My Journey to Recovery

By Jon Baker

If you’ve made it to this website, then there’s a good chance you know me from the recovery community in St. Louis, MO.  It’s a large and vibrant community that I’ve been plugged into since I got sober on 2/28/22.  I wouldn’t have gotten sober without it.  That’s for certain.

I have a sponsor, I’m a friend of Bill, I’m working a 12-step program, and as of 8/20/22 I’ve been living in a sober living home in St. Louis called the Hilljack House.  I’m posting this article on 12/1/2024, so I’ve been living here for about 2 years and 3 months and have been sober for about 2 years and 9 months.  It’s been an amazing experience and has helped me in more ways than I can imagine.  

Initially after getting sober, I opened up about my story with my sponsor and a handful of other people.  Aside from my roommate at the Hilljack House, I didn’t open up to the rest of them until after I’d been here for about 6 months.  I shared my story in a house meeting.  The guys were very supportive and I very much appreciate that.

The problem is, that was over a year and a half ago and I haven’t really said much about it since then.  There’s a whole new group of guys at the house now and very few of them have ever heard my story before.  I’m sorry guys for not opening up sooner.  I’m surprised I hadn’t told you, but I’m even more surprised if you hadn’t heard it from someone else.  If you haven’t, then I completely tip my hat to the group I shared it with for keeping it quiet.  That’s impressive.

Usually when I share my story, I give general information, but not specifics.  I mention that my story consists of alcohol addiction, mental health problems, emotional imbalance, and suicidal thoughts and attempts.  I give general info, but don’t say exactly what happened.  I was taught that nobody likes a drunkalogue so keeping it general in meetings is an appropriate route to take.  That’s what I’ve done. 

With that said, I’m now at a point where I have to get some stuff off my chest.  My sister Beth passed away about a month ago on 11/2/24 and it’s really made me think about some things.  Beth dealt with chronic mental health problems for most of her life.  She developed paranoid schizophrenia when she was about 19 or 20 and just passed away at the age of 44.  She lived in Chicago so I didn’t get to see her that often, but I got to talk to her on the phone once or twice a month.  I love her dearly, but now that she’s gone it’s made me think about the mental health problems I had in my own life.  They were very deep and real.  Not the exact same as Beth’s, but pretty serious in their own right.

You see my mother passed away when I was 3, my dad passed away in 2017, and my brother Nick passed away in 2008.  I’m 42 now with no wife or kids and with the passing of my immediate family, my mental and emotional health has suffered a lot.  I developed a pretty bad alcohol addiction between the summer of 2019 to February 28th, 2022 to try to cope with everything, but it didn’t help much.  Actually, it made everything much worse. 

With that said, most of the stuff I want to talk about happened in 2020 and 2021 when Covid 19 was going on.  I isolated myself and drank too much alcohol.  Way too much alcohol.  I then quit on two different occasions, but neither of them lasted very long.  Crazy enough, it was during these two stents of not drinking when everything went off the rails crazy. 

Before explaining this, I’d like to say that I’m fully aware the events I’m about to talk about will sound unbelievable to you.  I understand that.  But right now I’m not as concerned about you believing me as much as I am about just getting this off my chest.  The events really did happen, I just have no idea how to explain them to people.  Because of that, I’ve just kept them in for a very long time now.  With the exception of a small group, most of my friends in St. Louis don’t know.

With that said, if I had my preference I’d start off by explaining everything that happened in my life that led up to these events to put everything in more context.  I doubt too many people would be interested in that so I’ve decided to just tell you what happened.

In 2020 I did a 40-day water only fast.  I then did another one of these fasts in 2021 that went a little over 46 days where I broke it on the 47th day.  It was during this second fast where everything went crazy.  I’ll get to that one in a second, but I want to explain everything in order.  There’s so much stuff to cover that I don’t know where to start.  I’m just going to do as best as I can. 

If I could simplify what happened I’d say this, I lost my mind in a very public, spectacular fashion. 

It was somewhat embarrassing how everything played out, but that’s the easiest way to sum it up.  Maybe other people could handle going 40-days without food, but I didn’t handle it well, not well at all.

I lost my mind.

With that said, before getting into everything, I do want to take a step back and at least explain some things about my life leading up to these events.  I won’t explain my whole life story, but I at least want to explain some stuff to put everything in better context. 

You see in order to understand my background more accurately, you have to understand exactly how much of an impact that Jesus Christ has had on my life.  I’ve had some huge ups and downs with my relationship with him over the years, but the impact he’s had on my life can’t be overstated.  I gave my life to him at the age of 15 and it’s never been the same since.  The Lord changed my life completely and he’s all I’ve thought about for years and years.

