The Things I Can't Change
Before we get started, there are a few things I want you to know:
For some reason, I have an easier time opening up to people on the internet than I do with my closest friends and family. Maybe it’s because writing comes more naturally to me, and I mostly publish my writings to an open audience on the internet. I write to you, the ambiguous reader, not to any one specific person.
No person on Earth holds a lower opinion of me than I do. Your opinion of me may change after reading this; it might not. It might reinforce your previously held beliefs or completely shatter the illusion of who you think I am. If you want your opinions, likes, dislikes — however you feel about me, to stay the same, then please stop reading here, go for a walk, and I’ll see you around.
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please visit https://findtreatment.gov/ or call the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Preface
I still don’t know why I’m writing this. I think it’s because I want to come clean about mistakes that I’ve made, or to let people know what I’ve been through these last few years. Lately, I’ve had a hard time opening up and connecting with people. The outer shell of my personality has hardened, creating an almost impenetrable casing, which I've grown to be quite comfortable in. I cared far too long about what people thought of me, but now it seems I’ve overcorrected and tend to ignore or reject people entirely. At each attempt to share my story, I stop myself short, fearing letting anyone's perception of me affect me in any way. I want to be able to stand on my own, be my own person, and not let the perception of others influence how I feel about myself.
I would like to share this story because I am a deeply flawed but very real person. In a time when authenticity is more of a branding statement than an actual act of being genuine, I think it's more important than ever to share my experience. I've been working on this for many years — by this, I mean many things; my writing, my mind, my body. For 4 years, I've experienced a daily urge to publish this piece, confess my biggest secret, reflect on the experiences, and celebrate how far up this impossibly high mountain I have climbed. There are many ways I could tell this story, apart from releasing a Netflix stand-up comedy special, but only because John Mulaney beat me to it. This story is not a means of seeking pity, validation, or forgiveness. It is whatever it is, I suppose.
Then
The last bit of writing I shared was in November 2022, a sloppy pile of word vomit that was partly a confession but mostly a cry for help. I wrote it as an attempt to make sense of anything from the previous 3 years of my life. I wrote and published the entire thing while on my 4th consecutive day of being awake, powered by 100+ grams of Adderall and unquantifiable amounts of caffeine. I had recently finished Matthew Perry’s book and found myself truly repulsed by how much I related to his struggles with addiction and tales of regret. Reading that book felt like taking necessary medicine, forcing me to take a good, hard look in the mirror and look inward. I had to decide if who I had become was who I wanted to continue to be, which, unfortunately, was barely even a person at all. I allowed myself to be swept up by the artificial highs of Adderall, cocaine, caffeine — any stimulant that would kick-start my brain into warp speed so I could outrun my problems and, ultimately, reality. Everything I enjoyed in my life was completely fabricated.
My struggle with drug abuse goes as far back as 2016, but my struggle with addiction extends farther back into childhood. Junk food was my first true vice. I have memories that I can now clearly identify as signs of addictive behavior. I would start off with just one Twinkie, then suddenly go back for another, and another, until I had 5 in a row and felt the queasiness of a sugar overdose starting to settle in. I used to save up money, pocketfuls of spare change, so I could walk down to the single gas station in town to buy handfuls of candy and junk food. Then I would retreat to my bedroom to be awash with a feeling of the only acceptable high I could get as a 7-year-old. I could eat cereal for all three meals and as a snack in between. My top-shelf metabolism saved me from the short-term effects of poor eating habits, but there are long-lasting effects that I'm still trying to unlearn to this day, like not eating out of boredom and consuming less processed foods. These habits were formed early and are life-long, and trying to break them has become a true challenge I still haven't overcome after years of trying and failing. Decades later, those habits would transform and manifest in new ways. Like so many others, I developed an addiction to being on my phone. I started smoking cigarettes in college. Before I knew it, I was entering my 20s as a casual addict to junk food, cigarettes, coffee, social media, and, soon to be, cocaine and adderall.
