When I was a teenager I got into a motorcycle accident. I have plates in my wrist and my knee, and from that point on, I figured that life would always be a miserable, painful thing. I got into drugs, thinking they would help me escape from the misery, but it just got worse. And then I got into selling drugs to feed my habit. I was living in this dark, dingy hole in the wall, living from needle to needle. My whole life was going to hell, and that’s exactly where I’d be right now if I hadn’t been arrested last summer. I was being held at Rikers Island when my court-appointed lawyer told me I was being given a choice: head Upstate to prison or go into a program and get clean. So, of course, I said I’d go into the program, and in my mind I’m telling myself: go there for a week, get some money together, then run. That was nine months ago. I came to Hope Center, met a couple of people there, and, guess what, I’m still here. I just thought it was going to be some terrible program with all these rules and stuff, but it was actually really awesome. Hope Center sent me back to school, and I just graduated college. They reconnected me with my family after six years. And they showed me that my life doesn’t have to be so miserable. In fact, life can be pretty wonderful. I’m clean…