I’ll admit that over time my beliefs about God have changed quite a bit.  I don’t really want to get into that right now, but I just want to emphasize the impact that Jesus has had on my life.

With saying that, I’m well aware that this can be a major turn off for many people in the recovery community.  When you start talking about Jesus and Christianity, then some people don’t want to have anything to do with it.  I respect that, I just can’t tell my story in an accurate fashion without mentioning him and the impact he’s had on my life. 

In real life, I actually don’t talk about my beliefs too often.  I doubt very few of my friends in St. Louis even know this about me.  They know I’m a Christian, but I seriously doubt they know the extent I went overboard with my spiritual life in the past.

For years and years I read about this stuff pretty nonstop.  Although I don’t talk about it much, I’ve definitely read about it quite often.  From near-death experiences, to the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, to the apparitions of Medjugorje, to other apparitions of angels, Mary, Jesus, and Saint Joseph, to my personal favorite book of all time, “Hope Beyond Hell” by Gerry Beauchemin; I’ve gotten into this spiritual stuff quite a bit. 

With that said, I don’t think it was really a problem getting into this stuff until I started doing it in isolation and drinking copious amounts of alcohol while doing it.  That combination led to disaster. 

To try to move forward with the story, I’ll next give a brief overview of what happened leading up to the fasts and then delve into the craziness of what happened during them.  I know you have a lot of questions so I’m going to try to cover everything as best as I can.

Okay, so I was born and raised in Arkansas, but lived around Kansas City, MO for about 5 years between the spring of 2014 to the spring of 2019 (a suburb called Overland Park, KS for most of this time).

I then moved to Denver, CO for about 6 months.  I loved it there, but the cost of living was a little too high for me so I decided to move to St. Louis in the fall of 2019.

When I lived in Overland Park, KS I actually had a pretty solid network of friends as a support system.  I was very plugged into the community there.  When I moved to Denver, CO that support system went away and that’s when I found myself drinking way more than I should.

During this time, I had a lot of emotional turmoil going on as well.  My father just passed away in December of 2017 and I had numerous difficult questions about life that I just couldn’t stop thinking about.  The concept of pain, evil, and suffering to be the main one. 

Nonetheless, by the time I moved to St. Louis I had a pretty bad alcohol addiction that had set in.  I wanted to stop drinking and get plugged into the community here, but Covid 19 hit right after and instead of stopping and getting plugged in, I went in isolation and drank about as much alcohol as a person could drink. 

For the past 10 years I’ve sold Medicare insurance over the phone for a living.  In 2019 I continued to do this, but switched to a 1099 position and the drinking increased shortly after.  With a decent amount of money in the bank at the time and a schedule where I could work my own hours, I found myself drinking a whole lot more than I was working.  I’m now W2 again, but at the time I was 1099 and worked my own schedule from home.

Well fast forward to August of 2020 and I had a lot of things weighing on my heart.  We had the Covid-19 situation going on, the racial justice situation going on, I had a couple of projects I was working on, I had a lot of spiritual warfare going on that I didn’t know how to get rid of, and then my uncle Gary lost his eyesight for a while due to an infection and this prevented him from driving trucks for a living.  He’d done that for 35 years and I was worried about him since he couldn’t work.  Nonetheless, a lot of stuff was weighing on my heart.

Because of all this, I thought if there was ever a time for me to do a 40-day water only fast, then this was the time to do it.  I know this sounded extreme, but there was a lot of stuff weighing on me and I needed to have something happen.  This was the best idea I had.

Well it took me a moment to get motivated to do the fast, but I eventually decided to move forward with it.  The fast went from August 24th, 2020 through October 3rd, 2020.  I actually visited my sister Beth in Chicago right before the fast and then started it the same day I left.  I left Chicago on August 24th, 2020, ate a big steak dinner before I got home that night, and then started the fast right after.

Now I’m not really sure exactly what I was hoping to get out of this fast, I was just hoping for something to happen.  For me, the silence of God has been one of the most difficult aspects of life to deal with.  The sheer amount of crying out I’ve done in prayer over the years was not easy to go through when it all too often was met with silence.  The silence of God has been deafening and I just wanted to see him move in some way.

Now when you do something this extreme like a 40-day water only fast, then I’ll admit I had at least a little hope that something big would happen.  I would have taken something small, but if I were honest, I wanted to see something big.  Preferably, something really big.  That’s what I was hoping for.

Well as it turns out something big did happen.  Something really big for that matter.

