The Brooklyn in Mike Morgan's accent is obvious as the Army veteran talks about being strung out on heroin, the same drug his brother and sister overdosed on, killing both.

He sounds tough as he talks about how his parents divorced when he was a baby. "I never really knew my dad," he said.

Morgan's mother died when he was just a boy, and at age 13 he started drinking alcohol to — as he figured out later in life — deaden the emotional trauma of his youth.

"I didn't realize at the time that's what I was doing," Morgan said.

After his stint with the Army's 1st Cavalry Division out of Fort Hood, Texas, Sgt. Morgan received an honorable discharge, and in 1981 he ended up in Utah.

But the drinking continued, along with smoking marijuana and snorting cocaine.

While in the Army, Morgan had married, and the union lasted 15 years. But the final straw in 1993 was when his substance abuse kept him away from home for days at a time, neglecting his wife, son and daughter. He and his wife divorced that year.

He was weak in so many ways but didn't know how much so — not until about three years ago after a night when he tried to drink himself to death. He woke up on the floor of a motel room and decided then to make a change.

Morgan found programs through Veterans Affairs and the Volunteers of America. He started to turn his life around and would learn during treatment that he was "passionately" suicidal.

"I didn't care whether I lived or died," he said. "That got my attention."

Now he's a full-time employee of First Step, supervising its vet-to-vet program. He lives on his own and pays his own rent.

During two years of being off alcohol, Morgan confessed to one relapse. "I could see I was going to hit bottom," he said.

But being able to counsel fellow veterans and help them beat their addictions to drugs and alcohol means a lot to Morgan.

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"They trust me," he said. "They know where I'm coming from."

What about more relapses?

"I'm not going back today," Morgan replied. "One day at a time."


E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com

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