The 40-year road to recovery
New Milford man continues to fight decades-long addiction with art, writing
Daniel Davis, 47, is two years sober living at Ability Beyond, — an addiction recovery center in Danbury — using art and writing to maintain his sobriety and mental health.
Davis unexpectedly arrived at Ability Beyond after miraculously being revived from an overdose by emergency responders in an ambulance headed to Bridgeport Hospital. The overdose was not his first but he plans on making it his last.
His almost 40 years of addiction ended abruptly and painfully after doctors obligated him to enter an inpatient detox and found him a place at Ability Beyond.
Professionals at Ability
Beyond help those managing addiction coupled with a mental health illness to take hold of their lives by teaching adaptability skills for everyday tasks that help with coping.
There he worked with the center’s staff to manage his addiction and mental health. Although he recounts feeling intense anger the first few weeks, he later grew to learn healthy habits and indulged in the perks of sobriety.
Michelle Weinstein — a Residential and Clinical Services Manager at Ability Beyond who works with Davis — says managing mental health complicated by addiction is a “heavy load” for folks. She recalls being extremely
challenged when she first started working with Davis.
His fear to trust others — because he has been let down so many times before — was difficult to navigate. But over time, staff gained his trust and help him overcome triggering memories.
“One of the best things he’s done with us is identify some really great coping skills so when those memories come up, when those triggers happen, he is able to reach out, ask for help, ask for support, identify people in the community that he trusts and kind of build a recovery network around him,” Weinstein said.
Something as small as making breakfast every day — his go-to breakfast being bacon, eggs and home fries with coffee — went a long way in giving Davis a sense of independence and pride. Davis can be found sloshing colors together for a portrait or veraciously admistering his pen to paper releasing memories of his youth most days after breakfast. .
His artistic release is therapeutic, it transformed his time in recovery and catapulted his sobriety by reinforcing coping skills he learned.
Davis wrote a short book chronicling his addiction and road to recovery after decades of living in a perpetual loop of drug use, erratic behavior, crime and homelessness aided by addiction and a mental illness. He traced back his addiction’s origin to a bee sting he sustained playing with his sibling when he was eight years old.
After being stung by a bee outisde, Davis’ siblings thought it
best to treat his sting with an old-fashioned remedy: a beer. They splashed some beer on the wound and told Davis to drink the rest, according to Davis. Without giving it any further thought Davis consumed another two beers within hours.
Davis’ father had given him sips of beer before that day, but three bottles in one day was a new record for the then 8-yearold. For years to come he watched several members of his family indulge in the habit everyday.
His grandmother poured herself drinks and chased the alcohol with cigarettes. Despite knowing that behavior could be troublesome Davis still wished she would share with him. Eventually there was no need.
Davis felt a “dependency growing” in him soon after. What
started as a drink here, a drink there quickly turned into drinking 30 in a day, smoking marijuana and countless keg parties that led to drunk driving and other close calls. He refers to this time in his life as the “rebel years.”
By 20 years old, Davis’ taste for alcohol unraveled into a fullblown addiction accompanied by cocaine and marijuana habits. Davis manifested these habits into a lifestyle that he entertained well into his 40s, which led to his eventual placement at Ability Beyond.
“After a year and half into my recovery, I can see now that art has changed my perspective on things,” Davis wrote in the book. “It has changed the emotions I feel in my body and diminished the thoughts I had about my addiction.”