Playing My Own God

Hey everyone — checking in early today. I hope you're all holding your heads up high, because we've earned that after where we've been. Today was a testing day, like most days, and I want to say something that might sound strange: I don't mind it anymore. Honestly, I'd take a test every single day if it meant there was never any confusion or conflict about where I stand. That kind of certainty is worth more to me now than the inconvenience is.

That said, the way this brain works isn't always healthy depending on how I handle it. Some days it gets overwhelming fast. In those moments I lean on grounding techniques and try to think a situation all the way through before I react to it — a habit that took me a long time to build and one I still have to choose on purpose, every time.

Today was a good day, though, because I got to see my counselor at my recovery center. I'm in long-term care there, partly because I knew it would look more favorable to the treatment court if I stayed consistent with it, and partly because — honestly — I just like talking to him. It's my second counselor since I started; my first transferred to another center. But this one has made it easy to actually talk about the mental side of addiction recovery, not just check a box and leave. I feel comfortable getting into it with him, because he understands in a way most people don't.

That comfort didn't come naturally to me. In early recovery, I had a hard time being transparent with any counselor, because I grew up with a parent who used to call them “rose-colored glasses hippies.” I'll say it plainly: I think my father is a closed-minded man. I'm grateful I was only around him for a short stretch of my life, but it was enough time to absorb some of that negativity and a few of his character defects. The one thing I will thank him for is my work ethic.

If you break that down, work ethic is really just internal motivation, and for anyone with ADHD or attention issues, motivation matters more than most people realize. When you actually enjoy what you're doing, it stops feeling like work and starts feeling therapeutic. I'll be blunt, though — you can still get overwhelmed. You can still get burnt out. I did that to myself already, back in the winter of 2022 into 2023.

During that stretch, I gave up any free time I had trying to prove I was a good employee, because I was so self-conscious about my criminal charge and how long I'd used drugs. I thought I had something to prove, so I overdid it. I had a real problem saying no. I was a yes-man who didn't know how to protect his own limits, and on top of that, I wasn't doing any actual work on myself. That combination — pushing myself past my limits while neglecting the internal stuff — was a real piece of what led to my relapse through 2023 and into 2024.

Now that I'm clean and sober, I can sit with that and take accountability for it. There's no one else to blame. That's a real part of how I ended up in treatment court. Today I can own the fact that I neglected to change the old behaviors, and that I wasn't listening — not to my recovery center, and not to my own probation officer, who told me flat out that I was overdoing it. I just wanted to play my own god and keep going anyway.

So I'm going to keep doing this every day I can — giving you an honest look into my world, the struggles I'm actually dealing with, the squirrels I chase, and some of the battles from my childhood I still carry around. I've made peace with most of my childhood. I can't go back and change any of it. The only thing I actually have power over is who I choose to be now.

Being self-aware — actually conscious of every action, word, or mistake I make — is a genuinely satisfying thing once you get used to it. And you know what, being an ADHD rock star has its perks too. I'll take that dopamine hit.

I'm going to work on another post for the journal a little later, but tonight I have a celebration meeting at the very first AA meeting location I ever went to. I'll tell that story — what happened that first night and how it actually landed on me — another time. Stay positive, my friends.