My name is Connor Boyle and I am an alcoholic.

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I grew up in Littleton, NH in an ideal setting.  Supportive and loving parents who left me wanting for nothing.  After graduating from Littleton High School, I attended Bates College.  After college I attended Northeastern University School of Law, and, after which, began my career as a corporate attorney.  After working at a large law firm in Boston, I clerked for a Federal District Court judge in Concord, NH.  I then served as Associate General Counsel for a large corporation, helping oversee their transition following a private equity sale, and then their Initial Public Offering, taking the company public.  And during this entire time, whether I was drinking or not, I suffered from depression, anxiety, escapism, and a fundamentally disjointed perspective on life in general.

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Like so many others, I treated these maladies myself.  Initially this treatment took the form of obsessing over external validation.  And ultimately the treatment took the form of sever alcohol abuse. Two drinks a night turned into four.  Four transitioned to six.  Six moved to ten.  Ten to twenty.  And, eventually, no amount of vodka or whiskey would suffice, and I regularly drank bottle after bottle of mouthwash to “feel something.”  Not surprisingly, this level of substance abuse was accompanied by suicidal ideation.

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Through all of this, I was fortunate enough to have a loving and compassionate family that repeatedly tried to get me help.  And, finally, after multiple hospital detoxes and two residential rehab attempts, something finally clicked.

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If I could pinpoint what made the switch flip, I would.  But I cannot.  And I cannot because it was not one single thing.  It was a cumulative effect.  It was relentless compassion.  It was radical acceptance.  It was raw accountability.  It was hundreds, if not thousands, of conversations with other addicts.  And it was repeatedly doing the right things for the right reasons with the right energy.  No single drop of water will break a dam, but a big enough river can break through anything.  And that is what recovery is.  It is not any one single thing.  It is everything.  It, for those of us affected, is every part of our day, no matter how mundane or exciting.

 

And that is why I started Iron Helix.  Iron Helix is not meant to be a cure-all.  It may not be for everybody.  But what it is, for the people with whom the work and the energy does resonate, will be an indispensable part of the whole.

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Some of the most critical pieces that I can attribute my recovery to is the acceptance of my own responsibility in my addiction, my understanding that hard things are hard, and my willingness to do hard things, not for the result produced, but for the energy that exists in doing the work.  Not everything is about the result.  Some things, and I would argue the most important thing, are about the work and the process.  At Iron Helix you will absolutely get stronger and more fit.  But the real mission of Iron Helix is to deliver the benefits of the process.