Before I get started, for the new subscribers here, WELCOME. If you are not familiar with prior posts where I’ve discussed the process of getting sober (and staying sober, coming up on 15 years now) from a heroin addiction along with all other drugs and alcohol, I will include this older post because I’m going to take a different direction today:
Aside from the above story, let us discuss what recovery is and is not.
I will only use my own experiences, as I am not qualified to speak upon anybody else’s.
Recovery absolutely is:
up and down, often doesn’t make sense, scares the shit out of you - learning when to attack and when to release, and learning to discern the Higher Voice (Signal) from noise (ego, fear, external racket, old programming)
SAME STIMULUS, DIFFERENT RESPONSE
Recovery is not:
All of a sudden, you’re cured!
You do everything perfectly and it’s a constant shiny upward trajectory
an excuse to play God - with your life or the lives of others
Recovery is also NOT an identity. I may elaborate more on that, not sure yet. However I see this keep a lot of people stuck. For those of us who join 12-step fellowships (which I still am involved in, although not to the same degree I was 15 years ago) simply stopping there can be a trap. Recovery is a gateway into living aligned with a Higher Power / God, or harmonizing with Life, whatever language resonates with you. It’s not the end of the line, it’s our starting point.
What are things one can be in recovery from?
Anything that doesn’t serve you and fucks your life up - along with the lives of others. Never forget that if you are suffering with some sort of vice, be it heroin, alcohol, dishonesty, thought-loops, shame, guilt, self-sabotage, rage, lust, crime, adrenaline-seeking dumbassery, isolation, yes — all of those are vices that fuck other peoples lives up just as bad (in some cases, much worse) as yours.
May nobody who thinks they commit a “victimless” crime because they are “only hurting themselves” delude themselves beyond this point.
I mean, let’s be honest, I doubt I’m going to say anything to pierce through human delusion here, but I can at least throw that out there. We are all connected, there’s no such thing as “only hurting yourself”.
You are needed on Earth. When we abandon ourselves, we rob everyone around us of what we came here to give.
They say hell is when you meet the version of you that you could have been. That’s certainly one flavor of hell, I’m of the belief that there are many. But surely, that is the epitome of regret, so let none of us stay there if we have been there!
I will be nice for the rest of this post.
We can be in recovery from PTSD. Fact. I can attest to that, and absolutely it is possible to recover. I am not cured of it entirely, but statistically I should have been dead a long time ago.
I am also NOT UNIQUE - there are countless others who are NOT statistics who allegedly should be. You yourself may be one, and if you are, I encourage you to share your story. It’s not about us; We don’t know who is going to read our stories, resonate, and have that be what gives them hope on a day where they might have ended it all.
Never underestimate the power of sharing.
We can recover from any drug or alcohol addiction. I personally attest to that.
We can also be in recovery from abusive relationships - which I will discuss today.
I’ve spoken about drug addiction before. There are several tips to getting and staying sober in the post I linked above, and also in this post, where my friend Chelsea and I did a podcast when we both celebrated 13 years in 2022. Her and I got sober in the same month - November of 2009.
Recovery just in the last year alone:
I say this for the sole purpose of other people knowing it’s possible for them.
Two women in recovery pointed this out to me yesterday. I hadn’t noticed.
They told me I needed to take a moment to “congratulate” myself, to slow down and acknowledge what was happening.
I laughed because it’s true, but I rarely if ever do it. I don’t have a mind that thinks like that. I’m always looking to the next goal post I need to knock down, that ever elusive thing where maybe when I’ve done this or that enough, I can finally breathe, I can finally rest.
Yes - that very flawed thinking is still in me, and yes I’m working on it.
One year ago, almost to the day, I bolted out of Nashville like a bat out of hell with nothing but what I could fit in my Honda.
I left behind the house in my name (relax it was rented), most my belongings and the life I knew - which was a radioactive pile of ash by then.
I was in a relationship that was abusive beyond explanation - I knew I’d be dead if I didn’t remove myself and put a LOT of distance between myself and that person. My will to live at that point was almost zero. Almost.
