My name is Fred W.  I am 46 years old. I've been sober since 2/8/2022. I have a 27-year-old son that is my best friend, an 18-year-old daughter that I don't know at all and a 5-year-old grandson that is the light of my life. I grew up in Lakewood, Ohio with three sisters, my mom and grandma.  We were a very poor family living in a middle class suburb.  We lived on Section 8, food stamps, free meals and second-hand clothes.

Hi, my name is Kristina, and I am an alcoholic. My sobriety date is March 3, 2022, and that's an important date to me because it's the day that I became willing to change. I grew up in Garfield Heights with my mom, dad and four sisters. My parents are also alcoholics, but they did the best they could raising us. There was a lot of fighting and arguing in my house daily, so I had a lot of fear as a young child. I was very shy and insecure growing up and did not like being around a lot of people.

My name is Shawn, and I am an alcoholic. My sobriety date is January 31, 2022. My friends call me Sonny. I was born and raised in Paterson, New Jersey, and I'm 42 years old. I come from a very strong Irish family. I was taught morals and values. My parents tried their best to teach me right and to keep me away from the streets, and it worked for a while. I was a good kid who listened to adults and did what I was told to do. When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I was abused by a family member who I loved and trusted. After that I became really withdrawn and developed trust issues.

I have struggled with addiction for about half of my life and have been seeking treatment and solution for many years. I have been in countless rehab facilities, sober livings and detoxes all around the country, and here in Ohio. I started abusing drugs at a young age and found myself to feel very hopeless, depressed and lacking purpose throughout my adult years. My addiction has caused me to harm people I love, myself, people I don’t even know and pretty much anyone that would cross my path.

Hi, my name is Kelsey and I’m an alcoholic. I have a sobriety date of June 2, 2021. I’m 30 years old. I have a sponsor, a home group, and a higher power of my understanding — which is not something I ever thought I would say. For a long time, I believed that life had no meaning and I believed that my time on this Earth would never amount to anything. Thankfully, the program of Alcoholics Anonymous would show me that I can do things I never thought I could do and be someone I never thought I could be.

My name is Matt M and I'm an alcoholic/junkie. I have a sobriety date of 01/03/2019, a sponsor, a higher power, and a support group that cares more about my life than my feelings!! "Very Important" I come from a blue-collar family that was loving and caring. I grew up in Brunswick, Ohio. There is alcoholism in my family and we lived by a motto of work hard, play hard. Which I took to a whole other level.

My name is Toni and I’m a sober alcoholic. I was born on the west side of Cleveland to a middle-class, hard-working family. My dad was an alcoholic and from an early age I learned about living in fear and making myself small and quiet. I also have some forms of abuse in my story. Those things didn’t make me an alcoholic, but they did give me very unhealthy coping skills. Today, I am not a victim…as Katie Patton says, “victims don’t stay sober”. She’s right about that and it took me three times going through Jean Marie House to learn that.