Energy cannot be created nor destroyed—and neither can love. We find love for family, friends, significant others, hobbies, movies—you name it. In the case of many of us at Beit T’Shuvah, in our darkest moments, we siphoned the love we had for our families and friends and gave it all to the bottle, pipe, or pill. For Danny E., he forfeited his love for all three.
Danny E. grew up in Santa Clarita in a house where love was loud. A house full of kids—two brothers, four sisters—running around, laughing, talking over each other at the dinner table. His parents were always there, always together. Still are. And even now, there’s a family group chat that never sleeps, a digital thread of jokes, check-ins, and “I love you’s” pinging around the clock. Notificatications buzzing like the trading floor of the stock exchange.
“I was the quiet one. The kid who didn’t say much but got in trouble behind the scenes.” He learned how to lie early. Learned how to sneak things. Learned how to smile and say everything was fine when it wasn’t. He also learned how good it felt to get away with something. That little thrill became his first high. Before he ever touched a substance, he was already chasing that itching feeling of chaos.
Still, in school he was in Advanced Band, where he played the trumpet like a young Louis Armstrong. His passion for the brass section would take him through most of his young adult life…that is, until he discovered weed.
At thirteen, he found a stash of his dad’s weed and brought it to school. He didn’t even know what it was. “I knew my dad smoked tobacco, but this was different.” Like any curious kid, he smoked some…and something clicked. “I fell in love with it right away. I didn’t get paranoid. I was just… calm. Happy. I remember thinking, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever quit this.’”
By eighth grade, he was smoking every day. Drinking, too. He and his friends would even abuse cough medicine. “We called it Triple C’s.” In reality, Danny was taking anything he could get his hands on. Anything he could find. The trumpet he used to practice, the football he used to throw—those things started to fade. Not because he didn’t love them. He did. But because his love had been redirected. Toward escape. Toward silence. Toward anything that would turn down the volume. Eventually, he was expelled for being drunk on a school trip to Disneyland. His family started to catch on to where his addiction was at, but it would take years before Danny caught a whiff of it.
By the time he was in high school, he was taking pills every day. Xanax to be exact. “It made me feel drunk and no one could smell it on me.” He was taking so much that his friends referred to him as “Xanny Danny.” “I was getting hammered at five in the morning to go to class. By eight I was passed out. By the time it is five PM I am on the floor, butt naked in my bathroom and then I’d get up and do it all over again.” This, of course, led to truancy and eventually he was expelled. So, the remainder of his high school education was done at a continuation school with zero oversight.
Danny’s first job was for McDonald’s. Despite his constant intoxication, he rose through the ranks and became a manager there. Then Starbucks, where he did the same. He kept getting promoted. People liked him. He was good at his job. He met his now wife and was building a life he was proud of. Everything seemed like it was coming up Danny…until it wasn’t.
That string of promotions continued and he landed a dream job as an espresso machine tech for Starbucks—where he would drive from location to location fixing machines. They gave him a company van to drive and a gas card. Life was good…and he abused that. “I would keep a cooler of 40s in the passenger seat when I went from job to job.” One day, after pulling an illegal u-turn, a cop pulled him over and caught him with a carpet of empty bottles on the ground…in the company car…on the clock. He was finished. Slapped with a DUI and a termination from starbucks.
But that was just the beginning.
When his good friend and main dealer died from a fentanyl overdose, everything really came crashing down. Like many of us in the depth of our addiction, his first thought was of heartbreaking sorrow for the loss of his friend, but the quick second thought that followed was, “Where am I going to get my drugs?” You see, Danny had been so good at maintaining his addiction for so long that he had never had to deal with withdrawal before. “I didn’t know what withdrawal was. I just thought I was sick. I couldn’t stop shaking. Couldn’t think. So I started drinking even more just to function.” He was drinking in the mornings, drinking on the job, popping pills when no one was looking. His wife was terrified. His parents were exhausted. And Danny—who once used to carry so much love for all of them—could barely look anyone in the eye. His phone stopped buzzing and he knew why.
Then meth got mixed into the cocktail. When a homeless man that Danny had befriended offered him some, he just couldn’t refuse. “I was always against meth. I swore I’d never touch it. But he gave me a free sack. And I gave him free drinks. That was it. I hit the pipe, and I was hooked.”
His body shrank. His face hollowed out. He looked like a ghost in the mirror. One night, in a full-blown psychosis, he destroyed his childhood bedroom with an axe. When his parents found him sobbing on the floor, he finally told the truth.
“I said, ‘I’m high on meth. I don’t know if I can stop.’”
They said, “You need rehab.”
He said, “I’ll do it myself.”
And somehow, Danny did. At least for a while. He quit cold turkey. No meetings, no treatment, no program—just white-knuckling it. But he kept drinking. Always drinking. Ol’ reliable. And eventually, the meth came back, too—as it always does.
After the DUI, he thought he would find a job with ease. He told his wife constantly that it would be no problem. It was. The depression of his situation started to consume him. “I started drinking in the dark. Lights off. Curtains drawn. Just… nothing. Just me and the bottle and the thought that maybe it’d be easier if I just wasn’t here anymore.”
His wife kicked him out. He stayed with his parents. Tried outpatient. Tried inpatient. Tried sober living. Each time, he told himself he could manage it on his own. Each time, he relapsed. “I thought I was just gonna be an alcoholic for life. I had accepted that. Like, okay, this is who I am.”
And then a former resident told him about Beit T’Shuvah.
With everything he had gone through, Danny was near certain it wasn’t going to work. But he was also certain of something else…he was done. Tired. Sick of being sick.
When Danny got here, he was hit with a wave of emotion and a culture shock. “I was overwhelmed. There were so many people. I didn’t know anyone. And I thought my counselor, Micah, hated me,” he laughs. But Micah didn’t hate him. He was just tough. Direct. Clear. “That’s what I needed. I had so much to do when I got here and he told me, ‘Start with a baby list.’ Just small things. One at a time. Eventually, I finished everything and added things to the list like going to school.”
I always say that the true benchmark of a client’s progression at Beit T’Shuvah is when they stop resenting Micah for being a hard-ass and start loving him for instilling the boundaries they didn’t know how to set for themselves yet.
For the first time, Danny stopped trying to do it all by himself. He got a sponsor. Started therapy. Spiritual counseling. Family therapy. He sat down with his wife and started talking. Really talking. Rebuilding.
“We were about to divorce,” he says, eyes staring into the middle distance. “She was scared of me. And now we’re talking again. We’re laughing. She’s proud of me.”
Danny’s whole family sees how amazing he is doing and has reconnected with him—with their group chat as vibrant as ever.
Since coming to Beit T’Shuvah, Danny has started to feel love again—not as a memory or a concept, but in real time. In the people who showed up. In the people who stayed. In the people he thought he’d lost but hadn’t. And slowly, he started to give that love back. Not to substances. Not to silence. But to his family. To his community. To himself.
“I feel love. I am giving love. I love myself now. I used to hate myself. I never knew you could be happy and sober—” Danny stops himself to correct, “—I didn’t know I could be happy and sober…until now.”
If that’s not what Beit T’Shuvah is all about, then I don’t know what we do here.
Today is Danny’s last day as a resident at Beit T’Shuvah—but he’s not leaving. Not really. He’s stepping into a new life, one built on connection, honesty, and love—the very things he once thought he’d lost for good. The kid who lied to stay out of trouble, the man who drank in the dark to avoid the world, is now someone who shows up—fully, openly, and with purpose. He’s not running anymore. He’s building something real. Danny’s become someone full of energy—full of love—and finally, someone who knows exactly where to put it.