For Those in Recovery: A Reason to Stay

I’ve Been Addicted to Everything But a Reason to Stay 24M

I didn’t drink to party. I drank to vanish.
No matter how bad the withdrawals or the comedowns, I drank.
After nights where my body was still here but my mind was somewhere else entirely, I drank.
Because sometimes it was the only thing that brought me back — or at least made the disconnection easier to survive.

I’ve done it all. Feel Free drinks, tanks in my trunk, pills with names I can’t pronounce. But alcohol? Alcohol was the glue. The background noise. The thing that made everything else possible. And when all the other substances ran out, it was always there—legal, quiet, deadly.

I used to think I was trying to feel good. But now I think I was just trying to feel less.

You ever sit in a room after the high fades and feel like you’re floating three inches above your life? Like your own name doesn’t sound right in your mouth? That’s been my reality since I was seven. Depersonalization. Derealization. Just this constant feeling that I’m watching my life instead of living it.

So yeah, I drank. To land. To crash. To feel something even if it was ugly.

But here’s what I’ve learned after all of it:
If you’re still alive after the way you’ve treated yourself, you’re not broken—you’re resilient. You’re here because some part of you refused to go numb forever. Some part of you still wants to be real again.

This isn’t a success story. Not yet.
It’s a still here story.
It’s a trying again story.
It’s a message in a bottle to anyone who knows what it’s like to stare at your own hands and feel like they don’t belong to you.

If you’re drinking right now, I’m not judging you. I get it.
If you’re trying to stop, I’m with you.
And if you’re just tired—deep soul tired—I see you.

Because I’m tired too.
But I’m still here. And maybe that’s enough for today.