Bruised Fruit 14 - 9 January 2025

Addiction and sobriety are like wounds, scabs, and scars. Apologies for the analogy if you're squeamish. If someone rips off a scab too early, the cut will bleed. It's the same with addiction and sobriety. If someone—the courts, your family, whomever—tries to force an addict to get clean when they're not ready, there will be blood, and it typically won't end well. Now, I don't have any statistics to back this claim. It's known in recovery: we addicts won't get our shit together until we're ready. This is true for the majority of us. You must be ready to get clean, like a scab that falls off naturally, revealing a scar.

That scar is the emotional and physical damage addiction leaves you with. It stays with you for life. It's your history, a constant reminder of where you've been. Feel free to use this analogy for any emotional or physical trauma. Whatever or whoever hurts us impacts us. It changes our perspective on life, as a friend recently said. It helps shape who we become. Over time, the scar may fade, but it never completely disappears. It's always there.

Often, you can't tell a person is an addict just by looking at them. Sure, there's the stereotypical image of a junkie, but most of the time, you don't know. We're surrounded by functioning people with addictions. Alcohol is everywhere. Drugs are everywhere. We are everywhere. And yet, we are nowhere. The stigma attached to addiction is horrendous. I'm not a fan of calling addiction a disease - I feel it's more like smoking cigarettes and being diagnosed with lung cancer. We make choices that dramatically change us - on a cellular level.

For some of us, addiction starts with a gene, inherited like a cruel family heirloom. For others, it begins with a broken bone or a dislocated shoulder, followed by a visit to a medical professional who prescribes hydrocodone or Vicodin. Some folks just experiment and get hooked. For me, it was all of the above: genes, experimentation, and the doctor. My grandfather turned to alcohol as his wife, my grandmother, slowly slipped into dementia. I've heard he was a mean drunk, but I can't attest personally to it. I hurt my shoulder in Vail, Colorado, snowboarding in the backcountry in the late 1990's. I went to a doctor, got prescribed a painkiller, and opened up a Pandora's box that, once opened, can never be closed.

Once I felt that opiate high, it was hard to put it down. Sure, I'd experimented at a young age with weed, heroin, cocaine—all the usuals. But it wasn't until I got my first real taste of a lab-made medication that my addiction truly took hold. No matter how you enter the world of addiction, it scars you and those who love you. It's foolish to think, "I'm only hurting myself," which I was guilty of myself. I wasn't only hurting myself. I torched my relationships and hid in the shadows, watching everything burn. Jumping into addiction is always much easier than climbing out.

The lucky ones are the people who never mess with drugs. I truly believe some have an untapped addiction that never blossomed because they chose not to experiment, not to take pills, and not to tempt fate.

After so many years of drug use, rewired neural pathways, and self-destruction, I stand here as proof that human beings can change. It won't come without repercussions, but it is possible.