SUBSTANCES WILL NOT SAVE YOU
Before we dive in, I just want to let you know… this is not a story about addiction. This is not a memoir about how I hit rock bottom. Full disclosure: I am not sober. I will still enjoy a glass of wine at dinner, a joint on the couch, or a microdose of medicinal mushrooms on a hike. However, I will go weeks and months without touching any type of substance and for that I feel truly proud of.
There was a time in my life when I could not say the same for myself. I was never physically addicted to alcohol or marijuana. I didn’t “need it” to get by every day. I was addicted to the escape. As a child, I was extremely sensitive. Even then, I could sense if someone’s energy towards me changed. I cried a lot and often felt what now I can identify as anxiety and depression. And for this, I was frequently scolded. The first time I was intoxicated, I was 12 years old. Two years later, I started smoking weed and ever since then I found two beautiful substances that allowed me not to feel.
I pushed through high school, college, and my twenties not giving a fuck about any thing. Relationships, rumors, trauma, and friends came and went. Instead of dealing with it, I numbed and I will be totally honest with you, it was a lot fucking easier than feeling my internal pain. Throughout those years, I dabbled in a few other substances, those of which I am not comfortable sharing, but each time it helped me to suppress my feelings more and more.
It wasn’t until I was a month into my thirties that I finally admitted to myself that I used substances to contain my emotions. I was a little over a year single and heavy into my spiritual work, but I knew there was one more thing I needed to do to evolve further into the person I wanted to be. I needed to give up smoking weed every day. I needed to stop drinking to get intoxicated. I needed to stop using both substances when I wanted to cover up what I was feeling on the inside.
I will never forget the day; I was walking Brody (my dog) down the street in Rockledge (where I was living at the time) listening to a Ram Dass seminar. A week prior, a friend of mine reached out to me and told me something devastating had happened to them. This had me shook because I felt like what had happened was my fault. So I am walking down the street, thinking about my friend, stoned, feeling sorry for myself and all of the sudden I stop and say to myself, “I use weed and alcohol to numb my feelings.”
Prior to this, I had been through and witnessed a lot of wild shit in my thirty years of life, but for some reason this one simple moment was the most life changing. After that day, I quit drinking for two months. I didn’t go out with friends and I didn’t really see family. I sat in my little apartment on Huntingdon Pike and dove deep into my inner work.
If you made it this far (lol) I say all of this to you because during this inner work, I truly began to feel. And I will tell you; feeling is fucking hard, but if you want to level up in life, feeling is necessary. You have to stop making excuses. You have to stop telling yourself that it's okay because society says it's okay. If you are still drowning yourself in alcohol on the weekends and telling yourself it's okay because you only do it on the weekends, you will not level up. If you smoke weed from the minute you wake up until the minute you go to bed, you will not level up. It is a hard pill to swallow and if you are triggered right now GOOD. Because Bree three years ago would be so fucking triggered right now.
Yes, I know there are many medicinal benefits to some substances that are scientifically proven to truly help people. However, if you are a healthy adult without cancer, autoimmune disease, or mental illness, there is no need to overdo a substance each and every day. You are avoiding the beautiful world that is standing in front of you; a world that you will never have a chance to get back.
I don’t believe enough people talk about this. We hear the typical substance abuse stories of people doing fentanyl or heroin, but we never talk about the substance abuse that is labeled as a societal norm. Let’s face it, blacking out on the weekends is considered a societal norm. I hope some of you made it to the end. I hope this resonates for at least one of you who made it here. Redefining my relationship with substances completely changed my life.
