I once spent hours searching through the hard drive of my computer and all of my paperwork for an email from my mom. The email that saved my life. It was a short, polite note asking me to not call, stop by, or involve her or my family in my life anymore.

She died on June 16, 2005. It was – and has been – the worst experience of my life; but not the hardest.

My name is Mike and my sobriety date is February 26, 2000. I have worked and continue to work the Twelve Steps.

I checked myself into rehab on my 30th birthday, thinking it would be a chance to clean up my act. I thought I would try this "sober" thing and ONLY get high on vacations or holidays. You know, special occasions.

At the time, I was using crystal meth daily – a $1000 a week habit. What had started as a fun escape, ended up altering my life forever. I had broken all the nevers:

I'll never buy it and only do it if someone offers it to me.

I'll never use it two nights in a row.

I'll never use it on a weekday.

I'll never use it at work.

I'll never be a dealer.

In just three months, I had gone from doing a bump on the weekend to being a daily user. I had quit my job and graduate school.

That’s when my mom sent me the email. It was so significant because, until I received it, there hadn't been any consequences to my drug use – none that actually had an impact. Her email made me realize that I had nothing of any value left. So I figured I'd go to rehab.

Stopping was the hardest thing I had ever done. Staying clean was even harder.

The Twelve Steps play an important role in my sobriety and each has definite purpose in my life. An over-achieving, people-pleasing good boy, I thought I would work the Twelve Steps by devoting a week to each step. That meant I could be done in three months and then everything would be fixed -- friendship, finances, and relationships would all be perfect.

Fours years later, I got through my steps.

The second step, which sounds so simple, tripped me up the most: Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. I made two major mistakes with the second step and couldn't successfully move forward until I got it right. I thought "a power" meant one power or a single power. I thought I had to define it before it existed. After two years it clicked for me: IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO OR WHAT THE POWER IS AS LONG AS IT ISN'T ME. And it doesn't have to be just one power, it can be a combination of powers, including my sponsor, group, family, boss, literature, or healthcare professionals. Most often for me, it's God communicating through all of those other powers.

Also, I mistook the word would for could. That too finally made sense: It will NOT automatically happen, but it CAN if I take action. There's a huge difference between would/will and could/can.

The other most important part of my sobriety has been having a sponsor. It's one of the first things I share when I'm telling my story or ask when I meet someone who is new to recovery. I was not good about getting a sponsor in the beginning. The idea of forming a long-term relationship with anyone -- a new friend, a potential lover, my employer, even my mobile phone provider – horrified me. I knew the end of every other relationship was the same – I'll give everything I have and be let down in the end. What I didn't realize then was that what I gave was very calculated and I manipulated every situation with thoughts about what I could get in return. I've learned that my sponsor's ONLY responsibility is to teach me how to do the steps. No matter how hard I try to manipulate my sponsor or daily situations, in the end only I can do the steps necessary to achieve spiritual growth and healing.

My experience has also taught me that in order to be successful in my sobriety, I need a sponsor who works the steps, and incorporates them in daily living; is available for daily communications and knows that if I don't ask for a call back that it's just a check-in; has a sponsor; can commit to at least an hour of face-to-face time each week; will be brutally honest and challenge me; makes suggestions TO me, but not decisions FOR me; is supportive of outside help and medications if prescribed by a doctor; and maintains confidentiality, even among mutual friends or other sponsors.

The best lesson I learned from one of my sponsors is that my addiction is based in fear. Fear of being alone. Fear of being exposed as weak and vulnerable. Fear of needing someone more than that person needs me. Fear of rejection or abandonment. My sponsor taught me that fear and faith cannot coexist.

I choose to have faith today. Faith that I can sit still long enough to let the snow globe in my head settle down so I can experience peace. Remember, I said peace not happiness – they're different. There's faith that I can be of value to someone else who's high right now. Faith that I can help my dad who's alone now. And there's faith that I'll get out of bed tomorrow and that I won't get high when something happens – like when my mom died or when someone doesn't like me because my ears are kind of big or because I've gained about 50 pounds since I quit getting high.

During the last conversation between my mom and me, before she went into surgery, I told her not to be scared because "fear and faith can't co-exist." She smiled and then she told me she was proud of me. She said, "When I needed you to become a man, you did."

There’s truth in that statement, but that’s not how I felt when I lay in her arms weeping. I should’ve been comforting her, and she was comforting me.

I'm grateful that I'm not the same little boy I was before I got sober. The whole reason I got sober goes back to my mom's email, the one that saved my life.