There is an entire period of my life that's uncomfortable to talk about, a part of my life in which it felt like my conscience separated from my body and handed control over to a faceless stranger. I never felt like I had a problem with drugs or alcohol, which was categorically untrue. I thought that because I rarely ever drank or smoked alone, I was outside the definition of an addict, but addiction exists on a spectrum. Though I didn’t drink alone, when I drank socially, it would almost always end with me getting blackout drunk, or at least drunk enough to let the decision-making part of my mind take a back seat. But then, on a random night in 2016, I tried adderall for the first time, and it felt like my brain had taken off on a rocket into outer space. I absolutely loved it and could not get enough. It felt like, for the first time in my life, I was gifted the ability of absolute, unbreakable focus. It gave me confidence I had never had, a sharp, fixated, and determined attitude that made me feel invincible. It also made me completely miserable. Once the effects had worn off, I would come crashing back to earth. Soon it would take more and more to get me out of the atmosphere, until suddenly, I couldn’t even get off the ground. This video encapsulates the experience.
I would find myself getting on and off this ride for nearly 6 years. It never felt like a problem until 2019, when I was going through an exceptionally tough time. Rather than do the hard thing and deal with my emotions, I instead chose to tune out all the noise by scrambling the frequencies of my mind. The year was a slow, quiet regression of my soul. I hated and questioned everything about my life: Who I was, how I felt, but did absolutely nothing to fix it. My entire life was completely unstable, and I struggled to keep things on an even keel. I started to rely solely on getting high as a means of artificial happiness, my only reason for getting out of bed in the morning. Nothing about my life made me happy; I was absolutely miserable and unsure of anything. By the end of the year, I would end up selling off most of my things and throw away my freelance career, all so I could focus on trying to escape.
I had gotten pretty good at hiding my drug use, but in 2020, my secret was out to some. I was forced to leave my apartment and move home so I could get back on my feet. Three weeks later, the world was ordered to shut down, so I chose to isolate myself from everyone and everything. I thought it would be an opportunity to reset, to get my shit together and figure out who I was and what the hell I was going to do with my life. At first, things were going okay. I had gotten a job at Amazon as a means of both staying busy and having income during the early days of the pandemic. It was the strangest time of my life, by far. I talked to hardly anyone. I was an “essential worker”, making sure that people got their puzzles and toilet paper properly delivered, all the while the pandemic was raging on. Within a few months, it felt like I was starting to get back to normal, or whatever normal was at the time. I started to eat better, exercise daily, and run for the first time in ages. My body and mind started to feel better. It would be short-lived, though, as I quickly found an out. I don’t even remember how everything transpired. The next thing I know, I’m going out to Washington, DC, to meet someone I’ve never met before. What I thought was a one-time, impulsive act of adventure soon became frequent visits. I felt happier and happier, inspired to quit my job, and to try to make money by freelancing again. I gave myself a false sense of confidence, thinking that because I was relatively stable, I could take a giant leap.
By mid-summer, I was using drugs again. I told myself it was a means to work harder to try to freelance and figure out the next steps. Soon enough, I was back to old habits, finding myself lying awake in the middle of the night, strung out, unable to sleep, wishing that I could escape the hellish vortex that I’d put myself in once again. Before I knew it, the artificial confidence carried me all the way to Washington, DC. I thought I was entering the next phase of my life, starting fresh in a new city. In hindsight, it was mostly just another means of escape. I was so determined to be anything but myself, so much so that I fabricated a brand-new life that I was convinced was the one I’d always dreamt of. On a positive note, when I moved to DC, I managed to avoid using adderall simply because I had no connections or means of obtaining it. Unfortunately, over the winter, I would sink deeper and deeper into solitude, losing momentum, and the extremities of being stuck inside nearly every day were starting to take a toll on my mental health.
In January 2021, I started a job with a healthcare provider as a Digital Asset Manager, which was a role I was excellent at and surprisingly loved to do. I was also working part-time at the Leica store, hoping to save up enough money to buy a camera and some lenses that I’d been lusting after for years. After working 70 hours a week for 6 months, I finally bought an M10-P and 2 lenses, and quit my job at the Leica store so I could free up some time to actually go out and take some photos. I wasn’t freelancing or doing much creatively, so I was hoping the new gear would help motivate me to go out and practice the art of street photography. I was set up for success: a beautiful Leica camera, a steady job, all while living in a place I’d hope would inspire me to make strides in great improvements in my life. There were goals I set to meet. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t meet any of them because in June, I’d purchased adderall for the first time in months and immediately fell into a downward spiral, arguably worse than ever. I found out that sitting on a computer and letting my brain run wild on adderall would become one of my favorite activities, ever. I was starting to teach myself how to code, and the adderall was helping me learn things at a rapid pace. For hours straight in front of the computer, I would do my job and learn to code. Before long, it was all I wanted to do. I had no interest in going outside, no interest in doing photography, nothing much of anything, really.
