Kevin's Story

Kevin lovingly cared for his mother and grandmother up to the time they moved to an assisted living facility. He stayed in the house and everything was going pretty well until the pandemic shut everything down in March 2020.

That was a dreary time for him all alone and isolated with no work to do. And that’s when he made a big turn to alcohol, mostly just to pass the time.

He says “I’d been drinking since I was 16, but now it got excessive.” In fact, it was so excessive his family intervened and took him to a hospital for detox. When he was admitted, Kevin’s blood alcohol count was at a near-fatal level. He woke up from a medically induced coma confused and needing speech therapy. Forty-six days after being admitted, Kevin left the hospital, but his recovery was just beginning.

“My aunt wouldn’t let me go back to the house by myself,” Kevin tells us. “My family found Hope Gospel Mission, and I entered the long-term program in January 2021.”

When he arrived at Hope Gospel, Kevin’s grandmother had just died. Only a month into the program, he suffered another devastating loss when his mother passed away. “I was numb, in a deep depression,” he recalls. “Trying to deal with my addiction after losing the two most important people in my life was very difficult.”

But with the encouragement of staff and other family members, Kevin began to heal. “I felt like I was in the right place, doing the right thing. I knew God was with me every step of the way. That gave me peace when everything felt chaotic. It gave me the strength to be sober for the rest of my life.”

Today, Kevin has been sober for two years. He is a proud program graduate with a good job, a nice place to live and a church home for spiritual support. In his younger years Kevin spent many years traveling across the U.S. and Europe, but now he is content to stay close to home and put down some roots now. “I just want a regular, stable life with no drama,” he says.

"It took a long time for me to get to this place in my life," Kevin says,"but God had His way. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing."