Being young and sober can feel like standing outside in the rain while everyone else is partying inside. You scroll your feed and see drinks, pills, blurry nights. You hear
You didn’t plan for this. Your child is in crisis, and nothing seems to help. Maybe their behavior has become frightening—violent outbursts, reckless choices, nights where they don’t come home.
I didn’t know I was carrying trauma—I just knew I couldn’t breathe. There wasn’t one major event. Just a thousand quiet moments where my body felt tight, my mind raced,
You don’t have to hit rock bottom to feel the distance growing. For many high-functioning adults—parents, professionals, caretakers—opioid addiction doesn’t crash in like a hurricane. It seeps in like fog.
I didn’t hit rock bottom the way movies or headlines say you’re supposed to. No dramatic overdose. No jail time. No final straw that everyone could point to and say,
When you’re newly sober, the hardest part often isn’t saying no to the substance—it’s sitting with everything that comes roaring in when the noise fades. Grief you didn’t expect. Loneliness
I want to say something right off the bat that might feel impossible to believe: You didn’t choose this. I know, I know. Maybe you’re thinking, “But I said yes
When a young adult enters a residential treatment program, it can feel like everything is up in the air—for them and for you. You might feel anxious, hopeful, helpless, or
There was a time when healing felt like erasure—like in order to get better, I had to become someone else entirely. Someone duller. Flatter. Less me. But EMDR didn’t erase
Loving Someone Through Addiction When you love someone who is actively using, the relationship can feel like a tug-of-war between memory and reality. You remember the laughter, the promises, the
Life After Residential Treatment Is Messy Nobody warned me how strange the silence would feel after leaving treatment. Inside a Residential Treatment Program in Cincinnati, my days were mapped out:
When Sobriety Feels Like a Social Exile If you’re young and sober, you already know the sting of being the “weird one.” Your friends are out at bars, laughing over