During the pandemic, telehealth medicine was really taking off, and I schemed my way into getting an adderall prescription. It was all downhill from there. My routine involved consuming my entire prescription within a week or two, then counting down the days until I could get more. This cycle repeated for months. I had gained a tremendous amount of weight over the year, being inside so much, satisfying my addictions through food when I didn’t have adderall, and soon I felt unrecognizable in the mirror. So much so that I was embarrassed to be seen by anyone and developed a minor sense of scopophobia. I was afraid of people judging me by my weight and unsightly appearance, which was only intensified by the drug use. My anxiety had also become so unmanageable that I couldn’t stand to be in large crowds for extended periods. It was not a good time. It would all come to a head in the Fall, when I chose to sell all the gear I had just purchased. I told myself I wasn’t using it, that I wasn’t a photographer anymore, that all I wanted to do was to turn off my brain and take copious amounts of drugs. I was becoming perfectly numb.
6 months later, I was being kicked out of the house I was renting with my partner at the time, and for good reason. I was a shell of a person, and I had become so paranoid and anxiety-ridden that I wanted to do absolutely nothing but stare at screens all day. I was not living in reality. And so, I had to leave. I packed up all of my things, said goodbye to the dog I had loved dearly, and headed back home to, once again, get my life back together. This time was different. This time, nobody knew about what I was going through. I had managed to hide my addictions better than ever, or so I thought. I moved home and continued the cycle of not doing anything but taking drugs and sitting on the computer. I was devolving into a robotic state of being. In November 2022, I was heavily considering whether I wanted to continue living. I spent many nights alone, lying awake at 5 am, debating the pros and cons of living. I knew if I kept doing what I was doing, that I might die soon. I thought about all of my friends, family, and now the 3-month-old puppy sleeping on my chest. I thought about how I had failed everyone and might continue to do so. But I also thought that maybe I could turn it around, that maybe I could at least be around for my puppy a little while. So I made a promise to quit, once and for all, so I could be there for her.
In January 2023, I moved in with one of my best friends, back to Toledo. I had been 30 days clean from adderall, and was determined to make a change. I started going on long walks, and I went on a run for the first time in ages. On a cold January morning, I went on a run that would ultimately change the trajectory of my life. I ran one lousy mile at a slower pace than normal, and by the end, I was coughing so much that it felt like my lungs were bleeding. I knew at that moment that if I didn’t start treating my body right, someday I might not ever be able to reverse the damage. It was the first time I felt genuinely scared for my health when I realized that I had slowly let my once able body decay into something that might take years to reverse. I made it my mission to really get my shit together, to truly become this healthy person I’d always wanted to be. I took things day by day, mile by mile. I tried to spend my time being occupied as much as possible. For a few months, I was in a depressive state, trying to both understand and come to terms with what I had gone through during the last few years. I felt a tremendous sense of guilt and remorse. In March, I spent a week house-sitting for a family friend. It was the first time I’d been alone in months, and I was so scared of being alone with my thoughts that I caved and bought adderall for the time I was there. It was yet again another dance with the devil, and I spent 3 days without sleeping, feeling the immense guilt of failure once again. A few weeks later, I bought more to have what would hopefully be my very last dance.
Now
The last time I had adderall was April 25th, 2023. I had no intention of making a hard cutoff date; it just sort of happened. A few weeks later, I made another attempt at quitting smoking, fueled entirely by spite. Drinking coffee, working at my desk, having a greasy meal, passively watching television — all things that were once accompanied by nicotine were now center stage for a battle of sheer willpower. The first day was the most difficult, but soon a week had passed, then two, then a month, and once I crossed a certain threshold, smoking soon felt like a foreign concept, and I told myself I’d never go back. If I caved and had a cigarette while drinking, within minutes, I felt so ungodly terrible that it would only reinforce my desire to quit permanently. The secret to my success was to occupy my time as much as possible, and I attribute a majority of my success to riding a bike. I started by borrowing my step-dad’s old bike to start riding around each day for a few miles here and there, sometimes twice a day. Soon enough, I was feeling so good from riding a bike that I started to explore other healthy opportunities. I subscribed to Apple Fitness+ so I could do yoga, HIIT, and pilates from the comfort of my living room. I went for a bike ride with my friend Greg, who showed me the magic of riding a road bike, so I bought one. I started working out at the beginning of each day to set myself up for success; If I started on a healthy and positive note, I hoped it would carry me throughout the day. I spent my entire summer focused on nothing but trying to be as healthy as I could be, mostly. I was doing well with moving my body, but I was also starting to eat more than I should.
