Not Yet — Life with Addiction

Thirteen years old when heroin found me. Seven years addicted. Then four days that nearly ended me — and two words that gave my life back.

I was thirteen when my addiction started. Thirteen years old, and heroin had already found its way into my life.

When I look back now, I see a boy who needed someone to help him understand what he was carrying. A boy with questions he didn't know how to ask, trying to grow into a man without a father there to show him how.

Growing up without a dad left an empty place in me. As a child, you don't always have words for an absence that large. You just learn to live around it. You carry the questions into the next year, and the next, until they become so familiar you almost forget how heavy they are.

I know that absence played a part in how my addiction began. Years later, it would also become part of why I wanted to stop.

For seven years, I was addicted to heroin. Those years belong to my story, and they are difficult to write about. There is a particular ache in looking back at your younger self and realizing how desperately he needed help, how much life was still ahead of him, and how little of it he could see.

The Night Everything Changed

Then I found out I had a daughter on the way.

And suddenly, the future had someone in it I hadn't met yet. Someone who would need me.

I knew what it felt like to grow up with a father-shaped space in your life. I knew the questions that lived there. The longing. The quiet wondering about whether having him beside you might have changed things.

The thought of becoming a father reached into that place in me. I wanted my daughter to know the comfort of having a dad who was there. I wanted the chance to be someone she could reach for. There was a life coming into the world, and I wanted to be present for it.

So I quit cold turkey.

What followed were four days that felt like they might be the end of me. I thought I was going to die.

I want to tell that part honestly, because there was nothing beautiful about the suffering itself. It was frightening. It was a desperate stretch of time, and I came through it carrying a memory that has stayed with me ever since.

During those days, I had a dream that I was drowning in the ocean. I was beneath the water, unable to get myself out.

Then a hand reached for me. It pulled me up. I saw a face, and I heard two words:

"Not yet."

The next thing I remember, I woke up in an ambulance.

That was the night I gave my life to the Lord.

Even now, writing those words takes me back to the enormity of that moment. I had spent years caught in something that was consuming my life, and suddenly I was awake. There was still a world around me. There was still a daughter on the way. There was still time.

I believe God reached me in that moment. In the middle of everything I had become afraid of, I felt the possibility that my life could continue — that there was something ahead of me worth staying for, something I had not yet learned how to imagine.

Those two words have never left me.

*Not yet.*

They held so much possibility for someone who had nearly run out of it. There was a father I still hoped to become. There were parts of myself I had never had the chance to know. There was music somewhere ahead of me, though I couldn't have understood then how much of my life I would eventually pour into it.

I was still here to find out.

What Healing Actually Looks Like

Giving my life to the Lord did not make everything easy.

I wish I could write that the difficult part ended in that ambulance and the rest of my life unfolded neatly from there. Healing has asked more of me than that. There have been hard seasons, questions, and plenty of learning how to live with what I have been through.

My history with addiction has shaped the way my adult life has unfolded. Its influence reaches into the choices I have made, the chances I have taken, and the people I have wanted so badly to help.

There have been plenty of failures. There have also been successes I'm grateful I lived long enough to experience. I have burned bridges. I have built new ones.

There are decisions I wish I could revisit with the understanding I have now. There are things I'm proud of, too. Both belong in an honest telling of my life. I'm still learning how to take responsibility for the things I have gotten wrong while allowing myself to recognize the good I have done.

The People I Tried to Help

For a long time, a meaningful part of that good was my involvement in the recovery community in Georgia. That community has mattered deeply to me. I know how much can be carried behind an ordinary face, and I have always felt drawn toward people trying to find their footing again.

I even employed a whole gaggle of people who had troubles of their own. I wanted to give people an opportunity. A job can mean a place to show up, a chance to contribute, and the dignity of having someone trust you with responsibility. I wanted to be someone willing to offer that chance.

I remembered needing one myself.

But that chapter came with some painful lessons, and some of them came at my own expense. The situation didn't work out the way I hoped it would. I had to face the fact that some of the people I wanted to help did not want to change. Others may not have been ready. Whatever the reasons, I could not make that decision for them, no matter how much I cared or how much opportunity I tried to put in front of them.

That was difficult for me to accept.

When you have been given another chance at life, it can feel almost unbearable to watch someone struggle with the chance in front of them. You want to explain it better. Offer a little more. Somehow help them see what you see: the possibility of a life beyond the trouble they are in.

I have had to learn that compassion needs boundaries. I can care about someone and still recognize when a situation is hurting me. I can believe in their future without taking responsibility for every choice they make.

I'm still learning that balance.

Those experiences have made my understanding of recovery more honest. I have seen the hope and the disappointment. I have carried both. Through all of it, my heart has remained with people going through addiction, even as I learn to be wiser about how I help.

When I think about someone struggling, I think about the whole person. The child they once were. The people they love. The life they might still be able to build. The things they would tell you if they felt safe enough to speak honestly.

I remember having a future I could barely see. I remember needing hope before I knew what to do with it. And I remember what it meant to discover that my story could keep going.

Where the Songs Come From

That is where my songs come from.

They come from the places in my life that still have feeling in them. From the love I needed, the love I hoped to give, and the years I have spent trying to understand both.

They come from the failures I have had to face and the successes that reminded me I was capable of building something good. They come from bridges I burned, bridges I crossed, and the people who met me on the other side.

They come from being a frightened kid, and later learning I was going to have a daughter of my own. They come from four days I thought I might not survive. They come from a hand in the water, a face I saw in a dream, and two words I have carried ever since.

When I sing, *"If you're still breathing, there's a way,"* I am reaching back into my own life. I am thinking about waking up in that ambulance. I am thinking about how little I knew of what was still possible.

I am also thinking about whoever might be listening — someone sitting alone with headphones on, someone driving home after a difficult day, someone trying to believe they have another attempt left in them.

I hope a song can make that moment feel a little less lonely.

This is part of why I feel drawn toward speaking at recovery events and leading worship. There is something deeply personal about the possibility of standing in a room with people who understand how much courage an ordinary day can require.

I want to be there with an open heart. I want to listen. I want to share what happened to me without polishing away the difficult parts. I want to sing words I have lived long enough to mean. And I want to leave room for someone else to imagine a future.

If You're Still in It

If you are living through addiction right now, I hope you can feel the care behind these words. There is a person here who remembers being young and hurting, who remembers how far away a different life once seemed.

I want good things for you. I want you to have mornings you are grateful you reached. I want you to discover parts of yourself that have been waiting for a chance to live. I want there to be people beside you who can see your worth clearly, especially on the days you struggle to see it yourself.

And if you love someone who is struggling, my heart is with you, too. Your love, worry, and exhaustion deserve tenderness.

I cannot tell anyone exactly what their road will look like. I can tell you where mine began to turn.

I was a young man who had started using heroin at thirteen. I had spent seven years addicted. I had just learned that a child was on the way, and I wanted to give that child something I had grown up missing.

Then, somewhere in the worst days of my life, I dreamed that a hand reached into the ocean and pulled me out. A face looked back at me.

"Not yet."

I woke up with more life ahead of me. I am still learning what to do with that gift.

Some of it becomes a song.

— Topher Ryan