I tried to hide it for a while. I reached out to my Uncle when I knew I was not going to make it if I kept trying to “manage things” on my own, or whatever the hell. Sounds pretty similar to a drug addict at rock bottom, doesn’t it? We’ll fight like hell to try and “do it ourselves” - WAY beyond the point of when we actually lost control.
Reaching out for help in those situations feels damn near impossible, but if you know you’re going to be dead, you gotta get honest, ask for help, then actually take it. Which is the hardest and also the best thing we can do.
Funny that my internal goal for that year (2023) was to “rise and expand like a human bat signal” - I just realized that as I typed the bat out of hell sentence.
The “rise and expand” goal came true and continues to do so… but I had to be broken down to nothing and escape from a hell I was equally responsible for creating as the abusive parasite I was running from.
He may be one of the most evil human beings I’ve ever met, but I do have to admit that I am responsible for 50% of that nightmare.
Why? Well, it takes two people to have ANY form of a relationship. Until I removed myself ENTIRELY from that situation, “my part” was that I allowed myself to be IN that situation. I abandoned myself - we all do that if we stay in those conditions, even if we do not realize it. As soon as we realize it, we have to take action.
My responsibility is not to control psychotic people and make them not abuse others, my responsibility is to make sure I take care of myself, and I failed myself in that situation. This is not to be morbid reflection, this is being honest. I’m okay with it because I LEARNED from it - hence what I mentioned before about recovery:
-Same stimulus, different response.
because please BELIEVE i have been tested every which way in the last year where i could have lapsed RIGHT back into that shit. I had some backslides for sure. but in the end, I overcame. I got free.
My responses are not the same anymore- to several things, not just this scenario. This is why recovery is a blessing, because you can turn your nightmares into the gateway to your dreams. Alchemy, in other words.
What happened?
Moved to Florida - but when I drove down here, I had no plan. I didn’t even know that I’d be moving here, just came to get away for a few days is all I knew. It was an evac mission with a question mark. Were it not for my Uncle and Aunt letting me stay with them, I don’t know if I’d still be on Earth.
Within two weeks, I had a full-time and began learning a new trade. This required me to stop being stubborn in thinking things had to be a certain way. I let go and tried something new.
It resulted in me not only building my self-esteem back, I finally got myself out of living below (or on) the poverty line. Believe it or not, that makes a HUGE difference in every area of life. I had to take on a lot of responsibility in this new role, which kept me out of trouble.
Got into THERAPY and stayed my ass in therapy
Sought out and worked with various mentors along spiritual paths - still do.
Found a support network locally, still building it.
Increased my Kundalini Yoga practice, started reading a lot of books again, began to learn about things I’d always wanted to.
Got baptized for the first time June 24th of 2024 - I am not kidding when I say my life and who I am has NEVER been the same since that day. That story is for another post, I have a hard time finding words for it.
Began making music again. Began writing poetry again. However I allowed myself about 6 to 8 months of not creating outwardly at all so I could heal. As someone who was focused on doing that full-time up until then, that was hard. The new people I worked with / spent 40 hrs a week with didn’t even know I made music for the first 6 months of knowing me. Most people who knew me had no idea I moved to Florida until about 6 months later, some are still finding out.
I kept shit quiet and focused. I had zero presence online for both security and sanity reasons, except Substack. That’s when I really leaned into writing here, which was a huge outlet for me. That might not sound like much to most people, but when you’ve been doing music for years and it’s hammered into your head every day that you are failing if you’re not constantly visible and creating content for these bullshit social media platforms, that can fuck with your head. So I had to unlearn that.
I finally allowed myself to not worry about needing to have everything “figured out” or look the way I thought it was supposed to look. I surrendered and focused on rebuilding the basics of a foundation.
Started working on the new album with Cris Cordero. Started performing spoken word poetry throughout the Gulf Coast of Florida. Starting hitting events and open mics and collaborating with other artists.
Went back to the gym, started taking care of my health - LONG process, still in this process, but these things matter a lot. Without our health, we have nothing.
