SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY:

Man who lost everything to alcohol abuse gets his life back at Y Haven

By all accounts, Tim Lupton had it all. A happy marriage at 27 to his high school sweetheart. A brand new home. Five children. A decent job.

By age 40 he had lost it all to alcohol abuse.

As a teen and young man he drank to help manage his emotions. His drinking escalated in his 30’s as his responsibilities grew, until the point that Lupton was a hard-core alcoholic drinking heavily every day.

After several failed attempts at sobriety at alcohol treatment centers, his wife threw him out. He wound up divorced, penniless, and living on the streets of Cleveland, reliant on the kindness of strangers to survive.

At first Lupton slept in a cemetery off East Ninth Street. A restaurant employee who befriended him would feed him and let him wash up at the restaurant. Another allowed him to sleep in an alleyway garage close to Progressive field and escape the elements.

The crowds from the ball field and the chiming of the bells from St. John the Divine Cathedral haunted Lupton, reminding him of everything he’d lost. Lupton would binge and black out for days.

He was beat up, mugged, shot at, and somehow wound up with a broken back, though he doesn’t recall how it happened.

After undergoing surgery at Huron Hospital, his sister placed him in a Westlake nursing home for extended care. Even that was not enough to cause Lupton to sober up. Instead, he signed himself out, hopped a bus Downtown, threw the neck brace in the trash, and “went right back to what I was doing.”

Says Tim, “I had lost all respect for myself. I (literally) hated myself.”

But he couldn’t seem to stop. An arrest followed for stealing his ex-wife’s purse.

In lieu of a conviction, his friend took Lupton Y-Haven on Woodland Avenue, a program that provides homeless men with transitional housing, recovery services, treatment for mental illness, educational training, vocational services and assistance with permanent housing placement.

Two programs in the city of Cleveland have the capacity to serve 133 homeless men. While residents may be self-referred, most of the referrals come from the city of Cleveland’s Lakeside Emergency Men’s Shelter.

Y-Haven offers a continuum of care beginning with primary treatment for drug/alcohol dependency. When residents graduate from the primary counseling phase, their case managers focus their treatment plan on continuing care, relapse prevention, and appropriate education and training programs.

The final phase of the treatment plan is finding suitable permanent housing for Y-Haven residents.

By the time Lupton ended up at Y Haven he was 46-years-old. He felt he had finally hit rock bottom.

“I started to get it,” he said. “I remember that I was on my knees in my room one day (shortly after I was admitted to the program). I had nothing – I was nothing. But at Y-Haven, I felt a sense of being home. I surrendered.”

It was then that he started grasping the spiritual aspects of the program.

“When I first got there, I was a loner,” he said. Soon, he started coming with other Y-Haven residents to the Downtown YMCA at 22nd Street and Prospect Avenue to work out.

“Then my confidence started coming back,” he said with a smile. “Y-Haven changed my outlook. Along with the YMCA, it changed everything about me.”

He continued in the program. His ex-wife would periodically bring his children – now ages 8 to 20 – to visit him. That, he said, was tremendously helpful in his continuing recovery.

The effects of his alcoholism have taken a great toll on his family, and Lupton regrets that terribly, he said. But today, he continues to make great progress.

“I realize I was at the bottom,” he said. “I had to start over.”

He is back living in the house with his ex-wife, and his children. They aren’t there yet, but he hopes to one day eventually be remarried.

His family has become involved in Al-Anon and Al-A-Teen. Lupton has successfully completed the two-year Y-Haven program.

“My priority is my sobriety,” he said proudly.

On January 4, Lupton celebrated his second anniversary of being sober. This past February 7 was his third birthday being sober.

“Y-Haven truly saved my life,” he said.

His first job after graduating from the Y-Haven program was at the Southeast Family YMCA in Bedford, where he did maintenance work.

He now works as an Assistant Maintenance Custodian for a school district in the eastern suburbs.

“I could have died many times on the streets,” Lupton said. Y-Haven has given me my life back – a better life (than what I had before). I am so grateful and humble.”

He remains drug and alcohol free and – understandably – is very proud of that.

“I kept avoiding what I needed to work on,” he said. “I’ve learned that only I can change. I have to want it. And I do.”

Lupton described his journey this way: “I was in hell and didn’t know it.”

“We’re just so proud of Tim,” said Y-Haven Director of Operations Janet Schneider. “He is unquestionably one of our success stories.”

His strong faith – he and his family regularly worship at St. Mark’s parish in the West Park area of Cleveland – “every Sunday,” he said –attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings three times per week, and his family keep him going.

He has no plans to ever go back to the life he once knew.

“I can’t," he said with tears in his eyes. “Because I know the next time I won’t come back."