My name is William E. Barrett, and I was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas on June 23, 1952. I came from a family of thirteen children, and I’m the eleventh child.
     My family and I moved from Arkansas in 1955 and we came to Chicago for a new start. I believe we stayed on the north side of Chicago in a hotel off Wells Street. My mother was only allowed to have three kids live with her at this hotel. The rest of the family waited until night before they could come up the back way and sleep in the room with the rest of us, and then leave early in the morning before the landlord would come up to the room and see how many of us were really there.
     One day he found out that she had all of us staying in the room with her, so we all had to move. My mother really didn’t know where to go until she met this man by the name of Sam. He showed her where she could find a place for us to live, so we moved to the south side of town. We stayed there until one night somebody set fire to our apartment and we had to move again.
     Before this happened, my brother and I would go downstairs in front of the saloon and make money dancing for the people who were in there getting drunk. We could buy cupcakes and food for your house. Our mother would get upset with us when she found out that we were downstairs once again dancing for money. Because we were too young to be doing this, we could not go out of the house and play with the other kids for a while. I was only four at the time and my two brothers were only three and one and a half. So trouble started with me at a very early age.
     When I was five I started school, and I was scared to death of going to this school. Well, this is where my life started turning around and it was very confusing to me. I would get in trouble everyday for no reason at all. Somebody would hit me, and when I would hit him back, the teacher would only see me doing the hitting. I was called a liar, so I started living the life of a liar.
     School was not good for me anymore and I didn’t like the school or the children who went there, so I took to the streets and became one of the worst kids on the block. I started smoking cigarettes at the age of eleven and I stated drinking at the age of thirteen, doing drugs at the age of fourteen.
     Life became a living hell for me. I was going back and forth to jail, and was being put out just about everywhere I would go because I would start trouble. Drinking and drugging had me doing things I thought I would never do: sleeping in doorways, being homeless, not taking baths, eating out of garbage cans. I had lost my mind for some thirty odd years or more.
     I’m very grateful for Almighty God allowing me to come here to California. This was the bottom of the pit for me. Here, after living on the streets and going back and forth to jail, God gave me a second chance to live by going to a program of recovery. These people showed me love when I didn’t know how to give it to myself. It has been four years now and, with the help of God and these people in recovery, I don’t have to drink or use drugs in my life anymore. I’m very thankful for God allowing me this new way of life.