september, october, november of ’24 — the hardest months

let’s flash back to a little over a year ago. that was the season everything inside me cracked open. the season my addiction sank its claws in deep. i wish i could tell you there was a single moment that started it, a clear memory i could point to, but there isn’t. what i do remember is this: it began with a script. then another. then another. until i was drowning in bottles.

it wasn’t just pain medication. it was a cocktail—muscle relaxers, anxiety meds, mood stabilizers, pain meds. a pharmacy’s worth of escape. at first, i did everything right. i took the pills the way the doctors told me to. i told myself i was managing, surviving, coping.

but underneath that surface, i was unraveling. months of fighting for our daughter’s needs. emotional landmines as my girlfriend battled the ache of my ex-wife becoming tangled back into my heart. workman’s comp evaluations looming over me like a storm that never broke. i was stretched so thin i couldn’t feel myself anymore.

and then, somewhere in that chaos, i slipped. not all at once—more like a slow slide into a dark room where the door quietly shuts behind you.

for three months, i lived in that room.

my addiction wasn’t subtle. it took me by the throat. what started as help became hunger. and the worst part? i didn’t care. i knew the combinations i was taking could kill me. i knew the danger. i just didn’t care. that numb, hollow apathy is a kind of death long before your heart stops beating.

i wasn’t alone. but addiction makes even a full room feel empty. i had a friend stand at the foot of my bed, voice shaking, begging me to see myself. begging me to see what i was doing. she was crying, and i remember looking at her like i was underwater, like her voice couldn’t reach me.

my ex-wife knew too. i had texted her everything i couldn’t say out loud—my fear, my spiral, my loss of control. one day, when she was at my home, i asked her to help me get rid of my pills. i knew i didn’t have the strength to do it alone. she said yes. we sat together on the bed mixing them, smashing them, drowning them in chemicals. it was violent and necessary. when we were done, i felt weightless, like maybe i could breathe again.

that feeling didn’t last.

withdrawals hit before the sun went down. by night, i was crumpled in the fetal position, my wife on one side, my girlfriend on the other, both of them trying to hold together what my body was tearing apart. i cried until my throat burned. my muscles spasmed. my bones felt like they were splintering. chills, my body trying to vomit, tremors, agony—my body waged war against the very thing i thought was helping me survive.

for three days, i shook. three days of hell. three days where time didn’t feel real.

my tribe didn’t leave me. i pulled inward, and they stayed. they sat in my silence. they held me through the shaking. they watched my pain with the kind of helplessness that breaks people. they loved me anyway.

when the worst of the physical battle passed, the emotional truth settled in with its own kind of violence.

i had spent eighteen years in healthcare. lima-certified. medication manager. the one who always knew what to do, how to help, how to guide. and there i was—unable to trust myself with my own prescriptions.

i had to sit my wife and girlfriend down and tell them everything. i had to admit that we needed a lockbox. that i couldn’t be trusted around my meds. that access meant danger. i had to confess how manipulative i could become, how the addiction twisted my voice, my intentions, my instincts. that i could push and pressure and charm just to get more, and not even care about the cost in those moments.

saying those words felt like peeling my skin off. i saw the hurt on their faces. not disappointment—grief. grief for me. grief for us. grief for the way addiction had hollowed me out so quickly.

i apologized. i meant it. i tried to rebuild what i broke, even though i knew some pieces would never fit the same again.

growing up, i always heard about addiction—other people’s stories, other people’s battles. i never understood the depth, the darkness, the slow erosion of self until i lived it. now i do. and i’m grateful—deeply, fiercely—for every person who stayed with me through those brutal months.

today, my pain management is careful. intentional. supervised. and i no longer carry the shame of that—I carry the wisdom of surviving it.

that’s the thing about addiction. it doesn’t just break you. it teaches you how to rebuild.

recovery is choosing yourself when the part of you that wants to disappear is still whispering. it’s waking up in the rubble and deciding to stand anyway. it’s the slow return of warmth to places inside you that went cold. it’s giving yourself grace, even on the days you shake. i am still here. still rising. still blooming toward the kind of life i almost didn’t stay for.

with ink & bloom, 🌻