my name is Joshua I"m an addict ,at one time in my life that was hard to say but now I understand what it is I"m fighting. My story starts a lot like everyone else"s: I started to use at a young age and my addiction spun out of control. By the age of 14 and by the time I was 23 my life was so out of control I had poured gas on everything I loved and watched it burn. So at 23 I"m alone in prison and I don"t understand why. While in prison, my use went on for years, I fell in to the prison gangs and became the complete embodiment of hate. The sad thing is when I look back now I just didn"t care. This hate and drugs destroyed my hope of ever changing. While in prison I preached hate, I lived it, breathed it, walked it- the fish coming in to the system was pointed to me as an example of how to live that life style. And at this point in my life I never believed in god and I thought people who did were weak and simple minded- they were easy victims, they were scum.

The change in my life started when I was put in a situation to protect some young white new to prison. So I show them how to lead by example and a fight occurred a lot of people hurt. I went to the hole mad at the world and the prison guards knowing what I was about showed me who was really in control and beat me. The hate I felt was beyond compare. I couldn"t lash out to anyone so I started to beat the walls in the hole until my hands were broken and bloody, and it was at that point the rage and hate had so consumed me I dropped to my knees and screamed. I honestly wanted to kill somebody to release this feeling inside me. Then at that moment god came to me and removed it all, and when I say removed, I mean he took the hate, the rage, the loneliness from inside of me and gave me something I never had: hope. And this hope carried me back to the yard where the people I had been associated with couldn"t understand what had happened to me. So I waited for it- you know- the shiv in the back the neck, but it never came and it is only by the grace of god I"m typing this story. I was released on dec 27 2012 and I have been going to meetings and talking to kids about my life and how god has changed me from the inside. I have to praise god for saving me from me; as god works though me I"m excited to share and to say there is hope for us all, as long as we don"t use. And hell yes its hard to make it day to day but god carries us when we can"t do it on our own. He put my family, my children and the women I love back into my life even though I don"t deserve to have such beauty and amazing people around me. My hope is to share; we have to give it away in order to keep it. So never forget there is hope, and his name is god.