“I was drinking every day…”

Jason believed it was too late for him to change his life, too late to stop drinking himself to death. He said he didn’t want to quit, but in truth, he was afraid to try, even when his drinking threatened to break up his 10-year relationship.

“I never let up. It only got progressively worse,” he says.“It got to the point where I was drinking almost a gallon of vodka a day. I stopped eating. I looked like a skeleton walking around, sallow and jaundiced.”

Jason’s relationship finally did break up, and he had nowhere to go, so he came to the Jersey Shore Rescue Mission as an overnight guest. But during the day, he wandered around, lost and unwilling to change what was slowly killing him.

“Every morning I saw Chaplain Cole, and he asked, ‘Are you done yet?’ and every time I said, ‘No, no, no.’ After about a week and a half, I finally said, ‘Yes, I’m done!’”

It was then Jason entered our Life Change Program, where his faith has flourished. “I’ve always believed in God, but I’ve learned a lot more about my faith and grown exponentially closer to Him,” he says. “Before, I didn’t believe He’d want to answer the prayers of someone like me. Then I asked Him, and good things happened.”

Jason, who has been clean and sober for two years now, completed the program and stayed in our transitional housing while looking for work. He’s now employed at a local restaurant, has his own place and spends his free time at the Mission, staying connected with men in the program and manning phones. “I let people know it doesn’t have to be over. It’s never too late to turn your life around,” he says.

“I didn’t think anything would bring me to a point where I wanted to stop drinking. Then God put Chaplain Cole in my path,” Jason says. “The Mission is about saving lives… and my life was saved.”

He’s a man with a heart of gratitude for friends like you who have made his journey possible. Thank you for your continued generosity.

To read the Fall 2018 issue of The Lifeline, click here.