Yes, I went to meetings. I also learned to listen to my body and when I wasn’t feeling it, and knew I needed to do something else, I (mostly) listened to that. I have to daily practice listening to my own voice over the programming of dogma, because yes, even recovery has that, and at some point we need to learn to listen to our own voice - SIGNAL.
I have family here that I had only met in person once, when I was 10. Reconnecting with them and actually getting to have the experience of living in the same area as family and spending time with them is worth more than words can describe. They have taught me so much.
I also began learning about my ancestors. A lot of lost connections began to re-connect and I cannot tell you how healing that is.
Somewhere in the mix of all of that, everything is different.
One year ago I couldn’t look in the mirror. I couldn’t sleep. I had a fresh scar on my wrist. I had nightmares constantly, and flashbacks during the day. I was out of my fucking mind. I was broken.
Literally none of that is part of my life today. Zero. Even the scar has mostly healed. Still visible, but not as much.
Now, wow. I’m going to have to take a break from this article and come back another time to finish it. Because it’s a lot.
Actually fuck that, let me let Jai Dev sum it up for me.
Oh yeah, biggest win? I’m not suicidal anymore. At all. My brain does not go there. I think it’s the biggest win of all, as I was plagued by that shit on the regular once upon a time. Even just a year ago.
In all honesty, I dealt with it a few times in the past year. It changed around the baptism, that’s the biggest thing that shifted - something in my mind/energy is different. It’s just not an option anymore. I don’t know how to explain it.
Jai Dev said the following at the end of a Kundalini Yoga practice:
The mind is what is being purified…. not you.
You are being Glorified.
The “You” he talks about, (the “I” for those who follow Anthroposophy) is the Higher Self. It is the SOUL. So don’t get it twisted, I’m not promoting the materialist self-glorification, neither is he.
It is the individual Spirit inside of you that is connected to God - necessary to develop for evolution. If we do not have our “I” developed, we fall prey to what we commonly know as “mass psychosis” and become part of a cog in the commie machine.
One will be manipulated by everything and everyone if they do not know who they are and cannot recognize or feel their own energy.
This is also how human parasites / psychopaths / narcissists are born, they have no “I” - so they have to harvest it from others. Victims and perpetrators in those scenarios both have no “I” developed.
In conclusion: This is what is meant by being purified / glorified:
Removing all that we are not, so only what is Real remains.
The part of You and I that doesn’t die.
The indescribable, that which cannot be bound with words, that which must be experienced.
That’s what the fuck recovery is.
It’s not confined to any one formula.
This is the Evolution of the Spirit. And no one has a monopoly over it. We are all on this journey. Choose your own adventure.
I had to elaborate on that, as dogmatic religions revolt at the thought of self-glorification. They are not wrong through, you do not want to glorify the lower self, or the ego rather. This is a trapping from what we may call enemy forces disembodied.
We are purifying the mind when we take these spiritual journeys. We are letting all falsehoods burn away so only what is real remains. It’s painful because burning hurts, but you either do it, or you decay and rot. Your choice. However, your choice will affect everyone around you, your offspring and the generations after you.
So, choose wisely. ❤️
A few things from the past year. Most cannot be seen because much work is done in shadows, but for what can be seen, I cherish it deeply. I didn’t think I was gonna survive a year ago to be honest.
I prayed to God to make a way out of that situation and to give me the Courage to walk it, because I knew that second part would be harder than the first.
For someone who couldn’t look at themselves in the mirror and was too afraid to walk outside because they lived in so much fear and self-hatred, God pulled up pretty hard and provided both.
First, a dolphin video!
This was my first time EVER seeing wild dolphins, a pod of about 6 or 7 - the most beautiful bottlenose dolphins ever!
Ok frens, Substack is telling me I’m “near email length limit” and since most of you receive these posts via email and not in the app, I gotta stop here. Love you all and I hope you were able to take something from this that adds to your life. XO
Shared pain is one of the best ways to practice our love for others. Amen.
So good and so true. Blessings on you in your recovery from all things evil and toxic in your past life. 🙏
Rise and expand.