The story of Craig: Spirituality in Recovery
Closing out our “Spirituality in Recovery” series and the Voices of Recovery finale is the story of Craig—a story about identity, faith, and finally learning that recovery and spirituality are one and the same.
Raised in a loving Jewish home, Craig grew up surrounded by tradition, but not necessarily a deep connection to a Higher Power. Even as a child, he felt different from everyone around him. His father, a survivor of Nazi Germany, taught him never to hide his faith—a lesson rooted in pain, resilience, and pride. But when Craig was still very young, his father passed away, leaving behind both a spiritual legacy and an emptiness Craig would spend years trying to fill.
What began with nicotine eventually progressed to marijuana, pills, and cocaine. As his addiction deepened, so did his isolation. Family and friends no longer wanted to be around him, and he slowly became the person others were warned not to become. The farther his addiction progressed, the farther he drifted from both himself and his faith.
Yet even then, Craig never truly believed he was an addict.
Around that same time, Craig met the woman who would later become his wife. She met him while he was still using and saw him at some of his darkest moments. Their relationship was complicated, and they even separated a few times. After his sisters pushed him into rehab, he heard the message of recovery for the first time—but it still had not fully landed. Later, at a rehab for Jewish men, something deeper began to awaken in him. Alongside recovery, he started reconnecting with his faith and identity. After Craig returned home from rehab this first time, they found their way back to one another.
While he had quit everything else, marijuana still held him captive. Behind closed doors, Craig lived in quiet misery—crying, buying, using, and crying again. Every day became the same painful cycle, and no matter how badly he wanted to stop, he could not do it alone.
Finally, he made the decision to return to rehab. When he came home, his wife handed him a positive pregnancy test—and in that moment, everything changed. That became the true beginning of his recovery journey: abstinent from all drugs, one day at a time.
For Craig, recovery and faith became inseparable. As he returned to Orthodox Judaism, he also threw himself into recovery. Less than a year clean, he became a father. Before two and a half years clean, he became a father again. He balanced meetings, diapers, sleepless nights, and caring for his growing family while staying committed to recovery. He often brought his baby into meetings, where fellow addicts would hold his child so he could hear the message.
Craig’s recovery was not free from pain. Besides losing his father at such a young age, he also lost his mother before getting clean, his sister a year and a half into recovery, and spent nearly two years acting as a single father while caring for his sick wife after the birth of their second child. Through grief, fear, and exhaustion, Craig stayed clean—showing that it is possible to endure life’s hardest moments without picking up.
Like recovery itself, Craig’s spiritual journey has not been perfect. His faith and program have both gone through seasons of strength, distance, struggle, and renewal. After spending ten years in the rooms, he drifted away for nearly another decade.
But recently, through hardship, joblessness, and a longing for connection, Craig found his way back—not only to recovery, but to God. In returning to the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous, he rediscovered how deeply intertwined spirituality, faith, and recovery truly are.
In the years following the attacks on Israel, Craig has found a renewed pride in being openly and visibly Jewish. Today, he wears his faith with humility and strength, no longer hiding any part of who he is.
Today, Craig lives openly in both his faith and recovery, grateful for the connection to God that continues to transform his life one day at a time.
