"We weren’t poor or street. I came from a really good family. I had good examples all around me. My mother worked hard. My grandmother worked hard. I was an honor roll student at a military academy. I even graduated college with a degree in African American Studies. But I had already gotten into crack by the time I graduated, and things went downhill pretty fast. I lost jobs. I lost marriages. I went to rehab so many times. It took me twenty years to quit. But the whole time I battled my addiction, at least I had something positive to look back on. I had knowledge of myself before everything turned negative. And I think that’s why I was finally able to quit. I had a positive place to go back to. For a lot of the addicts I knew, there was nothing but negative behind them."