Ronald Matthew Altman III passed away March 5, 2017. He was 31 years old. Such a beautiful boy.

With family permission I am sharing a letter Matt wrote to Isaiah House on 9/27/16:

“After eighteen years of drug and alcohol use I am ready to live a life of sobriety and become closer to God. I come from a good family that is very supportive and loving. I have a younger brother who is twenty-one and I am very close with. My parents divorced when I was thirteen. Through the divorce, they did everything they could to try and not let it affect my brother and me. That is when I realized I was using drugs to numb myself from problems I was having. I started using drugs when I was in the fifth grade around age eleven.I started smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol. I started using methamphetamine at fourteen and prescription pills around sixteen. By the time I was eighteen and graduating high school I was using pills every day. I first tried heroin when I was twenty two and have been using that or some sort of opiate just about every day since then. I have lost fourteen good friends that I either grew up playing sports or going to school with that have all died from this disease of addiction, all of them overdosing on heroin or pain pills.I am terrified that if I do not get help and change my life I will die. I know that continuing that lifestyle, that will be the outcome. Throughout my life of addiction I turned into a person that I was ashamed of. I lost all self confidence, morals, values, and jobs.I grew apart from my friends, family, and most importantly God. But I know there is hope. There is a way to gain these back and that is sobriety. Trying to get sober for the first time in my life and going to detox two and a half months ago, and from there a recovery residence I have learned that there is a program, and that AA/NA and working the steps with a sponsor is it. That is the only cure for the disease of addiction. I am asking you to please give me chance and allow me to enter your program and help me save my life.”