And that was, I lost my freaking mind.

And by that, I mean I quite literally, Lost. My. Freaking. Mind.

That’s what happened. 

I lost it.

Now I actually didn’t lose it during the fast itself, I actually lost it afterward.  But nonetheless, that’s what happened.  It started with an event around Thanksgiving that I’ll explain next and then it went into full blown lost when I performed my second fast that went over 46 days.  We’ll get into that one in a moment, but first let me explain what happened during Thanksgiving 2020.

So what happened was about a month went by after the first fast and nothing of significance really happened.  It was just kind of the same thing as before.  Silence.  No improvements in anything I’d fasted about.  Well of course I get depressed and start drinking again.  This was around the second week of November 2020.

Well fast forward to Thanksgiving week and I decided to go down to my niece Justice’s house in Arkansas for dinner.  My brother Nick who passed away had one daughter named Justice.  After he passed in 2008 I tried to be more present in her life.  We usually hung out during the holidays and I came down to visit her for Thanksgiving this year.

Nonetheless, it was the day before Thanksgiving and I’m at her and her ex-boyfriend’s house in Arkansas.  Now you have to understand that I don’t smoke marijuana.  I’ve never done any hard drugs before and I’ve only smoked marijuana about 10 times in my life.  The last of which was around 2005 or 2006 so it had been a while. 

Well I’m having some sleeping problems and stomach problems and anxiety problems etc., and I hear that marijuana can potentially help with those ailments.  Because of this, I decided to smoke a little pot with them to see if it could help.

This was not a great idea, because let me tell you folks, this experience was a catastrophe.  And when I say catastrophe, I mean catastrophe.  I went into a different realm.  And by that, I mean I went into a different realm. 

I don’t know where she got that weed from, but it absolutely did a number on me.  It was a disaster. 

At the hospital they tested me for other stuff and didn’t find anything so it was only weed, but it was some pretty dang strong weed I’ll tell you that.  And I didn’t handle it well.  Sorry Justice for losing it.

Nonetheless when I smoked it, it was like putting on a video game helmet and when I put it on it went wa-woom and I entered a different realm. 

And this place scared me to the core. 

And the scariest part of it all was that it felt like I’d been there a hundred times before.  The feeling of déjà vu was intense.  Not kind of intense, extremely intense.  And it was immediate; as soon as I entered that place, it was like I knew instantly I’d been there before. 

This was exceptionally scary.

Well luckily, I didn’t hurt myself or anyone else thank the Lord, but the cops and ambulance did get called.  They sent me to the hospital and had me stay there until the marijuana finally wore off.  It took a while to wear off, but it finally did and I came back to reality. 

Nonetheless, after I came back to reality I was like, what in the world just happened? 

I was like… What. Just. Happened?  Are you kidding me? 

How in the world did that just happen after I did a 40-day water only fast to prevent stuff like this? 

I was like, I was wanting something good to happen from the fast, not that! 

That scared the crap out of me!

I was extremely confused.

Now I know I have a sister with paranoid schizophrenia, but I myself have never experienced anything like that before.  Not a break from reality to where my mind was completely gone.  That freaked me out.

Well of course after I got back to St. Louis then I start drinking again to try to escape from everything.  I was getting more and more depressed and drinking more and more alcohol to cope.

Well fast forward about a month and a half later to January of 2021 and I’m extremely suicidal at this point.  I’m drinking like a sailor and absolutely ready to move onto the next life.  Everything was so confusing to me that I just wanted to escape it all.

With saying that, this is where the story gets crazy. 

If I were writing a book, then I’d separate this into different chapters.  I feel like it’s throwing too much information at you at one time and now we’re getting to the stuff that I don’t know how to explain.

I’ll do my best to explain it, but this is where it got weird.

So again, it was January of 2021 and I was extremely suicidal and drinking enormous amounts of alcohol.

The problem for me was that suicide wasn’t an option.  As bad as I wanted to move onto the next life, I just couldn’t pull myself to actually do it.

Well that’s when I had a crazy idea. 

Now I know that nobody should be doing this and it’s an alcoholic’s logic, but the idea came to me that instead of committing suicide, why don’t I offer my life as a sacrifice to God for the healing of our nation and for God to reveal his love to the entire world.  Instead of committing suicide, why don’t I do that.  That’s what I thought.

Yeah, I know it’s crazy but for some reason the idea connected with me and it connected with me deep.  But the thing about it was, the only way I felt comfortable with performing this sacrifice was through a water only fast. 

So I’m back for round two.

Well I get all my affairs in order.  I update my life insurance information, I write down letters to everyone I want to write letters to, I get everything situated, and then I decide to start the fast.

