Matison spent most of his childhood in the Dallas suburb of McKinney, Texas. Alcoholism and addiction run deep on both sides of his family and he recalls feeling very different at a young age. He never felt like he quite fit in even with close friends, that there was something strange about himself. He began experimenting with alcohol at a young age which eventually progressed into an addiction to cocaine and heroin. He thought that all of the drugs and alcohol were filling that void he felt when he was young. He later realized that it was but a symptom of something greater. The disease left him in jail, broke, homeless, and out of options. He wound up at The Dallas 24 Hour Club, where his life turned around. With the help of the twelve steps, and a community of support, he is now working on his degrees in Psychology at the University of Texas at Dallas where he is a student worker at The Center for Students in Recovery, as well as the president and co-creator of the student organization Students For Recovery. He is deeply involved in the recovery community both on and off campus and committed to helping other young people find their own path to becoming sober as well as useful to themselves and especially those around them.