FAIRFIELD, Ohio — As COVID cases rise, so are the amount of drug abuse and overdose cases.

One man knows the situation first hand after it happened to him, but he said he found a way to overcome his addiction.

Matt Peterson was just a kid when he said he got a taste of what would send him to rock bottom. 

“I just wanted to fit in," he said. “I smoked my first cigarette, my first joint, my first beer, all in the same night at 13 years old,” said Peterson.

It wasn’t long before he was hooked on drugs.

“I had to continue to use on a daily basis just to function, have a conversation with a person, go to work. I had to have them,” said Peterson.

That would follow him for 15 years.

He’d been in and out of jail and was stealing to feed his addiction until he had nothing left.

“I didn’t have anywhere to go. I couldn’t go back home, I didn’t have any friends at this point, I didn’t have a job anymore, I had no money, didn’t have a cell phone,” said Peterson.

But he wasn’t alone. 

“When I transitioned from alcohol to marijuana to cocaine, it was with Kyle, when I transitioned from cocaine to hardcore opiates like Oxycotin, it was with Kyle, then when I eventually ended up on heroin, it was with Kyle," said Peterson. "The day I walked into treatment, the first person I saw was Kyle,” said Peterson. 

But Kyle, his best friend who’d just become a father, never made it past his addiction.

“He took that last shot alone in the back of that van and it killed him,” said Peterson.

But Kyle is the reason Matt ended up at Brightview Treatment Center in Fairfield. 

He got clean, got educated, and eight years later he is a substance abuse counselor there.

“What I’m doing today, this is why God spared me,” said Peterson.

He’s been helping people through their recovery journey, leaving behind the blueprint to what got him through his. 

In a book, he wrote he hopes it will explain to his own kids and anyone else what it's like to overcome addiction. 

“I’m never gonna stop fighting,” said Peterson.