I started the fast on February 28th, 2021 and it went until April 16th, 2021.  It lasted a little over 46 days when I broke it slightly into the 47th day. 

The only things that went in my body over this time were 1) water, 2) my sleeping meds melatonin and trazadone, 3) a periodic dose of milk of magnesia, 4) I chewed gum, and 5) a sprinkle of salt each day.

And the reason I did a sprinkle of salt each day was because during the first 40-day water only fast I did a daily multivitamin, but after the fast was over on day 41 I wasn’t feeling right so I went to urgent care.  Urgent care sent me to the emergency room because my sodium levels had dropped down dangerously low.  Well supposedly if your sodium levels drop down too low then it can cause brain swelling and seizures and I didn’t want to go out like that so during the second fast I had a sprinkle of salt each day instead of the daily multivitamin.

But that was it, that’s all that went in my body.

The first fast had the same exact things, but with a daily multivitamin instead of the sprinkle of salt each day.  I switched them up on the second fast because I was trying to kill myself. 

With that said, the fasts were obviously very difficult, but the second one was worse.  Way worse.  At one point I went 6 days in a row without water.  I was trying to speed up the dying process so I decided to stop drinking water. 

That was horrendous.

Aside from dampening my fingers at times and touching my lips to keep them from being parched, I made it for 6 days in a row.  I thought I’d be dead for sure after 3 or 4 days, but I ended up making it 6. 

That was brutal. 

Nonetheless, I know the only way I lived through this was by God’s grace.

He definitely saved me.

Well fast forward to about day 44 or 45 and I’m starting to feel this conviction that God wants me to break the fast.  Now you have to remember that by this point I’d absolutely lost my mind.  I mean completely lost my mind.  I was genuinely believing God wanted me to offer my life as a sacrifice to him for the healing of our nation and for God to reveal his love to the entire world.  No that’s absolutely not what I should have been doing, but that’s what I was believing at that point.

Nonetheless, when I started to feel this conviction to break the fast, I questioned whether it was my flesh speaking or whether it was coming from God.  Considering I was just about to be dead and I thought I was supposed to be offering my life as a sacrifice, I had my doubts as to whether the conviction was coming from him.

Because of this, I decided that I wasn’t going to break this fast in any typical fashion.  I decided to break the fast in a way that if I lived through it, then I knew it was coming from God.

You see when you do a fast this long, the most dangerous part of it is not actually the fast itself.  It’s coming off the fast at the end.  That’s the part that can kill you.

There’s a condition called refeeding syndrome that lasts about 10 days for a fast this long.  The first half of those days are the most crucial, but if you refeed too quickly, then that’s what can kill you.

Well since that’s the case, then I decided that instead of refeeding very slowly like I did after the first fast, I decided I was going to eat as much food as I possibly could over the first 10 days and if I lived through it, then that was God letting me know that he still wanted me to be here on this earth. 

And so that’s what I did.

On April 16th, 2021, I broke the fast by eating as much food as I possibly could. 

I gained over 15 pounds that day and it was glorious.

I weighed 141 pounds going into the day, but by the end of it I shot up to over 156 pounds.  I ate so much food I couldn’t think straight.  But I didn’t slow down after that, I had Golden Coral the second day, I had Applebee’s and IHOP shortly after, and tons and tons of snacks and food in between.

I ate like there was no tomorrow for 10 days straight. 

It was amazing.

But crazy enough, it didn’t really affect me.  The Lord saved me through it.  I think my ankles swelled up fairly large and I had a pretty bad headache on the morning of day 5; but overall, I made it through the refeeding process pretty unscathed.  For some reason, the Lord decided to save me.

Well after making it through something like this, then I kind of have a turn of heart.  I’m like, heck yeah, God still wants me to be here and has a purpose for my life.  Awesome!

So I get this little jolt of excitement for a second.

Well unfortunately this jolt of excitement didn’t last long, because I then have another idea.

Now I know I’m just full of these things, I have one great idea after the next, but this idea seemed to be brilliant to me.

I had the idea to go public with everything. 

Oh yeah, I was ready to post videos about this on Facebook.

I was going to bless my 1200 Facebook friends with the story of me offering my life as a sacrifice to God.

Yeah, you can probably imagine how that went.

Not swimmingly.

My friends and family were like oh my goodness, Jon Baker has just lost his freaking mind. 

He. Has. Lost. His. Freaking. Mind.

That’s what they were all thinking.  I could feel it.  I could read it.  Their comments were empathetic, but they definitely encouraged me to seek help. 

