“I was the life of every party, and the death of every relationship.”
This is My Recovery.
No Anesthesia.
No MALARKEY.
All love.
🥰
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A lot happened this month, to say the least. Didn’t take many pictures.
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All Hawaii. Didn’t take any other photos this month.
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For years, I thought my relentless dopamine chasing was a personal failure. Weak willpower. Poor discipline. Another addiction story. It turns out it was biology. Genetic testing confirmed what I’d long suspected: my brain is wired with significantly fewer dopamine receptors, making “normal” life feel chronically underpowered. That truth changed everything. Recovery stopped being a moral battle and became a survival strategy—one grounded in science, self-honesty, and compassion. I’m not trying to return to who I was before addiction. I’m building a new normal that actually fits my wiring, one quiet, sustainable dopamine hit at a time.
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I didn’t fix myself—I learned how to drive my bus again. Internal Family Systems gave me a language for what was already happening inside: a system of parts, each trying to protect me the only way it knew how. Addiction, anger, fear, and chaos weren’t personal failures; they were passengers fighting for control because they didn’t trust the driver. IFS taught me how to rebuild trust, regulate my system, and show up sober, present, and grounded. This work helped me stop drinking, walk away from kratom, and transform rage into something useful. For me, IFS isn’t just therapy—it’s a self-love…
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This week, I finally stopped arguing with permanence. Not the things I can change—I know that dance well—but the things I can’t. Chronic conditions. Lifelong diagnoses. Bodies and brains that don’t magically “turn around” if I just try harder. In IFS terms, I hit a trailhead where perfection, fear, shame, and denial were all standing guard. Acceptance isn’t giving up. It’s making peace. Before I can walk forward and live meaningfully with what’s permanent, I have to befriend the parts that are terrified of imperfection and rejection. When those parts feel safe, they don’t block the path anymore—they offer wisdom,…
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One of the cruelest parts of bipolar disorder is never fully trusting good feelings. Is this joy—or the start of hypomania? Is it real, or is it a glitter-bomb that’s about to explode into consequences? Right now, I can see that some recent “good” feelings were actually mild destabilization during a medication change. Not a crisis. Not euphoria. Just enough hypomania to make a mess. Awareness doesn’t erase the frustration, but it gives me a chance to course-correct, repair, and keep moving forward. This is the work: learning to hold joy carefully without letting fear—or denial—run the show.
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On paper, I’m “stable.” My mood is steady. No swings. No spirals. But underneath that stability is a brutal reality: crushed energy, flat dopamine, and relentless akathisia. For years, one side effect quietly dictated my life and drove me to self-medicate with alcohol and kratom just to function. I finally named it for what it was—and chose a different path. This med change isn’t about chasing perfection; it’s about survival. I’ll take a few hard months of transition over another cycle of substance use, crisis, and hospitalization. Stability that destroys your body isn’t stability. It’s a trap.
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