A Victim of My Own Evolution

Bad habits have followed me from the cradle. Staying up late. Eating out of boredom. Procrastination. Overthinking. Tedious bullshit that doesn’t warrant an immediate cry for help, but nonetheless has the potential to become ground zero for things of a more sinister nature if left unchecked.

Procrastination becomes self-sabotage. Overthinking leads to paranoia, which evolves into a bad temper. Staying up late starts off as an act of rebellion until acclimating to life in the dark. A nocturnal animal who only functions during the witching hours. Eating out of boredom—like a fat kid who loves cake—spawns machinations of getting high out of boredom, like a junkie who loves dope.

That last one is the devil making noise in my head today: addiction. The plague itself. As far as trending topics go, you couldn't find a deader horse to beat. And speaking of another dead horse, this all goes back to the shooting I survived three years ago. The elephant in the room that'll always be by my side.

I've got this peculiar psychological imbalance in the way I respond to turmoil. Words do damage. Actions hit hard. But sticks and stones can never hurt me. I react to trauma and violence with the nonchalance of a man who just had a couple of rough days at work. Emotional fallout, though? That's left me with one foot in the coffin for months.

That's no exaggeration. I've honestly had a harder time getting over being cheated on by my ex than I did getting the right side of my head blown off by a friend I thought I could trust. Or at least that's how it seemed on the surface.

But that's where it gets tricky. Against every odd, and to the bewilderment of me, my family, and my friends, the first two years after getting shot included some of the greatest experiences of my life. My priorities shifted. Life was no longer about fast money. For once, I chased real goals.

Working on my book. Spending hours alone sharpening my creative skills the way Jordan practiced his jump shot. Learning the stock market instead of hustling. Podcasts. Book readings. Documentary interviews. Acting gigs. Doesn't exactly fit the script for a man on a collision course. Or does it?

A friend once told me, "It's not like there's a handbook for how you're supposed to act after getting shot in the head. But goddamn, Al... if there were, I don't think it'd say anything about flying to Vegas for a bachelor party after leaving the hospital."

I didn't go straight to Vegas. I stopped home to shower first. Then I waited for the doctor's approval, which I never got. But yeah. Taking down Sin City a few months after waking up from a coma probably qualifies as the road less traveled.

Vegas.

Miami.

Bright lights.

Vibrant colors.

Drowning myself in seas of beautiful people devoid of any substance. Why? Because I'm alive. I needed to live. And love. And drink. And fuck. And prove to the world I'm not some helpless victim. Most of all, I needed to stay detached. Because eventually I'd have to strip away all the distractions and face my demons.

Fast-forward to the present. That day didn’t arrive all at once. It crept in over weeks and months. Instead, I caught a new habit. Gas station heroin. Kratom extract.

Little bottles of poison sitting beside the cash register in every gas station, bodega, and corner store within fifty miles. The stuff shoved me down a rabbit hole and into a feverish waking dreamscape, eventually sending me on a haunting bender, ending in a two-day cold-turkey withdrawal not too far off from the one I would have had using junk sold on the street. What made this relapse so much more appalling than all the others was that, for once, it showed me how far I’m willing to go to remain under the influence. The way I’ll move mountains and dig canyons if it means I can indulge in a new addiction.

It was surreal.

This mysterious leaf from Southeast Asia that hits 30 times harder than morphine yet has somehow managed to bypass any legal restriction, being advertised on signs and stickers as well as internet ads, just like beer and cigarettes. This new monkey on my back wasn’t smuggled over the border or made in a clandestine lab. Instead, it was beaming in plain sight, placed right in between the Tylenol and the bubble gum. It’s the type of real-life satire normally reserved for dystopian fiction.(Lemme get 20 bucks on pump 5, a pack of Newport’s, and 3 bottles of heroin. Which flavor? One lime and two blueberry.). Or something you’d expect to come across at an open market in a 3rd world village somewhere in the Sahara, not an Exxon or a 7-11 in the land of the free. For the first time, I understood the pain of an alcoholic.

That being said, the politics are irrelevant . Legality means shit to a man who’s trying to get lit. I’m here to talk about what all this is saying about me. Buddha says it’s only after you rid yourself of all cravings and necessity and are willing to experience reality in its purest form that you can truly be at peace. The ancient guru makes a valid point. Instill mental discipline. Embed it within inner core strength. Marry the idea of self-control.

They always make it sound so easy though, don’t they? The gods. Jesus. Mainstream culture. Honor thy father. Love thy neighbor, Embrace thy hater. Whatever. Until I win the war against the monster in my head, the rest is just background noise.

We all may have a war story. And we all may be subject to mental anguish. But not a single one of us has had the same experience when it comes to getting sober. I’ve become a victim of my own evolution. I’ve mistaken survival for success and I’ve confused awareness with wisdom and maturity. And there it is. Clear as day in black and white: I’ve been clean. But I’ve never been sober. I know how to heal… …but I’ve never learned how to recover.

Healing is a process. It coincides with time and diligence. But to recover, that takes stamina. That requires a tolerance for pain. Hence why the truth hurts. And the truth is I’m addicted. Not just to drugs, but to whatever takes me out of the moment. If I gave up binging on junk food, it's because I traded it in for supplements to suppress my appetite, for anabolic enhancers to boost my performance. If I put the hard drugs to rest, chances are I replaced them with ones that (I thought) were less addictive. And once I’d rid myself of all foreign substances, then came gambling and sex. It’s a revolving door as costly as recidivism. A game of roulette that the house always wins.