"You know the best thing Dr. Hudson did for me?" When he took me to The Salvation Army's Harbor Light Center, he made me think getting sober was my own idea.
"He's very perceptive. He knew immediately my future might hold nothing but prisons, institutions and death".
That's David Pyles' opinion of this state of mind when he first came to grips with the possibility of recovery. "I was egotistical. Self-centered. I thought I could control it. Do you know what I mean? I didn't know how bad it was."
Eight years later, now that he's able to look back at it with some perspective, Pyles says he worked the program, although reluctantly, and fought some of his counselors tooth and nail.
"I had at least five counselors," he says. "They were like a family looking out for me - the people persons, the hard-nosed cousins. I hated it at the time, but learned from it. I learned if they sometimes said harsh things, it was not out of meanness but out of caring."
Pyles went through three phases of the Harbor Light Program - the 30-day detox, the 60-day interim phase and the final six-month transitional phase.
While there, he met his wife. Throughout the period, he stayed in close contact with Dr. Fred Hudson, who had first recommended that he go into treatment and was best man at his wedding.
Pyles is now a professional chef. Hudson, now retired from general practice, went with him to check out the Harbor Light Center and was so impressed with the program that he joined the Harbor Light Center Advisory Board and then The Salvation Army's San Francisco Metro Advisory Board. He's stuck by Pyles ever since and after open-heart surgery, brought him in to cook for him during his own recovery.
Pyles credits Hudson, his pastor, his wife and his Harbor Light Center counselors for helping him over through rough times. They are his "kitchen cabinet," he says. Using further cooking analogy, he describes the layers he's had "to peel like an onion" to discover issues about his life that needed resolution.
Hudson urged him to keep a journal. In it, he could see the parallel between issues and relapses. At his father's grave, he read the journal, realizing that although love was not a word often used in his household, his father was the man "who was always getting me out of trouble."
After a dozen years of separation, he made amends with his sister, surprised his mother and reunited with his son, who attended Stanford on an athletic scholarship and reapplied for an academic scholarship after proving his grades. During basketball season, says Pyles proudly, his son's grade average was 3.91. Off-season, a 4.0.
Recognizing that hobbies help addicts replace old habits, he says in his early recovery whenever he felt the need for cocaine, he would splurge and buy slot car parts, books or a good diner for himself instead. Today he has a hundred model slot cars and races monthly, sponsored by manufacturers.
Believing recognition of a higher power is essential for people in recovery, he travels from the East Bay to a Peninsula church and pastor, with whom he feels a special spiritual kinship. He speaks very positively. "I don't dwell in the past. I live the present day by day with God's help."
For more information about The Salvation Army's recovery programs, please email recovery@tsagoldenstate.org or log onto www.sfharborlight.org.