When terrorists blew up Marine Corps barracks in Beirut and killed 241 troops, Keith Hairston was among the sailors who volunteered to help recover bodies.
The damage was severe following the Hezbollah truck bombings in the Marine Battalion Landing Team headquarters during 1983, he recalled.
"I'm talking about body bagging arms, body bagging legs, heads," Hairston said.
While Hairston had used substances before the bombing, when he got back to the states, the trauma from the event hit hard and he started using hard drugs so he wouldn't have to feel anything.
When he got caught using drugs on a screening, Hairston went to a 30-day rehabilitation program, but he just couldn't stop using. So he opted not to reenlist -- in part, so he could preserve his honorable discharge.
In the decades since leaving the military, Hairston has survived severe addiction, homelessness, his daughter's death, two suicide attempts and prison.
He's been clean and sober for 14 years and, following his retirement from a marketing company, started leading a peer support program in July 2024.
"Before I die, I am committed to change as many as lives I can, because I want to give back what was freely given to me -- and that is hope," said Hairston, who is now 65.
The Warrior Support Group he leads through Serenity Recovery Connection, a Colorado Springs nonprofit, is for veterans, law enforcement officers and other first responders. He said peer support is critical in keeping the disease of addiction arrested.
While recovery is not a linear path, he believes strongly in the power of a story, even just listening to one, for those in recovery from addiction.
"If you're not ready to tell me your story, let me share mine, and we can come to a point where we recover together," Hairston said.
'On the basis of rock bottom'
After Hairston left the Navy, he spent several years battling addiction. He was living with his parents and while they understood he was suffering, they didn't know about his addictions.
When he was arrested for drug possession, Hairston and his father decided he would attend a 45-day rehabilitation program. While Hairston completed the program, he relapsed the next day. It devastated his parents and they no longer allowed him to stay in their home, Hairston said.
For about a year, Hairston was homeless in Washington, D.C., sleeping on benches and in churches, doing whatever it took to get high.
When he got to the point he wanted to die, Hairston sought out recovery support groups. He went to the first one, tired and hungry, without having showered.
The groups helped him get stable and he started to put his life back together. He stayed clean for 13 years and became a successful insurance broker.
"I was staying clean on the basis of a rock bottom," he said. But he never touched his core issues of post-traumatic stress disorder or depression.
He was 12 years into his sobriety when he decided to move to Colorado Springs with his wife. When he arrived, he got a job with The Gazette working in the advertising department selling employment ads.
Hairston had just finished celebrating a large ad sale with some customers when he relapsed.
The customers wanted to toast the campaign and while he raised a glass of water in the moment, he just couldn't stop thinking about the beer on the table.
He left the hotel where he had been for his business meeting, but then returned 15 minutes later for the beer. It sparked a spiral that lasted several years, marked with stints in jail and community corrections.
Hairston was at the tail end of a six-month rehab program through the Salvation Army and starting to deal with some of his core problems, when he got a call from his case manager, telling him that his daughter, Teresa, was in a coma after overdosing. He asked Teresa's mother, Susan, if he should fly out to Cincinnati to see her. But she told him to stay and finish the program because Teresa was expected to recover.
Three days later, he got the call that Teresa had died. She was 24.
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Hairston continued working at the Salvation Army for about a month after successfully finishing the rehab program. But then he went back to using and largely blacked out between 2004 and 2010, and became homeless again.
At the end of the six years, Hairston made a plan to kill himself and drove to a hotel near the entrance to the Pikes Peak Highway. He was high and drunk, holding the gun he planned to use to kill himself, when he accidentally shot himself.
"The bullet hits my calf, at the top of my calf and goes out the bottom of my calf. ... It scared the living crap out of me," Hairston said.
He left the hotel and went back down U.S. 24 to a different hotel, where he used makeshift tourniquets and towels to stem the bleeding. When the bleeding stopped two days later, Hairston left to go get high again. He never went to a doctor.
On his way, he stopped at the 7-Eleven on Chelton Road and Fountain Boulevard to get some beer.
While there, a police officer recognized him and arrested him on an outstanding warrant, because he hadn't checked in with his probation officer. When an officer told him to get in the police car, he recalled asking if he could finish his beer first.
"When I got in the car, I just start bawling, because I knew I was on my way to prison," Hairston said. He remembers the date clearly, April 21, 2010, because he has been clean ever since.
After his arrest, he was sentenced to 18 months in Sterling Correctional Facility, where he says he damned God, spirituality and recovery, and wanted to die.
So, while he was in the weight room one day, he cut in front of a Mexican gang member, who promptly beat him using one of the weights. He spent a month and half in the prison infirmary.
When he was released from care, the same man asked him why he didn't fight back and Hairston told him about losing his daughter. The man didn't respond. He just got up and walked away.
But Hairston felt he turned a corner that night. While he doesn't fully understand the moment, he says he came to believe that he was capable of change.
"I was crying, you know, and praying, and I just got this overwhelming feeling that I don't want to die," he said.
Something other than fear
That's when he started reading all the books he could find on changing his life, including "The Upside of Fear," by Weldon Long, who also spent time in prison and came to speak to the prisoners while Hairston was serving his time. It helped him learn how to stop allowing fear to drive his life.
"You have to build a foundation of trust. You have to believe in something other than fear," he said.
When Hairston got out, he responded to an ad for a job to train others in sales. Hairston explained to general manager Doug Wyatt that he had a criminal history, but that he had changed. Wyatt believed him and invited him for a interview.
Hairston had a good feeling about the job and then he got to the door and it read, "Weldon Long Organization."
"I walked in, and I was almost crying," he recalled, and he explained to Wyatt the pivotal role "The Upside of Fear" had played in his life, and also brought Wyatt to tears. He came back to interview with Long, who hired him. Hairston worked for Long for six years giving sales trainings.
Long, who still works with prisoners, says he can typically tell who is ready for real change in their lives based on their level of humility -- a quality he saw in Hairston.
"He was very willing and humble enough to say 'I don't have all the answers' ... that's, to me, the guy that's got a shot," Long said.
While Hairston credits Long for mentoring him after he got out of prison, Long noted that Hairston was willing to put in the work, while Long said he just showed him a mirror to help him along.
Hairston's willingness to give back is also one of the hallmarks of people who change their lives after serious run-ins with the law, Long said.
"If you look at the common theme of guys who get out and make it, there is always some element of contribution," he said.
For Hairston, it's using his story to help other people unlock their stories.
"I will help you find a pathway to your recovery, whatever the case, and whatever that looks like," he said.