Success Stories
Crandall May
After-care Coordinator, St. Matthew's House
My first experience with alcohol was around age nine when I had a drink of NyQuil. I loved the stuff and would drink it every time my mother bought it. Alcoholics like me are born that way. I never saw my parents take a drink. By my first year of college I was a full blown alcoholic. I dropped out of school and started my first failed attempt at business. After a couple of failed marriages followed by unsuccessful business and rehab attempts plus a jail term, I figured out that there was something holding me back. I had already become a Christian, started Bible college and gotten married again, but the question remained. Why couldn't I stop drinking? It wasn't until I stepped foot into St. Matthew's House and Justin's Place did the answers start coming. At many other rehabs the counselors are paid; at Justin's Place, I was surrounded by people who were there simply because they care. The counselors are men that came through the program themselves and made a decision to stay and give back. When I came here, I was still trying to finish a degree that I had started in my twenties, on disability and without hope. I was broken; my wife had kicked me out, I was addicted and homeless. Today, I have a bachelor's degree in counseling which I was able to finish while at St. Matthew's House. I am a case manager with St. Matthew's and will soon be able to come off disability. I am not a statistic on the pages of a homeless report. I have a home that my effort pays for. I am a husband that can feel the pain I put my wife and family through. While safe at Justin's Place, for the first time in my life I could face that pain and the hurt that I had caused myself. It changed me so completely that my wife not only fell in love with me all over again, but left everything to join me here in Napes and become part of this ministry. For this, I am eternally grateful. Thank you, St. Matthew's House!