Recovery Spotlight: Damian Bujanda

Same Man. Different Life.

This story discusses active addiction, injection drug use, homelessness, overdose, incarceration, and relapse.

“My name is Damian Bujanda. I am an addict in recovery, an Iraq War veteran, a son, a brother, a father, and an uncle.”

Today, Damian says his life is full of infinite possibilities.

His passion for the arts has led him into music and photography. His lived experiences have led him into outreach. He now works as a R.E.A.L. Team Care Manager at Reflections, where he can use parts of his own journey to help people who are still struggling.

He is also rebuilding his own life, one piece at a time.

At the time Damian shared his story, he was preparing to graduate from Drug Court after participating in the program since 2023. He had regained his driver’s license, earned his motorcycle endorsement, resolved outstanding warrants, paid restitution and a significant amount of debt, and owned a fully insured and properly registered car.

Those accomplishments may sound ordinary to some people. To Damian, they represent something much greater.

There was a time when an ordinary, stable life felt impossibly far away.

“I’m still slowly putting the pieces of my life back together,” Damian says, “and I’m proud of those pieces.”

His life still has struggles. Recovery did not remove every hardship, repair every relationship, or erase the consequences of his past. Instead, it gave him what he once prayed for: a new set of problems.

“Recovery didn’t give me a life without problems—it gave me a life worth dealing with them for.”

When Addiction Took Everything

Before recovery, Damian lost everything more than once.

His addiction hurt and separated him from people he loved. He blamed others for choices he was making and lived through periods that felt like purgatory—or even hell on earth.

He wandered through large cities without a safe place to sleep or a friend in sight. Some nights, the only thing supporting his head was a curb. Because sleeping outside didn’t feel safe, he would inject drugs to remain awake and walk for miles with nowhere to go.

He experienced drug-induced psychosis on the streets of Hollywood while the nightmares created by his own mind chased him in real time. He hated the choices he had made, hated his own reflection, and continued using anything he could find to numb what he felt.

As substances and drug trends changed, Damian followed them. His addiction took him into dark alleys and trap houses throughout California and Washington. He went through opiate withdrawal more than twenty times.

The drugs eventually came before everything and everyone.

Damian became untrustworthy. He robbed and stole. He learned how to talk his way into situations if he believed they would lead to the next bag. He brought people he loved into his addiction and lost people he loved while struggling to find any love for himself.

He also witnessed the devastation addiction causes. He saw death. He administered Narcan to people experiencing overdoses, then fled because he was afraid of being questioned by law enforcement.

Eventually, it felt as though his shadow had taken control.

“The person you see today was still somewhere inside me,” Damian remembers, “sitting in a corner, rocking back and forth and crying, hoping for years that somebody would come and save me.”

Then he realized nobody was coming.

“I had to come to my own rescue.”

This Time Was Different

Damian once relapsed one day before reaching a full year of recovery.

He lost everything again—but this time, his decisions affected more than his own future. Watching someone he loved lose herself to addiction forced him to look differently at the life he was living.

Damian was in Seattle and had recently rented an apartment. While delivering drugs, he saw police lights behind him. He had outstanding warrants and had only been out of jail for a few weeks.

He was arrested, and Clallam County came to retrieve him.

Damian was exhausted.

He was tired of the life he was living and ashamed of the decisions he had made. He prayed for the strength to do something different. He wanted to stop numbing his pain and finally begin facing it.

After a news story about his arrest was published, strangers tore him apart in the comments. Damian acknowledges that some of the criticism was deserved.

“But where they went wrong was doubting me,” he says.

This time, he decided he would stop playing the victim. He would stop blaming other people. He would take responsibility and prove recovery was possible—not for strangers or a comment section, but for himself and for anyone who might see his story and find hope in it.

Damian never wants to forget where he came from because remembering his past allows him to recognize how far he has traveled.

If someone can see themselves in the person he once was, he wants them to know one thing:

“It’s never too late.”

Walking Through the Door

Damian’s recovery began when the Clallam County court system helped him gain access to treatment.

Although he was a veteran, he no longer had the insurance coverage he needed. Instead of allowing that problem to become another dead end, the court helped him restore his coverage. His team then helped him enter treatment at ABHS.

Damian had entered treatment before, but he had never completed it.

This time, he began listening.

Learning about addiction, recovery, and the reasons behind his behavior helped Damian understand that recovery required more than simply putting down drugs. He needed to address his mental health, practice accountability, learn self-love, and confront the pain and behaviors beneath his addiction.

He also had to accept that he could not rebuild his entire life overnight.

He would have to do it one day at a time.

For Damian, recovery means abstaining from all substances, remaining accountable, caring for his mental health, learning to love himself again, and surrounding himself with people who are also trying to build better lives.

“The court and my team helped open the door and gave me an opportunity,” Damian says. “But eventually, I had to make the decision to walk through it and keep walking.”

Sometimes Staying Is the Victory

One of Damian’s hardest lessons was discovering that he could not save someone else by sacrificing himself.

His partner entered treatment around the same time he did. Fifteen days later, she left.

Damian cried for three days.

He had written approximately fifteen letters filled with drawings, encouragement, and motivation. He was devastated. Earlier in his life, that heartbreak might have been enough to make him abandon his own recovery and follow her.

But not this time.

Damian realized he could not rescue her by following her. If he truly loved her, he had to remain steady. He hoped he might someday become an anchor—someone she could look toward and see that recovery was possible and that life on the other side was worth fighting for.

Unfortunately, that did not happen.

It became one of the most painful lessons recovery taught him: sometimes loving another person cannot come before learning to love yourself.

Damian stayed in treatment. He remained committed to his recovery and continued moving forward, even when his heart wanted him to turn around.

“Sometimes staying is the victory.”

