Spotlight Testimony of the Month

My name is Joe Filippi and this is the story of my life – how I became a heroin addict, a bartending alcoholic, walked out on my wife and one-month old baby and eventually found God’s restoring love at the Rescue Mission of Salt Lake.

I was born in 1957 and grew up inside a dysfunctional home in Chicago where my mom and dad yelled at each other a lot. Still, I had a fairly normal childhood and even was an all-star short stop in city league baseball. My big brother was six years older and I idolized him growing up. The trouble was he got into drugs early.

Heroin Takes Over

When I was 14 my brother and his friend took me to my grandmother’s house. She was a first-generation immigrant and spoke broken English, so we felt like we could get away with anything there. The three of us shot up heroin together. I remember lying on my grandmother’s bed high on heroin, thinking I was in the Garden of Eden.

Over the next three years, I got high every day. We burglarized about 10 pharmacies, over those three years. After our first burglary we realized we needed to do some research. We spent our days down at the library reading “The Physician’s Desk Reference.” We learned all the clinical names of drugs that could get us high like heroin. Armed with our list of target drugs we hit the pharmacies with greater precision – scoring the drugs that fed our addiction.

It wasn’t until I was 17 – after being high for three straight years and dropping out of school – that I was busted. The cops traced a pill bottle I had back to one of the pharmacy heists. I was tried as an adult and sent to prison before I could legally vote.

As a teenager, prison was Hell. People were always messing with me and I had to fight to survive. After a particularly brutal fight I spent nine months in solitary. When I got out nobody bothered me anymore. In prison I quit heroin – mainly because it was nearly impossible to get – but I smoked plenty of pot and drank potato wine, which was homemade vodka.

When I got out I started bartending and was drinking a lot. One day I was watching CNN and learned there was a bartender’s strike in Vegas. I thought all the casinos would be dying for bartenders and I could show up and have my pick of jobs. My rent was due, so I took what little money I had, bought a bus ticket for Vegas and headed west. I spent my last bit of cash on a quart of vodka and a quart of orange juice when the bus stopped in Phoenix. When I arrived in Vegas I got a job at the brand new Excalibur Hotel and Casino, which was the largest hotel in the world at the time.

In Nevada I met a girl, fell in love and got married in a Vegas wedding chapel. In 1993 we had a son named Joey. I arranged a long leave of absence from work and we moved to Elko, where my wife had family. I felt totally unworthy to be a father. In my mind I was a loser alcoholic. So when my son was just a month old I left my young family and headed back to my bartending job at the Excalibur.

I rented a dumpy apartment but was barely able to afford it. Most of the money I made I either gambled away or wasted on booze. My life was a mess, and it was about to get worse. I was talking with a coworker about a huge heroin bust I had seen on the evening news. He mentioned that his uncle was a dealer and he gave me his beeper number. I waited a week and then I paged him. He met me in the parking lot ofa Vegas 7-11 within five minutes. Over the next five months I did heroin every day. I lost my job and eventually was thrown in jail for trying to shoplift a power saw that I would have pawned to get money for more drugs.

Back To Prison

I went to prison for two years. Unlike my first trip to prison, my second prison stint was a piece of cake. I was paroled to Reno so I could be closer to my son Joey who lived with his mom (now my ex-wife) in Carson City. I lived in a halfway house run by this old Italian guy, who had been sober for 53 years. He was from the same part of Italy that my family was from and he became like a father to me. He hired me as his assistant at the halfway house and I started to help him run the place. I was doing great. I went back to college and had been sober for almost seven years.

When my boss and mentor passed away the halfway house’s Board of Directors  voted to make me the new director. The pressure of the job – finding funding and dealing with clients – got to me and I started feeling out of control. One of my former clients was an ex-junkie with some mental health issues. He was struggling after leaving the house so I decided to let him stay at my place for a few days. The second day he was there he was out of control, he wanted a fix so bad. His behavior grew so annoying I reached the end of my rope and plopped down a $100 bill. “Here, go get high,” I told him.

He came back with some dope and the next thing I knew I was using with him. I felt like I had failed the world. I called my ex-wife and told her that Joey shouldn’t come for his next visit. I went to work, left the keys on my desk and bought a bus ticket to Chicago. I needed to get out of Reno and I figured my hometown was as good a place as any. When the bus stopped in Salt Lake I got off and for some reason I stayed.

I blew through all my money in no time since I once again had an everyday heroin habit. After only a few months I was back in jail on shoplifting charges. I was released into a drug addiction program where they used “intense confrontational therapy.” The sessions were good for a while but I eventually felt I had to get out of there. The constant confrontations were too much. I walked out of that program with no money, no possessions and no place to go. I came straight to the Rescue Mission and joined the free New Life Recovery Program. The Mission was here for me when I needed it most.

Jesus Saves Another Life

I have learned so much since coming to the Mission last year. God has taught me that he still loves me even though I feel like I don’t deserve love from anyone. God has taught me not to dwell on my past sins, or on the wrong things that other people have done to me in life. I learned to be grateful for what I have and not focus on what I don’t.

While at the Mission, God placed a desire in me to right some of the past wrongs I had done. I had been under the impression that I owed the Fourth Street Clinic (which is across the street from the Mission) some money. I built my courage up and walked over. I told them my name, explaining that I owed them money and that I was willing to do some janitorial work around their clinic until I had paid off my debt. The clinic told me that I didn’t owe them any money but they said they would hire me as their custodian when I reached the job phase of the New Life Recovery Program. Today I have been working at Fourth Street Clinic for almost a year and have been sober for almost two years. With the help of the Mission and Fourth Street I was able to get into some low-income housing and have been living drug-free on my own for most of 2010.

I have been able to strengthen my relationship with my son, and had him visit me earlier this year. The best news is that next summer when my son Joey turns 18, he is moving to Salt Lake to live with me. He will be attending Salt Lake Community College, taking general classes before transferring to a university. I can’t wait to live with my son again! I am working towards becoming a case manager at the Fourth Street Clinic, so I can help homeless clients find housing, financial assistance and other aid. I want to help people that are in the same situation I once was. Please pray that God would keep me sober and I would continue to put Him first in my life. I thank Him so much for how he changed my life at the Rescue Mission.