Joe Stallings

“I started using when I was about 8 or 9 years old. My younger brother and I grew up with a single mother. My father used and was in and out of prison and drank and used way before I came along. As I got older I started using other drugs and drinking more. At the age of 14, one of the times my father was around, he taught me how to sell cocaine. All throughout high school was nothing but a big party. Somehow I did graduate high school and went off to the Army. I was clean for a little while until after airborne school when I went to the base I was stationed at in Louisiana. I started back selling and using. I did end up going to prison for the first time at the age of 19. When I got out I was still using heavy. At this time I was to have a son by my first wife. He ended passing away at birth but I was too busy getting high to be at the hospital. I moved back to North Carolina shortly after that. This is the time I started using heroin. Everything I did had heroin as my first priority. So over the next 10 to 11 years I'm in and out of prison and using both in and out of prison. In 2017 I was blessed with a beautiful daughter but even she couldn’t keep heroin away for long. Last year when I got out of prison my daughter's mother died of an overdose. I ended up using and overdosing after a month and a half of sobriety due to grief and depression. This got the ball rolling on my recovery by me going into Bridge to Recovery for in-patient treatment. I am now staying with Anchor of Hope Sober Living. I just had my first overnight stay with my daughter and it was the best feeling in the world to get her ready for daycare and not think about drinking

or using first.

-Joseph Stallings-

Sober since May 11th, 2021