Recovery Takes a Community

Damian is clear that no single person or program is responsible for his recovery.

It has taken a community.

He credits his friendships and the people at Cedar Grove, ABHS, Oxford House, Reflections, Drug Court, and the courthouse. He is grateful for Judge Basden, the nurses at North Olympic Healthcare Network, and everyone who encouraged him, cared for him, held him accountable, or simply treated him as though he was still worth helping.

Damian also draws strength from people who are still suffering from addiction.

He has not forgotten them because he has not forgotten what it felt like to be one of them. They remind him why he continues showing up and why his outreach work matters.

His gratitude can also be beautifully simple.

A roof over his head.

A bed where he can safely sleep.

After nights spent resting his head on a curb and walking for miles with nowhere to go, Damian no longer overlooks those ordinary comforts.

“Recovery has taught me that sometimes the things we once overlooked become the things we’re most grateful for.”

The Ability to Be Available

Recovery has given Damian back the ability to be available.

He recognizes that some damaged relationships may never return. Recovery does not guarantee that everything lost will be restored.

But if someone he loves chooses to reconnect one day, Damian can now be present. He can show up differently.

Recovery has given him consistency, a new outlook on life, and principles to live by—many of which he has learned through the Steps of Narcotics Anonymous.

It has also given him stability.

Reliable transportation, the ability to go out for a meal, treating someone on a date, taking care of himself, and having the freedom to participate in life again may be material things, but Damian does not dismiss what they represent after living for so long without them.

Most importantly, recovery has opened the door to a new spiritual journey.

Damian feels God’s love and believes his guardian angels or guides have been with him. He is learning to become still enough to recognize that guidance.

“I’m learning to listen to the whispers so I don’t have to wait for the yells.”

For years, life had to scream before Damian would listen. Today, he is learning to hear it when it speaks softly.

Turning Toward the Shadow

Damian is most proud of finding the strength to face his demons.

For most of his life, he ran from his shadow. He tried to silence, numb, hide from, or escape everything within himself that he did not want to confront.

Recovery taught him to turn around.

“Once you turn toward that shadow, look it directly in the eye, and scream with every ounce of your being, ‘You no longer have power over me,’ something changes.”

The darkness did not magically disappear when Damian chose recovery. The demons still call.

The difference is that he no longer has to answer.

His recovery and faith have given him strength he did not know he possessed. Every waking moment now carries a new appreciation for life. He does not need to know exactly what the rest of his life will look like.

He only needs to be grateful for today and, God willing, wake up tomorrow with another opportunity to keep going.

“A new day. A better day. And, God willing, another sober tomorrow.”

Caring Takes Courage

Damian once believed that not caring gave him a rebellious voice of strength.

Today, he knows that caring takes far more courage.

Paying bills.

Keeping his word.

Going to work.

Taking responsibility when he is wrong.

Being present for people who need him.

Showing up for himself when nobody is watching.

That is the courage of recovery.

“Recovery is art. It’s music. It’s poetry. It’s happiness and love. It’s forgiveness and gratitude. It’s also tears. It’s grief. It’s feeling things I spent years trying not to feel and discovering that I can survive those feelings without having to numb them.”

Recovery does not mean that every day is beautiful.

It means Damian is here to experience it.

Most importantly, today he is sober.

He continues choosing recovery every day—and sometimes every second. Tomorrow can wait because tomorrow is not guaranteed.

Today is here.

And today, Damian chooses recovery.

Same Man. Different Life.

Damian wishes more people understood that the person they judge, mock, or ignore on the street could become another version of him.

Addiction has a face. Sometimes that face is dirty, angry, or desperate. Sometimes it belongs to someone who has lied, stolen, hurt people, and burned bridges.

But that does not have to be where the story ends.

With opportunity, encouragement, accountability, and a willingness to change, the person others have dismissed could become tomorrow’s leader.

Damian knows because he has lived both sides.

“Once, you could’ve walked past me sleeping on a curb and seen nothing but an addict.

“Today, I help others find their way out.

“Same man.

“Different life.

“Don’t count us out.”

I See You

If Damian could speak to the version of himself who was still struggling, he would not lecture or judge him.

In many ways, Damian speaks to that former version of himself every day through outreach.

Sometimes that means telling someone there is a place where they can warm up food or use a restroom. Sometimes it means explaining that help will be available when they are ready. Sometimes it is a hug.

Sometimes it is simply looking into someone’s eyes long enough for them to understand that he truly sees them.

Damian remembers what it felt like to believe he was invisible.

If he could stand before the man he used to be, he would look him in the eyes and say:

“I see you.

“It doesn’t end here.

“You’re better than this.

“You deserve another chance.

“You always have.”

To someone struggling today, Damian offers the same hope.

There may always be another bag, another withdrawal, another loss, and another reason to continue hurting—but pain is not a reason to create more pain.

Perhaps everything that person has survived is preparing them for a purpose they cannot yet see. Maybe one day they will use their experiences to help somebody else who believes no one could ever understand.

“This isn’t the only life available to you,” Damian says. “This isn’t the only story you get to tell.”

People can offer a hand. Treatment can open a door. Recovery can reveal a path. Eventually, a person must choose to show up for themselves.

“When you’re ready—reach for the hand.

“Then don’t let go.”

His Story Is Just Beginning

Damian spent years pouring from an empty glass.

Recovery taught him to fill his own first so that today, he has something real to pour into others.

He is grateful for where he has been, proud of where he stands, and excited about where he is going.

His story is not over.

It is just beginning.

“I’m coming for everything life told me I couldn’t have.

“And this time, I’m showing up for it sober.”

— Damian Bujanda

Stories of Survival is a Sheryl’s Second Chance Designs project sharing real stories of recovery to encourage hope, challenge stigma, and remind our community that recovery is possible.

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