Drugs Were an Off Switch I Could Operate

I began my journey of sobriety 32 years ago today the 25th of April 1993.

It started by abstaining from the pills the thrills the bellyaches , the powders and parties. I keep maryjane as a lover , a friend always there . Deluded myself by telling myself the herb , the natural plant was a safe way to hide . This year I will be 19 sober from all mind altering substances .

There’s a truth I’ve come to understand over the years, and it’s not always easy to say out loud,Drugs were never really about the high.

They were about control.

For a long time, I carried trauma like an invisible weight on my back always there, always pulling. I didn’t have the tools to lift it, name it, or even understand it. What I did have was a switch. A way to turn it all off.

That switch came in the form of substances drugs, alcohol, distractions that numbed the edges and dulled the ache. They gave me something trauma never did they gave me predictability. Relief. A moment where I could finally breathe without the noise in my head shouting over me.

In many ways, it was survival. My nervous system had been stuck in overdrive for so long that any way to regulate it even chemically felt like salvation. It wasn’t about rebellion or escape. It was about trying to manage the unmanageable. Trying to soothe the parts of me that were screaming for help.

But here’s the thing about that kind of relief it’s always rented. It never lasts. And eventually, the trauma doesn’t just return… it brings friends. Shame. Isolation. Disconnection from the very things I needed to heal.

It took time, support, and an honest reckoning to learn there were other ways to feel safe. Other ways to come back to myself. I had to find new tools, tools rooted in truth, connection, and compassion. Tools that didn’t require me to disappear.

And now, looking back, I don’t see my past as a failure or weakness. I see it as a chapter in my story one where I did the best I could with what I had. And maybe, just maybe, that’s where healing begins not in perfection, but in compassion for the parts of ourselves that were just trying to survive.

So if you’ve ever felt like you needed an “off switch” to get through the day.

You’re not broken.

You’re human.

There is another way forward, a passage of remembering , not recovering but uncovering the self before the fall .