Month: September 2025

From Chaos to Craft: Brandon Pitman’s Road to Recovery

When we sat down with Brandon Pitman last month to hear his personal story, there was a particular moment that put his remarkable recovery transformation into perspective.

Brandon was reflecting on how much he’s changed for the better in recovery, and in the same breath he mentioned his girlfriend Regina, whom he openly admires and respects. He said:

“I’m a different person today. My girlfriend would never tolerate the person I was five years ago. A completely different person. I’m glad – I really am.”

For context, Regina isn’t part of the recovery world. She’s a “normie” from a strong family with a solid career at a local hospital. Brandon knows the man he used to be would have driven her away immediately. In that unguarded moment, he expressed a special kind of gratitude for his spiritual experience working the 12 Steps, because today he is capable of building and keeping a healthy, loving relationship with someone he truly admires.

Recovery has brought Brandon many blessings. He’s free from the obsession to drink or use. He teaches 12 Step recovery classes locally and sponsors others to help them find what he’s found. He has also built a solid career as an HVAC technician, earning multiple EPA and industry certifications. At 25, he is living as a resident member of CORE’s recovery community, building the kind of life he always dreamed about but never had in his youth.

Brandon grew up in Sullivan, Missouri, a small town where everyone knew your name and Friday nights were for football. Money wasn’t scarce, but stability was. Substance use ran on both sides of his family, and home life could turn violent. He tried marijuana at 13, but after an abusive incident with his father, “the rebellion started,” he recalls. Sneaking out, smoking, raiding the medicine cabinet, and experimenting with drugs became his escape from home.

School and sports quickly fell by the wayside. As his parents’ marriage dissolved, truancy letters piled up until they had him emancipated. By 17, he was couch-surfing, living in his car, and selling marijuana and pain pills to fund his habit. Hoping for a fresh start, he moved to Florida to live with his grandfather, an AA old-timer with decades of sobriety. Brandon attended meetings and found work in landscaping, but soon relapsed into IV opiate use with the help of an addicted relative and learned firsthand the misery of withdrawal.

For the next few years, he bounced between Florida and Missouri, working construction and factory jobs while drinking and using. “I tried the geographical cure three or four times,” he says. “It never worked, because wherever I went, I’d run into myself.” He survived two serious car crashes, one leaving him with a traumatic brain injury, yet he continued chasing the next high. By early 2019, he was living in the woods or in cars, awake for days on meth and hallucinating.

Eventually, he went to his family for help. They brought him to Valley Hope in Boonville for a 28-day stay, which he initially intended as just a “tolerance break.” But a presentation from a CORE graduate on the cycle of addiction changed his thinking. For the first time, he saw a path forward and agreed to enter CORE in May 2019.

Brandon’s first stay at CORE gave him structure and an introduction to the 12 Steps, but he admits he still wasn’t fully committed. A week before graduation, he left and quickly spiraled. In early 2021, at his lowest point, he found himself in his mother’s garage, hallucinating, and shouting at God to either help him or take his life. Just hours later, a recovery friend called and encouraged him to get back into a program.

This time, he entered another sober living program and, guided by a strong sponsor, began working the Steps. He completed a searching Fourth Step, made amends, and found purpose in helping others. Believing he had experienced a spiritual awakening and was ready to move on, he rented a studio apartment.  Unfortunately, he promptly lost touch with his recovery community, stopped going to meetings, and became isolated. “I got unplugged,” he says. A joint with a family member led to another spree. After legal trouble and a 60-day treatment in Florida, his probation officer gave him a choice: prison or CORE.

Brandon chose CORE, returning on November 7, 2023. This time he reworked the Twelve Steps from the beginning. “Being older and more mature through the experiences I’ve had, I know I can’t be the guy who smokes one joint and still be fine,” he says. “My experience, confirmed by the truth in the Big Book, leaves me absolutely certain that I need to be here.” In time, he was helping others again, staying connected through Big Book study, CORE’s 4D recovery classes, and daily structure. He credits CORE’s staff and community for keeping him grounded and moving forward.

Ultimately, Brandon credits God for his recovery. “On the basis of self-knowledge, it’s not enough to stay sober,” he says. “I had to believe that a Power greater than myself would restore me to sanity in the area of the first drink.” When he first came to CORE, he was agnostic and wanted nothing to do with God. Now, he is a Christian. “I believe Jesus died on the cross for my sins. I know I’m a sinner in need of a savior.” Brandon also observed, “Cultivating my relationship with God saved me from being the angry young man I used to be. It saved me from myself.”

An important breakthrough came when an old friend and CORE graduate invited him to try HVAC work. He started while still waiting tables, but soon committed full-time. Under a veteran foreman, he learned wiring diagrams, brazing, installations, and maintenance. He studied his craft diligently, passed the demanding six-hour EPA Universal exam, and earned multiple certifications, including a gas certificate and A2L refrigerant training.

Today, Brandon is a full-time HVAC technician, a recovery class instructor, and a steady member of CORE’s Falcon House. For those serious about working the 12 Steps, he says it is an ideal place to grow, and he is always willing to sponsor anyone ready for real change. His advice is simple and direct: “Reach out and ask for help. When enough is finally enough, if you’re not dead and you don’t end up in prison, there are tons of people out here who will help.”

Brandon is also repairing relationships with family, several of whom are now pursuing sobriety themselves. And then there’s Regina, the relationship he clearly treasures but keeps private. “We’ve talked about the future,” he admits, but he’s not giving away any details. It’s a bit like when the whole world speculated about Travis and Tay Tay’s engagement. When the time came, they told us in their own way.