I’ve come to learn that addiction can grow and evolve in new ways. Even though I was winning the fight with drugs and smoking, I soon found that snacking had replaced smoking as my boredom killer, and impulsive purchases were now flooding my brain with dopamine. As Autumn arrived with the cold air, my time spent outdoors trying to fight off my demons was cut dramatically. I grew to love cycling, and I was devastated when the weather prevented me from spending hours at a time outside. I tried walking and running more, but it just wasn’t the same. My eating started to get out of control, my appetite reaching levels unseen before, and my self-control was nearly non-existent. In the span of a few months, I’d ballooned to almost 200lbs, a weight I once thought impossible for me to reach. I was confused, frustrated, and self-conscious. I had trouble with feeling overweight before, and that was nearly 30 pounds prior to this. I had mostly been a scrawny, skinny-fat person my whole life, and the dramatic gain in weight had my self-confidence down to a new low. I hated pictures of myself. I tried buying new clothes to make me feel more comfortable, but the clothes weren’t the issue. For a while, I tried to simply ignore how I felt and tried to numb the feelings with even more shopping and eating. It’s both funny and frustrating how vicious the cycle can be. I feel like all the progress I’d made was for nothing, like I had to start all over again. So, I did.
2024 was a year of learning about diet, exercise, and addiction. I’ve watched countless YouTube videos, read quite a few great books, and mulled over these subjects religiously over the last couple of years. All of it boils down to a few key principles:
Eat more whole foods, and less than your daily caloric expenditure.
Lift weights to work and build muscle.
Do cardio to help your heart.
There is no perfect science, method, or strategy; there is only consistency. Doing those things on a routine basis every single day is the key. It doesn’t really matter what type of diet; just eat less. It doesn’t matter what type of cardio; just get that heart rate up a little. The only thing that matters is that you show up every single day. I applied those principles to my life for two years, and I would say I’m in the best position I’ve ever been in. I’m not saying I’m perfect, I still struggle with impulsive behaviors, the occasional food binge, but I wake up every morning knowing that as long as I continue to keep up the good fight, I’ll be just fine. That mentality helped me lose 50lbs, helped me run my first half-marathon, helped me crawl out of debt and bad credit, and continues to help me in many facets of my life. There is one last thing that has been absolutely essential in my fight against my addictions: controlling my environment. I had to dramatically change my lifestyle in order to take away any opportunities or potential for me to engage in bad habits. I cut myself off from a lot of people, activities, places, and anything that could be a potential trigger to engage in my old addictions. Your environment is a key factor in shaping who you are, and if you’re able to use it to your advantage, it can play a key role in your success.
I have been quietly working on myself in the background, hoping to instill a sense of confidence and stability that has been lacking throughout my life. I’ve been waiting to slowly come out of my own little cocoon, ready to emerge transformed and anew. I have started, deleted, written, and rewritten this piece hundreds of times over the last 5 years. Every time I wanted to share it, it never felt like the right time. I thought maybe in 2023, when I first started to rebuild my life, then maybe in 2024, at my one-year anniversary of abstaining from drugs. Then I thought maybe after my half-marathon. I signed up to run my first full marathon, which will take place on the 3-year anniversary, so maybe then? Maybe today? There’s a great quote in the book Steal Like an Artist that goes.
If I’d waited to know who I was or what I was about before I started “being creative”, well, I’d still be sitting around trying to figure myself out instead of making things. In my experience, it’s in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we really are.
This, I feel, rings true in all aspects of life. If I had waited for the right moment to start taking care of myself, maybe I never would have. If I wait for the perfect moment to publish this piece, maybe I never will. The only time is now. Now, I wake up every day and continue my love of running and taking care of myself. I bought a camera again, started playing music, and found joy in making things and being creative. After many years of seeing a stranger, today I look in the mirror and see a familiar face, one that perhaps looks a bit more tired and worn, but happy nonetheless.