A memoir of addiction & recovery
My Journey
To Having Had
A man who was told over and over to “please get out of here, I never want to see you again” climbs from a Pittsburgh childhood, through thirteen years of addiction and a six-day delirium tremens nightmare, to a life he never thought possible.
“When the impossible becomes possible, something spiritual is taking place.”
What the book is about
Four threads, one climb
01
Recovery
From a first injection at Penn State in 1968 to a surrender that ended in December 1979 — and a long road after.
02
Spiritual awakening
The “having had” of the Twelfth Step: a transformation that can begin with only a willingness to believe life can get better.
03
God incidences
Moments that look like coincidence and turn out to be something larger, told chapter by chapter.
04
Poems & parables
Short recovery poems open the stories, with collected parables to return to on a hard day.
Meet the author
Phil D
Born in 1950 and raised in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill, Phil D was expected to inherit the family drugstore. Instead he found recovery — and has now spent more than forty-six years helping others find it too.
Keep a box of tissues nearby
“If these miracles could happen to me, they could happen to you, too.”