Provoked: The Galvin Kielty Story – Part 2
It Just Ain’t Fun No More
Some addicts get “scared straight” into sobriety, some quit on their own and others just get bored of it. In Gavin’s case it was the latter. “I didn’t have anything going on in my life,” says Gavin. ”I was just getting high and it wasn’t fun anymore. So, I thought well, I should probably go to rehab. And this time it’s going to work…because it has to.”
Thankfully, Gavin had a sister who was like a dog on a bone about her brother’s addiction. Once the drug use lost its allure, it was she who cinched the deal. “She’s been telling me for 15 years, you need to go to rehab and work the steps,” says Gavin. “Because all that time I went in and out of the same cycle—what she called The ‘Groundhog Day Effect.’”
From “No Fun” to No Funding
Gavin’s excuse, and he always seemed to have one, was “I don’t have any funding to get into a rehab.” His sister convinced him to go talk to probation. He went, but they told him, “Normally we’d have funding, but because you don’t have any drug charges—just identity theft, forgery and fraud—you can’t get in anywhere.”
That turned out be to be a blessing in disguise. Even probation knew it. “They told me, ‘Lucky for you because if there was funding, we would have to put you in a rehab here in this county,’” says Gavin. He knew what they meant by “lucky.” “If I was in a local place and I was having a bad day and was tempted to relapse, I could call “homeboy” down the street to bring me drugs,” says Gavin. “And I’d be kicked out of the program.”
Lack of county funding forced Gavin to start looking for recovery programs that were at least 200 miles away. But he had his own criteria. After years of on-again and off-again rehab, he knew he needed something different—way different. And it had to begin with faith.
When asked why that criterion was so important to him, he didn’t hesitate to answer. “Well, the seed was planted in me at a young age…my mom taking me to church and all that,” says Gavin. “I rebelled and pushed against it, but I knew in the back of my mind that this is what I needed, and if I follow this basic order in life, then I’m going to have a successful, rewarding life. But I was in the rut of addiction.”
No Appointment Needed…Except for Divine Ones.
After researching faith-based programs that were the requisite distance away, Gavin came upon the Good News Rescue Mission’s Recovery Program. It seemed to check all the boxes—especially because he had lived in Redding for a brief period while being in a group home during his junior year. After that, he returned to Tulare where he would resume his “rock ‘n roll” life style and spend the next 20 years in and out of prison.
But that was then, and this was now. It was a new chapter in his life and Gavin was determined to create a different ending to his story. And the Mission would be the preamble. Because he had lost everything and was officially homeless, he took an Amtrak bus to Redding, went straight to the Mission and walked in as a guest. The very next day he applied for the recovery program and was almost immediately accepted.
Over a year later, in 2024, Gavin graduated the Recovery Program and even received a Mike Rowe Ethic Scholarship—a competitive scholarship granted to students pursuing skilled-trade careers and who demonstrate a strong work ethic, personal responsibility and a positive attitude.
Good Seeds: “Seed dormancy is a survival technique that allows plants to wait for more favorable conditions to germinate.”
Gavin demonstrated all those scholarship requirement requirements during his time in the Recovery Program. He gives huge credit to the Mission for helping him get to that place.
“ My being able to go up there and feel safe and not have any stresses and worries such as where am I going to eat? Where am I going to sleep? well, that was huge,” says Gavin. “Because it allowed me to focus on what should be the priority, and that’s recovery. Digging deep into yourself and figuring out why it is you keep using drugs, and why you were making the decisions you were making…having that time and place to do that was a gift from God.”
Also “a gift from God” was Gavin’s not thinking of himself as a victim—a popular social sport that leaves supposed adults stuck in an emotionally infantile state. And while there is some healing benefit in expressing how angry one might feel over what their parents didn’t do right in raising them, ultimately, playing the “blame game” doesn’t benefit anyone. Forgive from the heart and move on may just be the best advice any of us ever receive.
“I always knew my life wasn’t supposed to be the way I was living it,” says Gavin .”Was my mother overbearing and my father not always present because of his drinking? Sure yeah, those were contributing factors, but I was still accountable for my own choices. I was just choosing to not grow up and be responsible.”
Wise words. And we don’t have to be addicts to heed them. We can start by appreciating the good seeds our parents did sow into our lives. Sometimes that’s being grateful simply for the gift of life and sometimes it’s for much more than that—such as a mother “teaching their children the way they should go” and for her fervent prayers. A praying mother isn’t perfect. But she does pray her child will end up exactly God how intends them to be—in spite of her own failings.
In the natural world, seeds require favorable conditions to germinate, though that doesn’t always mean that either the environmental or physiological conditions are ideal. In the Creator’s logic-defying, “bioworld,” He decides what those most “favorable conditions” are. And as Gavin Kielty will tell you, He will use absolutely anything to get us where we need to be—the good, the bad and the ugly.
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