Normalizing The Humanity In The Human Journey

It took three trips to an inpatient psychiatric unit, two trips to drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities, and an epiphany that I’d desperately needed for 27 years for me to find my purpose in life — but I found it…

…and nothing’s been quite the same ever since.

I’ve lived and battled with PTSD, Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder (with panic attacks) — and a little bit of ADHD to top it all off — for thirty years, now. For 27 of those years, I did everything I could to avoid confronting or treating those mental health disorders, with my weapon of choice tending to come in the form of mind-altering substances. Alcohol was my substance of choice to abuse up until fourteen years of lifting weights with more focus and intensity than Daniel Day-Lewis wielding a Sony A9 Mark II finally caught up with me.

After my initial back surgery, a discectomy, only intensified (from a 7 to a 9) and increased the frequency (from my back going out once a month to my back just existing in that “out” state) of the pain, oxycodone became my crutch — though, I still managed to have a drink or two in social situations. Needless to say, overtaking my medicine and going through opioid withdrawal regularly didn’t do my mental health a whole lot of good.

The suicidal ideations I’d chased away with iron and booze for the better part of three decades were becoming constant — hence, the stays in the psychiatric ward of a local hospital.

I jumped through perilous and life-threatening hoop after hoop just to avoid confronting my mental health.

Not because of how hard it would be.

Not because I didn’t believe that I had any mental health “issues,” either.

I was hiding, masking, and self-medicating for no other reason than shame.

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