The Beginning

Prologue & Forewarning

Most books on addiction end with the main character getting clean. 

I used to think that when I was using I was battling addiction. But the truth is-

My battle didn’t even begin until I got clean. 

Prior to that. It wasn’t much of a fight, it was me just in the fetal position, letting the disease beat the living shit out of me. 

How did I manage to stay clean?

I got here riding the shoulders of giants. 

Thank you to my predecessors who taught me the first rule of boxing:

KEEP YOUR FUCKING HANDS UP

These are my actual diary entries. Very little is edited. Only names have a been changed. 

To be honest reading these old entries fill me with disgust and confusion and sadness. Some of it is just simply bizarre. 

When I was 17, I thought I was an adult and I pretended to be one. I pretended to be a lot of things. At that age I was totally lost. A spoiled brat. A womanizer. A wanna be gangster. Filled with insecurity and fueled by a desire to fit in. 

My mental health was in shambles. Not only did I live with constant suicidal ideations, I also experienced homicidal ideations. For a long time I passed them off as jokes, I just had a dark sense of humor, or so I thought. Therapists have later come to describe it as a dark passenger… At the time I was reading a lot of Tucker Max and idolized Brett Easton Ellis - so much so that I often went to school with a folded copy of American Psycho in my back pocket. I know that a lot of my writing was me simply me trying to emulate the authors I looked up to. 

However, now that I am adult, re-reading some of the things I wrote frighten me and at times cannot believe my own handwriting. When I look through my teenage diaries its filled with heinous things; upside down crosses, swastikas, 666, glorifying Rape and murder, poems about shooting up my school… putting pee in a girl’s drink, ripping my pubes out during class and sprinkling it on the kid’s head in front of me… I have no words. It is a tsunami of What. The. Fuck. 

All I can say is god & the 12 steps has truly changed me. 

I apologize deeply for anyone who is offended by what is in here. I hope this diary brings hope that if someone like me can change then anyone can. I often wondered if releasing my diaries would cause more harm than good. Good forbid a kid reads this and thinks I’m egging them on to commit acts of violence or thinks it would be cool… Please, do not. Get help. Get on meds if you need them. Get in therapy. Find a meeting. Tell people you’re having these thoughts. 

…………

I spent my life wondering what was wrong me.

It wasn’t until I found the 12 steps that I finally was diagnosed. 

If you’re a drug addict. If you feel lost. If you feel like there’s no fucking way you could ever change. If you feel trapped Under Ice. If you feel unwanted. If your only dreams are dying. If you’re stubborn, hard headed, a lying piece of trash. If the sight of your own face in the mirror makes you want to rip it off. If you can’t remember the last time you looked someone in the eyes, let alone yourself. If you drive by semi-trucks wishing they’d crash into you head on. If you’ve hugged more toilet seats than people. If you been baker acted, arrested, humiliated beyond comprehension, over and over and over… I am you and I wrote this for you.