I was born in 1965 into a military family who moved every 2 years or so. Because of all the moving I, like many military children, learned deeply rooted coping mechanisms to allow easy communication and multicultural assimilation. In 1984 I entered the United States Air Force as a Fuels Specialist. My natural leadership skills were noticed immediately, and I was placed in leadership positions at every level in my military career. In 1992 I cross-trained into being a Mental Health Technician, where I graduated with honors 2nd in my class. Although my early psych tech career was slow to develop, within three years my natural leadership abilities were on display again when a gunman (former patient) rampaged through the clinic taking revenge on the psychiatrist and psychologist he had perceived as those who had ended his military career. In 1993 I had perfected my primary role as a Mental Health Technician and began assisting the American Association of Psychiatric Technicians write a Textbook for prospective Psychiatric Technicians who sought to be licensed nationally. By 1996 I began the arduous process of earning my licensure as an addiction counselor. In 1998 I was placed in charge of a failed Drug Testing Program where the previous had brought into question several legal aspects of the program. Within 6 months I moved the drug testing office into a permanent unused property on the base, furnished it and completely written new procedures: and began random testing that the local Legal office was again willing to prosecute any positive results. By 2002 I had progressed up in rank and responsibility and earned the Certified Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselor license through the USAF Licensing Body and the ICRC/AODA. In 2006 I was granted a Registered Addiction Counselor license by the State of Louisiana when I volunteered to assist SAMHSA with the continuing Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts. After Retiring from the USAF in 2007 I moved to Istanbul / Turkey where my partner and I eventually opened the first completely secure online portal specifically designed to allow addiction counseling at a distance and online. My Relationship with Addiction: I have not entertained addictive behaviors myself; I am not “recovering” I spent my youth watching my brother use drugs daily from the age of 11 or so. I watched him engage in trouble constantly, openly and without reservation. He did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. He built up or tore down everything he wanted. Then when I was 12, my other brother was killed in a car accident in which he was drinking and driving. He was 18 and I didn’t even know he drank. But after he died, we had to clean his room where we found more VO bottles in the rafters than were in the store.