ABOUT ME
Twenty years of addiction. What it actually took to understand why.
My childhood wrote a contract I never got to read. The terms were simple: survive now, pay later. Hypervigilance. Numbness. Rage. Dissociation. All of it kept me alive as a kid. None of it was free. The bill came due in adulthood as panic attacks, broken relationships, and addictions that looked like poor choices from the outside. That's the cruelty of it. The skills that saved me as a child were the same ones dismantling me as an adult.
My brain wasn't built for balance. It was built for survival. I didn't wire my nervous system for peace. I wired it for war.
My recovery started in 2001. What followed was two decades of attempts and relapses. At sixteen I was already coming apart. Cocaine and alcohol were consuming me, and at the same time I was becoming the public face of an Edmonton youth homelessness shelter. Featured in commercials. Plastered on billboards. A public success story covering a private disaster. From eighteen onward I lived split between two realities. By day, semi-functional, channeling raw anxiety into work and climbing parts of the corporate ladder on white-knuckled effort. By night I disappeared into crime, sex, drugs, and reckless chaos. Chaos wasn't just familiar. It was the only home I knew. The more of it I found, the more it confirmed everything already written about me.
By my late thirties, after countless attempts and interventions, I was quietly meeting all eleven DSM-5 criteria for Substance Use Disorder. Truthfully, I had been for years. When I did manage sobriety, it often felt worse than using, and I took that as proof I was broken beyond repair. What I didn't understand yet was that the trauma underneath had never been touched. Alcohol had become my outsourced nervous system, delivering the only moments of peace available to a brain wired for war. My addiction wasn't a moral failing. It was survival gone sideways.
Early treatment had convinced me sobriety would fix everything. It didn't. After nearly a year clean I looked fine on paper. Stable job. Bills paid. Relationships repaired. Inside I was coming apart at the seams. The anxiety was relentless and invisible. I hid panic attacks behind locked bathroom doors. I avoided people because even the smallest interaction could derail an entire day. I remember standing on train platforms for an hour or more, watching packed car after packed car slide past, because stepping into a crowded train felt worse to me than dying. Every day was survival in slow motion. Fight-or-flight running constantly behind a calm face. I didn't understand what was happening to me. I only knew one thing with certainty: sobriety isn't the same as peace.
Sobriety ≠ Peace
The turning point came during my final stay in a concurrent-disorders program in Southern Alberta. It wasn't my first rehab. It was the first time I stopped running from my childhood and turned to face it. The process was painful in ways I hadn't anticipated. It also cracked something open. Vulnerability. Insight. And for the first time in longer than I could remember, a hope that didn't feel like a lie.
If you've lived through trauma and still feel its weight, hear this. Your addiction isn't evidence of defect. It's evidence of survival.
Recovery shouldn't ask, “What's wrong with you?” It should help you see where in your story things went wrong. Not to excuse the past. To make sense of how you got here.
That shift in perspective can save lives. It saved mine.
The most validating information I've ever found, I had to uncover on my own. Nobody taught me how adverse childhood experiences, toxic stress, and early attachment shape behaviour, coping, and identity. Most of what I know now never came up in treatment. And the most dangerous trauma is the kind that hides in plain sight, unnoticed by patients and clinicians alike.
This isn't a missing piece. It's a massive void in most recovery models. When treatment focuses only on abstinence or surface behaviour without addressing the root, relapse doesn't become more likely. It becomes predictable. And while my story may sound heavy, it isn't rare. I've sat with people whose pain ran even deeper. Some of them aren't here anymore. Many others are barely holding on.
Youth Emergency Shelter Train Station Ad. (circa early 2000's)
You are the reason this site exists.
I built this as a survivor, for survivors. I spent years looking for something real. Not a pamphlet. Not a hotline script. Not someone telling me to stay sober and think positive. If you're here for yourself, or for someone you love, you already know that wasn't enough.
What you'll find here is what I wished existed. Honest research. Real context. Tools that connect to the life you're actually living. How trauma reshapes the brain. Which approaches create lasting change. How to rebuild a sense of self that isn't built on shame.
If you're done with surface-level answers, this is where we start.
I'm not here to preach, and I'm certainly not here to judge. Nor will I make empty promises that if you do what I did, you'll get what I got.
I built this site by exposing the ugliest parts of myself and tying them to the science — to help you see why you make sense, and where to go from here.
Plain language. No mystique. Here's exactly what this site is — and what it isn't.
I am not a medical doctor. Everything here is offered for education and context — drawn from research and lived experience — to help you understand patterns, language, and options. It's not a diagnosis, treatment plan, or a substitute for professional advice. Always consult your clinician or care team before making medical or mental health decisions.
I do all of my own studying, writing, and research. AI is used as an editor — to help refine language, grammar, and structure — not as a source of ideas or conclusions.
This site exists to share context, not prescriptions. I combine evidence-based research with lived experience to make recovery language more accessible — but no website replaces professional care.
Any mistakes are my mistakes. If you spot an error, unclear phrasing, or a missing citation — especially around Alberta-specific resources — please reach out. This is a community-built project, and it grows stronger when readers contribute clarity and lived insight.
By using this site you agree that all content is informational and not medical advice. You remain responsible for your own decisions and for consulting qualified professionals.