“This helped me stay sober today,” a sponsee told me when he called to tell me of an alcoholic found wrapped in a blanket, dead of a drug overdose. To further compound the tragedy, the man’s father had a massive heart attack when he learned of his son’s passing.

Often our clients say they never hurt anyone in their addictions. They might say they never stole from their family, or they kept their jobs, or hadn’t been in jail.

When I hear this rationalizing I counsel them to reconsider what they are saying because they’re unaware of the impact of their addiction.

In my experience we addicts, even if we didn’t end up in jail or on the streets, took from others. Often we weren’t present for our wives or children. We likely didn’t put in a full day’s work for our employer. We disappointed our loved ones.

And the even larger tragedy is that we didn't live up our potential. We've had many college graduates at TLC, people who were successful in different paths of life. We’ve had attorneys, teachers, and scientists through our doors. How much more successful, happy, and productive would these clients have been had they not been consumed by their addictions?

In the tragic case of my sponsee’s acquaintance, the son’s death was such a shock that it caused his father to have a massive heart attack.

These kinds of sad messages come often enough to remind us in the recovery community of the impact our disease has on others.