed at 14. After high school I started trying other drugs; by the time I was 19, I was addicted to the lifestyle of weed, speed, and alcohol, which led me to make a lot of destructive choices. I had a lot of low points, and I kept redefining rock bottom. One of my lowest points was a near death car accident in 2010. I was driving drunk and high with five of my friends when I crashed into a transformer pole going 100 miles per hour. Thankfully everyone was fine post-accident, but that was the start of a downhill stream. Eventually my mom asked me to go to rehab in October of 2011. I went because there were a lot of things I was struggling with and I wanted a fresh start. Since then I have managed to completely turn my life around; it was a long journey, but I was able to figure out what I wanted my future to look like and that truly saved me.”

Fixed Shorts are Humans of Oshkosh stories collected by students in instructor Grace Lim’s Interdisciplinary Course “Telling Stories for Fun, Profit and World Peace” at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Many of the people are strangers the student storytellers met in public places, who’ve generously shared their stories of addiction and recovery.