Kendal Smith, 30, is a survivor, beating cancer as a young child and facing heart surgery as a teen. While his early life was rocky due to illness, when he looks back at his childhood in Dayton, Ohio, he smiles when he thinks about his mom.
“My mom worked very hard every day,” shares Kendal. “She set a good example for us.” 
Kendal’s struggle with addiction came from an insecurity that began in high school.
“I moved a lot from school to school, and I was always trying to fit in. In high school, I started experimenting with drugs and alcohol out of curiosity,” he remembers.
At the end of high school, his family moved from Ohio to North Carolina, and Kendal found himself back in the hospital, this time for heart surgery.
“On my 19th birthday, I had heart surgery,” he recalls. “It was hard, and I had no friends here yet, so when I got out of the hospital, I went back to drugs and alcohol as soon as I could.”
That’s when his life started to take a turn. He lost jobs, relationships, and even got into legal trouble. His drug use progressed from marijuana to cocaine, and he says he was at the lowest point in his life.
“I was trying to find myself. I guess I thought it would be fun, but, yeah, it wasn’t. It brought me down. I’d been clean for nearly a year, but then I relapsed and started wilding out, and I ended up hospitalized for two weeks under suicide watch,” he says.
Kendal’s unexpected angel came in the form of a social worker at the hospital named Brittany who helped Kendal begin his journey at Healing Transitions. When he arrived at the front doors with Brittany, he remembers his first thought was, “I’m so glad I’m not in the hospital anymore.”
He was mandated to stay in the program for six months, and initially, he couldn’t wait to get out and start using again.
“I didn’t want to stay, I wanted to go back to using,” he acknowledges. “But sometime during those six months, I came to terms with the fact that I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to continue the program, so I decided I would stay.”
Kendal says there were so many people at Healing Transitions who helped mentor him along the way.
“Growing up, my friends and I would make fun of rehab, like it was the end of the road,” he says. “But I was completely wrong. I really enjoy my recovery, and I have a lot of respect for what it is. Recovery is saving people’s lives, including mine, and it’s helped us to find genuine, authentic happiness.”
Today, Kendal’s life looks nothing like he expected. He smiles when he thinks about what he calls his “luxury problems.”
“Man, my life is great. Even on a bad day, whatever I’m facing, I call those my ‘luxury problems,’” he shares. “I enjoy doing service work, I have genuine friends who care about my well-being, I can keep a job, and I don’t obsess about drugs or alcohol anymore.”
To someone considering beginning their recovery journey at Healing Transitions, Kendal has some words of encouragement for them:
“Coming here was the best decision I ever made. I actually believe in myself now. I have friends, I have family back in my life, and it all started here with Healing Transitions,” he says. “Now, I want to be able to give somebody the opportunity that so many people gave me.”