05/08/2026
My name is Dylan and I’m an alcoholic. I was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1987 into a big family that loved me unconditionally. I had a great childhood, studied music like my mom and dad, played sports and did well in school. I had plenty of friends and enjoyed high school, and did well on my SAT’s. I appeared to have a bright and promising future ahead of me, but the disease of addiction does not discriminate. I began drinking and taking pain pills in high school and things progressed quickly, as they often do with young people in early addiction. Soon I was an intravenous He**in, Fentanyl, and Co***ne user, drug dealer, and altogether hopeless variety criminal. My lifestyle became increasingly harmful to myself, my family, and the areas I lived in. After 20 years of active addiction, selling drugs and multiple incarcerations, I made a decision to get my life together and seek help. An old music buddy of mine, Hayden Karchmer, put me in touch with Charlie Hatcher at Healing Appalachia music festival , who was instrumental in my early recovery. He brought me to West Virginia and arranged for me to begin treatment at Harmony Ridge in Walker, West Virginia where I met Josh Haskiell, Jacob May and Robert Di**le. They helped guide me to a place in Parkersburg called Recovery Point where I met folks like Roman Gibson and Jared Reaser who began to walk me thru the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anomymous. They changed my life in a dramatic and beautiful way. It took hard work and painstaking effort to get to where I’m at today, but nothing worth having comes easy. I now work in recovery and my life has become so much more fulfilling than I ever thought possible.
“We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.”
-Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous pg.25
Harmony Ridge Recovery Center
