FORT WALTON BEACH — After two decades of small victories and defeats, Jordan Chalden says he’s finally winning the war against his drug addiction.
He tried cocaine for the first time just after his freshmen year in college and in the years that followed. He’d get clean for a while and then slip. Sometimes he’d give it up for years before choosing to start using again.
In January, 25 years after he first used the drug, the father of two looked at the paths in front of him, and decided to take the hand offered by Shelley Poirrier, executive director of Opportunity Inc.
Since then his life has improved outwardly and inwardly.
“I haven’t gone this way before,” Chalden said.
He’s not only gotten himself a steady job to help pay the bills, but he’s resuming his passion for music.
Chalden was just about to start the fifth grade the first time he picked up a saxophone. It’s been a constant companion in the years that followed, even as he struggled to separate his identity as an individual from his identity as a musician.
“If I wasn’t playing, I was miserable (and) getting high,” he said.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he toured the world with a group called The Urge, which recorded several albums.
After leaving the group, he stopped pursuing music as a career for a while, got sober and landed a six-figure marketing and sales job. By 1998, he’d met and married a woman who, unknown to him, struggled with her own addiction.
They were OK for a while, but the cocaine reappeared in their lives and he lost his job. They got clean again, he got his job back and lost it when they decided to start using again.
Eventually, they realized they needed a change. They moved to a small town in Missouri and focused on fixing their marriage and finding their faith.
It was a choice that led them down a rewarding road of sobriety, parenthood and ministry.
“It was like he (God) was making an example out of what he can do with the next junkie,” Chalden said. “At that point, I was literally touching lives.”
Chalden and his wife resisted cocaine for eight years and shared their story of recovery with people around the world before everything fell apart.
That was nearly five years ago. The couple battled their addictions, and as they hit rock bottom, Chalden decided it was time to move forward.
He left his wife, got full custody of the children and turned his life around with the help of people like Poirrier at Opportunity Place, where he lived for a time before getting an apartment.
“It was divine. There’s no other way to explain it,” Chalden said. “I just started focusing on the basic things that mattered.”
Poirrier said her organization sees a bright future for Chalden and that they were glad to help him find a path without drugs.
“He’s really trying to so hard,” Poirrier said. “He has a real vision. He has a real goal he wants to get to.”
Right now, Chalden’s path is built on establishing relationships with people who will hold him accountable, learning to love himself and expanding his musical horizons to return to that place of ministry through music he found when he was sober.
“It had to take its course, unfortunately,” Chalden said of his addiction. “ … But I can feel a change coming.”
CHECK IT OUT:
Listen to Jordan Chalden’s music at http://www.jordanchalden.com.
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Katie Tammen at 850-315-4440 or ktammen@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @KatieTnwfdn.