{"id":55591,"date":"2019-05-08T11:33:06","date_gmt":"2019-05-08T18:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=55591"},"modified":"2019-05-09T10:20:27","modified_gmt":"2019-05-09T17:20:27","slug":"graduate-eric-lynch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/graduate-eric-lynch\/","title":{"rendered":"Graduate Eric Lynch: How hitting rock bottom turned his life around"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sometimes, it takes hitting rock bottom to realize it\u2019s time\nfor a change. In Eric Lynch<\/strong>\u2019s case, it\nwas almost dying for the third time.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lynch, who grew up in Tucson, was the poster child of a good\nkid. He stayed busy with team sports\u2014soccer, basketball, football and\nvolleyball\u2014and took part in orchestra, marching band, concert and jazz band\nthroughout school. He enjoyed learning and was a good student. Then, during his\nsophomore year of high school, he was introduced to drugs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He went from smoking weed for the first time to being an\nintravenous heroin addict within a year. For the next four years, drugs consumed\nhis life. He spiraled out of control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was arrested more times than he can remember, spent time in juvenile detention, was suspended and expelled from school, spent his teen years on and off probation and was sentenced to house arrest with an ankle monitor. Despite multiple attempts at in- and out-patient rehab, he relapsed every time, eventually dropping out of high school entirely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His addiction led to homelessness, sleeping on \u201cfriends\u2019\u201d\ncouches, with a shallow existence and no foreseeable future. It took a third\noverdose and near-death experience for him to realize things needed to change.\nHe might not be so lucky the fourth time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lynch called his parents\u2014he was finally ready to come home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Medicine helped him deal with withdrawals, and he slowly\nregained control of his life. He began exercising and switched to a plant-based\ndiet, losing almost 90 pounds as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He got his GED, enrolled in classes at a community college\nand worked a steady job managing a local restaurant while he saved up money to\nattend a university. He wanted to stay in state, and after visiting Northern\nArizona University\u2019s campus, he knew this was where he belonged. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Lynch reviews footage with fellow film makers.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He enrolled in communication and creative media and film\nclasses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI knew hard work before coming to NAU, and I knew suffering before coming to NAU, but I didn\u2019t know how much those experiences would apply toward my success at NAU,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I needed to take 20+ units in a given semester, my previous experience working 50+ hours a week at a restaurant week in and week out gave me the ability to work hard every day in my classes knowing I was capable of incredible amounts of work. When I was sitting in the library until midnight or later, writing essays and taking quizzes I didn\u2019t particularly want to, I would reflect on how grateful I was to be able to get an education, to be alive, to be on my own, to be in this position to succeed.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d much rather be writing a 12-page essay on rhetorical criticism in the library at 2 a.m. than sitting in a jail cell suffering from withdrawal symptoms of a drug addiction.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

During his time at NAU, Lynch has had the opportunity to\ntravel and produce documentary films in other countries. He\u2019s directed several\nfilms that have won multiple awards and was the president of the\nstudent-produced TV station, UTV62. This year, he was named a Gold Axe\nrecipient and was inducted into the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He will graduate Saturday morning with a dual degree in Creative Media and Film and Communication Studies. He will continue his education at NAU this fall as he pursues a Master\u2019s in Communication with a documentary studies emphasis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBy completing two bachelor\u2019s degree, all whilst maintaining a 4.0 GPA, I have proved to myself and to the world that I am not my past mistakes. I am better than them, and I have grown and learned from them. Everyone in this life deserves a second chance, I am living proof of that, and graduating this May is the symbolic embodiment of what I have been trying to overcome for the last decade of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One month after graduation, Lynch will receive yet another\nendorsement for which he\u2019s worked so hard\u2014his 10-year sobriety chip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"NAU<\/figure>
\n

Carly Banks | NAU Communications
(928) 523-5582 | carly.banks@nau.edu<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, it takes hitting rock bottom to realize it\u2019s time for a change. In Eric Lynch\u2019s case, it was almost dying for the third time.  Lynch, who grew up in Tucson, was the poster child of a good kid. He stayed busy with team sports\u2014soccer, basketball, football and volleyball\u2014and took part in orchestra, marching band,…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":55604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-community"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}