My childhood dream was to become a professional pool \u2013 billiards player. I logged thousands of hours of practice at my Dad\u2019s bar and grill. Pool was my first love. I held several titles, including Missouri State Champion and Junior National Champion among others. I fell in with cross country pool hustlers and began to use cocaine and methamphetamines to keep me up and add to clarity of mind. However, it wasn\u2019t long before I was a full-blown junkie and hustled pool to pay for my drugs.
\nIt didn\u2019t take me long to find out I was an addict. I had stolen a lot of money and items from my parents and family to support my habit. I was powerless and out of control. After numerous failed attempts at inpatient treatment centers, I was very content that I was going to use until the day I died. I was hopeless.
\nAfter my last stint in another treatment center, it was a blessing in disguise that they told me about CORE. I had no clue what the 12 steps were and I did not believe in God. I gave it a try. When I arrived at CORE, I did what I was supposed to do, worked my steps thoroughly and found a new way of life where I found happiness. During this journey, I had found this God that I didn\u2019t believe in. It is due to the grace of God and His work through CORE that I am 18 months sober and recovered from this often fatal disease.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My name is Mike Banks and I am an addict. I was brought up in an upper middle class family. I had good grades in school and was very loved by both of my parents. By the time I was a freshman in high school, I started drinking beer and smoking marijuana every weekend. I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":309,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-testimonials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/core-usa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/core-usa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/core-usa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/core-usa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/core-usa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/core-usa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/core-usa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/core-usa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/core-usa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/core-usa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}