At just 25, Brandon is no longer surviving. He is living a life of purpose, building a career, nurturing a loving relationship, and helping others find freedom. He didn’t get here by luck. CORE provided the structure and community, God provided the power, and Brandon brought the willingness and effort. The result is the “normal” he has wanted all his life: a steady home, a career, a woman he loves, a mending family, and a life that is not just surviving, but quietly, solidly good. 

We at CORE are so very proud of Brandon and the life he’s building.  We wish him all the best in the future!

What Every Relapse Has in Common

When people talk about relapse, they often mean very different things. Search online and you’ll see “relapse” applied to everything from using after twenty years sober to breaking a month(s)-long streak of abstinence. In reality, these are probably two very different situations, and only one of them may properly be called relapse.

We often hear the slogan “relapse is part of recovery,” but this is misleading. Relapse is the antithesis of recovery, and believing otherwise plays into the same dishonest thinking that fueled our addiction in the first place.

Most of what gets labeled relapse is really just the end of a dry spell; the person was never recovered to begin with. They may have stopped drinking or using for a while, but the obsession was never removed, and they were not living by the spiritual principles that make sobriety and its blessings possible.

Until true recovery happens, the addict is a sitting duck, simply waiting for some trivial circumstance to justify doing what they were already inclined to do. The list of excuses is endless: peer pressure, boredom, fatigue, an argument, skipping meals, a little extra money, a bad night’s sleep, nearly anything captured by the acronym HALT. To name a few. These are transient conditions, nothing more than paper-thin rationalizations.

Likewise, the newcomer who thinks that simply quitting drinking or drugging will solve all their problems is in for a rude awakening. In practice, quitting often makes life’s problems more poignantly visible, because alcohol and drugs were how we coped with a maladjusted life. Using was only a symptom of a deeper malady. Left unaddressed, that malady will inevitably drive us back to substance use.

The Big Book describes it this way:

“The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd into the mind to deter us. If these thoughts occur, they are hazy and readily supplanted with the old threadbare idea that this time we shall handle ourselves like other people. There is a complete failure of the kind of defense that keeps one from putting his hand on a hot stove.”

Unless recovery has taken place, simply quitting creates a no-win scenario. When life is unbearable, there will always be some insane excuse or “threadbare idea” that seems plausible enough to justify the first drink or drug.

That’s why we have the Twelve Steps, clear-cut directions laid out in the Big Book for living a spiritually grounded life. They move us from maladjustment and self-will into a life with hope, purpose, and meaning. The Steps not only guide us into a happy and worthwhile existence, they also form our defense against the first drink or drug. This defense cannot come from another person; it is given by God when we maintain a fit spiritual condition, and maintaining that condition is never burdensome.

Understood properly, relapse can only happen to someone who has recovered. When such a person drinks or uses again, it is never because of a bad day, bad news, or an uncomfortable feeling. Those are surface conditions. The real reason for relapse is always the same: they have stopped following the clear-cut directions of the Twelve Step program, abandoned God-reliance, and returned to self-will.

The Big Book puts it plainly:

“So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot…. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us. God makes that possible. …We had to have God’s help.”

When a recovered person shifts back into self-will, relapse has already begun in the heart and mind, whether or not they have picked up. The old friction with the world returns. Restlessness, irritability, and discontent begin running the show. In that condition, the obsession can descend suddenly and without warning, and their return to drinking or drugging is only a matter of time.

There are three high-risk circumstances under which a recovered person is most vulnerable to that shift from God-reliance to self-reliance. These are not the transient conditions of HALT; they are structural changes that can shake the foundation of recovery if not met with deliberate spiritual action to maintain reliance upon God.

The first involves events that substantially upend daily life, such as moving to a new city, changing careers, retiring, losing a loved one, or facing serious illness. In these moments, the person finds themselves in a liminal space, unaware of how much their recovery footing may have shifted. Recovery should never depend on people, places, or routines, but major life disruptions often reveal such hidden weaknesses. If old routines vanish and we do not consciously and actively follow the Big Book’s directions to maintain our spiritual health, we risk slipping into self-reliance and inevitable failure.

The second is a loss of connection to God and doing His will. This may follow spiritual disillusionment after tragedy or unanswered prayer, or it may come from stepping back from service roles or sponsorship without replacing them. Without entrusting ourselves to God’s care or keeping a clear purpose in serving others, the Steps begin to lose meaning. Even daily inventory can feel optional. If we cannot remember the last time we sincerely sought God’s will or directly helped another alcoholic or addict, trouble is already brewing.

The third is the illusion of self-sufficiency, believing that life can now be managed without relying on God. We think, “I have been sober for years. Surely I can do this on my own now.” Such thinking may follow a financial windfall, career success, public recognition, or simply a comfortable life. This is a true red flag moment, as is thinking that our recovery can slide from top priority to a backup plan, or that it is no longer essential. Once God and the Steps become insurance instead of our daily operating instructions, we are already heading for disaster.

While these circumstances do not cause relapse by themselves, they create the conditions where self-reliance can creep in and God-reliance can fade. If that shift is not corrected, we are running on our own power, and self-imposed abstinence never ends well!

Relapse is not random then. And it always has the same root cause: a shift from God-reliance to self-reliance. The conditions may take different forms, but they all share this in common: they distract us from daily spiritual living and dull our dependence on God.

As the Big Book says:

“What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God’s will into all of our activities. ‘How can I best serve Thee — Thy will (not mine) be done.’ These are thoughts which must go with us constantly.”

There is no such thing as “I’ve got this now.” We must guard our daily reliance on God as if our lives depend on it, because they do.