To anyone walking the road of recovery,
Every day has started to feel like the day before. Same sunrise, same thoughts, same heaviness. And some days it’s hard not to wonder if this is just what life is now.
After thirty-five years of being some version of altered, I finally stopped. Booze, weed, coke, crystal meth, MDMA, cigarettes… all of it. I quit on October 8th, except THC. I guess that makes me “green and sober.”
But here’s the part that still hits me in the chest, literally: I also went through heart failure, open-heart surgery, and now I’ve got a defib/pacemaker sitting inside me like a permanent reminder. I know, deep down, that if that hadn’t happened, I’d probably be dead. Not because I was trying to die… but because I wasn’t trying to live, either. I wasn’t going to stop self-medicating. I knew it. I’d made peace with it.
Some people need consequences. Some people need a warning. And some people, like me, need to be cracked open with a scalpel before the message gets through.
I believe God saved me. And now I’m left with the part that’s harder than quitting: doing the work to build a life that I actually want to stay in.
I’m 53. No partner. No real family close to me. Not many friends left, because most of the old ones were built around partying. No job right now. No money. No safety net. And if I’m being honest, you can add “meaningless rendezvous” to the list of ways I used to escape myself. My dog is the one steady thing that keeps me moving forward when I don’t feel like I’ve got anything else.
Life is very hard. And sometimes it’s not very fun anymore.
I was never the “raging” version of anything. I wasn’t a headline. I wasn’t a rock-bottom story people point at. I was just… constantly and consistently numb. Always a little bit checked out. Always chasing “different” because “normal” hurt too much.
And now I’m living a different life… with a lot of the same feelings still riding shotgun: sadness, loneliness, hopelessness, worthlessness. It’s like Groundhog Day, only now I’m doing it without drugs and alcohol to blur the edges.
I’m grateful for the blessings I’ve been given. And I’m also mad about them sometimes. That’s the truth. I’m trying to learn how to hold gratitude in one hand and grief in the other without dropping either.
If you’re reading this and you feel like you’re crawling through the same long day on repeat, you’re not alone. I might not have a perfect message, but I have an honest one: I’m still here. Still trying. Still showing up, even when it’s ugly, even when it’s quiet, even when it hurts.
Thank you for this community. Thank you for the bond that holds us together when we don’t feel like we can hold ourselves.
With love,
