ADDICTION: THE UNSPOKEN TRUTH

ADDICTION: THE UNSPOKEN TRUTH

I’ve lost two little brothers to overdose.

Fentanyl. Opiates. Addiction.

I spent a lot of my life trying to help them, understand them, save them — while struggling with my own addictions at the same time.

I have been an addict since childhood. Not because I was broken, but because addiction was what I was taught — by adults, by institutions, by society itself.

It started with being taught to live unnaturally.

Succeed.

Go to college.

Start a business.

Have a family.

Do what you’re told and call it fulfillment.

Early on, I realized something was wrong with that path. It didn’t fit reality. It didn’t fit human nature. But instead of being encouraged to question it, I was taught to suppress those realizations.

Alcohol was the first obvious suppression tool. It was everywhere. It’s what the adults around me used to dull their own realizations. Then marijuana — not because it was better, but because it became available, accepted, even promoted as a healthier escape.

Then came the diagnoses.

Depression — a natural response to living an unnatural and unachievable life.

ADHD — a reaction to being trapped in an education system with no substance, no meaning, no engagement.

Anger — the result of understanding things clearly while being told I was stupid for not conforming.

Therapy followed, and the blame was placed squarely on me. Prescription drugs came next — drugs no child or human should be on — not to heal, but to enforce conformity.

That led to cocaine and other street drugs, because that’s how people around me coped with the same realizations, disbeliefs, and loss of natural instincts and autonomy.

It became a cycle that lasted decades:

Realization.

Suppression.

Alcohol.

Marijuana.

Therapy-induced coping.

Prescription drugs.

Failure of obvious outcomes.

More realization.

More suppression.

Over and over.

It wasn’t until I walked away from all of it — in search of a better way to exist — that I was able to strip these addictions out of my life.

That matters, because what I’m about to say doesn’t come from theory, textbooks, or treatment pamphlets.

It comes from watching people I love suffer.

From failing repeatedly.

From sitting with grief that doesn’t resolve cleanly.

From slowly realizing that the way we talk about addiction misses something fundamental.

This isn’t a clean story.

It’s a real one.