Janco’s Journey to Freedom
I’ve already died once with a needle in my arm.
It’s only by the grace of God that I’m here today to tell you this story.
I’ve struggled most of my life with the disease of addiction.
My obsession with using drugs was so powerful that nothing else could compete. My addiction cost me everything. I lost my licence, my home, my marriage, my son, and ultimately, I lost my freedom.
I was up to no good and I ended up in jail for the first time in 2017.
For the next five years I was in the system. I was in and out of jail. I was unable to hold on to my freedom because I couldn’t follow the conditions of my probation. I got caught up in a vicious cycle of breaking the law in order to fuel my addiction.
Most times I was out of jail I was homeless. It was torture. I hated myself for choosing drugs time after time, but I didn’t know how to change.
The hardest day of my life was when I had to write a letter to let my wife take my one-year-old son out of the country. She moved back to Russia with him and I haven’t seen him since.
That day, I put more fentanyl in my arm than ever before. I wanted my life to end, and the thing I both loved and hated was going to do it for me.
God had another plan for my life.
I don’t know how I made it through that day. But I saw the darkness, and at that moment I knew I wanted to live in the light.
A week before I finished my last sentence in 2021, I prayed to God and asked Him to help me. I prayed for guidance and I prayed for the courage to leave this dark place.
When I got out of jail, I made an appointment with an addictions counselor through Fraser Health. While I was waiting in the office, George walked by. You might know that George went through the Hope for Freedom recovery program himself 25 years ago. He is now an addictions counselor, grandfather and past board member.
George poked his head in the door and said,
“Hey, do you want to get into recovery?”
That was the beginning of a two year recovery journey at Hope for Freedom. It was really hard. I was depressed for months and it took a long time to see the real impact that recovery could have on my life. I’m thankful for the men here who believed in me and encouraged me at each step along the way.
Today, I provide peer support to the men in the program at Hope for Freedom's Liverpool House. I’ve learned that the best way to help someone is to simply listen.
