Herb Stepherson was born in Jonesboro, Georgia. He is the middle child of three boys. He is thirty-four years old and spent his youth like most young boys in central Georgia, riding bikes and playing sports- baseball in particular. His family relocated to North West Indiana in 1997, when he was twelve years old. He attended Valparaiso High School until 2002, and since then, has been involved in the fight for his life. He battled the nightmares of addiction for fourteen years. His first drug use was at fifteen, which was tobacco and alcohol and from there quickly progressed to prescription pain medication and ultimately cocaine and heroin. Heroin and cocaine took him to the darkest places he could ever imagine. He ended up homeless, eating food out of dumpsters, and strung out in some of the roughest neighborhoods in Chicago, in the dead of winter. The winter months are brutal in the Midwest with temperatures plummeting down towards forty degrees below zero. Herb slept in abandon buildings, airport terminals, and under bridges clinging to two basic needs: more heroin and to be numbed from the wreckage that this drug was creating in his life. All the while trying his best to keep hope alive that maybe one day he would finally be able to conquer this demon of addiction and recover.
Jails, institutions, and death. Herb experienced them all. He’s been to the bitterest of ends, and reached a point in his life where suicide became the only real option for relief. But, God intervened and delivered Herb from the death grip that his self- induced death sentence had on him. He writes his story at junkboxdiaries.com and his book “Junkbox Diaries” – A day in the life of a heroin addict is a stark, dark, and gripping account of what life is really like for the addict trapped in active drug use.
Today, Herb celebrates life as a man in recovery! He is an intervention coordinator, Nationally Certified Family Recovery Coach with Genesis of Recovery- an Intervention Firm He and His wife Tiffany founded in 2018. He is a published Author, Public Speaker, Advocate, and is active with making reforms within the state of Indiana to make life better and brighter for those who suffer from addiction and mental health issues. Herb and Tiffany married in October of 2019. They have four children together. Herb speaks on behalf of numerous agencies in his community hoping to shed some light on the true battles with drug addiction that he himself faced.
His book is available on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble
“If you want to truly help someone, the most important thing you can do is listen to them.”
-Fred Rogers
Herb Stepherson, NCFRC
Intervention Coordinator
Recovery Specialist
Featured on: A&E/ TEDX
Chicagoland & beyond
Public Speaker
Author: Junkbox Diaries
219-916-7236
Hstepherson85@gmail.com
http://www.genesisofrecovery.com
#Addiction #MentalHealth #Recovery #PTSD #BPD #Hope