I said earlier that if I could simplify everything that happened then I’d sum it up by saying I lost my mind in a very public, spectacular fashion.

Well this was public.  And it was spectacular. 

I think I summed it up well.

Now since this time I’ve taken down my Facebook account, but obviously my friends and family were worried about me for quite some time.

Well after seeing their response, I actually wasn’t sad or depressed about it; I was actually in a state of great peace inside.  At some point between the two fasts the emotional turmoil going on inside of me had finally broken and I was actually very much at peace. 

But even with that peace, I was still ready to move on to the next life. 

I was ready to see my mom again, I was ready to see my dad again, I was ready to see my brother again, and most importantly, I was ready to see Jesus Christ and experience his love firsthand.  I was just simply ready to move on to heaven.

So with that being the case, on May 18th, 2021, a little over a month after the second fast ended, I decided to commit suicide.  This was no offering my life as a sacrifice to God or anything like that, this was just me ready to move on to the next life.  I won’t give the details of what happened because they are pretty bad, but I’ll just say I got a hotel room and tried multiple ways to kill myself.  It was really, really a horrible mess and that’s all I’ll say about that.

Nonetheless, the Lord saved me through this as well.  After about 13 or 14 hours of trying to kill myself I finally stopped.  I noticed that God wasn’t going to let me die.  So I called 911 and asked them to come get me.  They sent me to the hospital and then sent me to the mental health ward on suicide watch.  I stayed there for about 3 or 4 days. 

During those 3 or 4 days I thought about a lot of things, but I’ll be honest, as soon as I got out the very first thing I did was go get absolutely hammered drunk and then I proceeded to drink about 15 to 20 alcoholic beverages a night, 6 to 7 nights a week, for the next 8 or 9 months straight.

And that’s what led me to the friends of Bill.

Now I know that gives it away, but of respect for tradition 11 I’ll just call it that for now.  Nonetheless, this community helped save me.  I wouldn’t have gotten sober or been able to recover without it.  I went to my first meeting at the end of January 2022 and then finally stopped drinking on February 28th, 2022.

Well after getting sober there’s been a lot of stuff happen in life since then.  Too much to explain right now.  Nonetheless, I will admit the recovery process has been slow.  If I could sum up the recovery process in one word, it would actually be just that… slow.

But even though it’s been slow, I can also say that life has unequivocally gotten better.  It’s not that crappy things don’t happen anymore, because they definitely do, it’s just that I have better tools now to cope with the difficulties life can bring. 

Just this year the Medicare brokerage I was selling for shut down with no warning on April 30th, 2024 and then my sister Beth died on November 2nd, 2024.  Both of those events were horrible.

In the past, I’d have probably drank over it and thought about suicide nonstop.  Now, I lean into my community and support system and trust that God will help me through it.  No matter how difficult the situation may be, I know he’ll help me through; especially in times like these.

With that said, I actually haven’t had any suicidal thoughts in over 2 years now; which is pretty amazing.  The last ones I had were around May 30th, 2022 before I moved into the Hilljack House.  May 30th is the anniversary of my brother Nick’s death so it got to me a little bit when I was still early in sobriety.  That was the last time I had any of those thoughts. 

Since moving into the Hilljack House things have gotten steadily better.

Yes, I still have my difficulties, but I know that life is heading in the right direction.  Instead of thinking about suicide all the time, I actually have aspirations for the future.  That’s amazing. 

One day I’d like to become a disability lawyer and help veterans get on VA disability and social security disability who need it.  There are numerous reasons I want to do this, but I’ll save that for another day.  I just mention it now because it feels good to have direction in life and a hope for the future.  That’s an enormous improvement from where I was at before.

With that said, my greatest desire right now is to help other people.  There are numerous ways to do that so I’m just going to take this one day at a time. 

As for today, I hope that sharing my story can somehow help a few of you out there.  I know it’s unique, but I pray it somehow helps.

If nothing else, I hope it shows you that no matter how deep of an emotional pit you get in, the Lord can bring you out of it.  He brought me out of mine and I’m 100% confident he can bring you out of yours as well.  Just be patient, keep taking the next right step in life, trust God, and eventually it’ll happen. 

That’s all I have for now.  Thanks for reading everyone and I’ll talk to you again soon.

Best Regards,

Jon Baker

These pictures are from the fasts. The first three are before, middle and after pictures of the first fast.

The last picture is the only one I took of the second fast. I didn’t take a before picture of the second fast, because I didn’t think I’d live through it. I weighed 141 lbs. in that picture. I praise the Lord he saved my life.