A lot has happened in the last month. The long and short of it is, I ended the first quarter of 2023 having emergency surgery for ovarian torsion. (that’s something I will talk about in the book I’m co-authoring in. Release is set for May!) Believe it or not, the experience was the perfect ending to the first 3 months of the year that felt dark, cold, and alone. While the surgery could have had me freaking out and going further into my cave, instead I’m grateful it had the opposite effect. It put some perspective on the recent Dark Night I’ve gone through and gave me the time I needed to reflect on it all. It also showed me in live 3D that the therapy sessions and antidepressant are working. For those of you who haven’t heard the term Dark Night of the Soul – it’s something we reference often in the spiritual world. It refers to an extremely difficult, dark and painful period in your life where you can feel lost, alone and unsure of where you are supposed to go. It’s meant to strip you of the things that no longer serve you so you can ascend and move forward into the things that will. Because this earth realm is based on free will, you have a few choices when this happens to you: work through it and move on, stay stuck in the dark and get miserable or bury your head in the sand and go back to what was. My most recent experience with this started this past December. For me, my body shuts down and I get sick.  I’ve learned to recognize that’s Spirit’s way of letting me know I’ve taken on too much and I need to slow down and re-evaluate. The events that unfolded afterwards put me in such darkness that I sat it in for a while instead of moving through it. I went through a period of health issues and thought I was falling apart. I guess, in a way, I was. At the time, I was unknowingly in the process of burning away the old ideas and boxes I put around myself to be reborn in this phoenix energy where I am now able to start over again and create new. Out of all the things that I’ve gained and learned over the last few months – and there are quite a few big things I’ll write about later on I’m sure – I gained something monumental.

Sobriety.

I feel weird even typing that word. Like it shouldn’t really apply to me. I wasn’t into alcohol so much. I had a run with that at a young age and got a wakeup call that stopped that particular train in its tracks. I’ve been on my own since 17 and the first place I rented was a room in a home with a coworker who had become my friend. She was in her mid-twenties, and I was pretending to be a grown-up and we would go to clubs where I would get served (or drinks would be bought for me) and then I would come home from work every day and drink. It got the point where my tolerance was so high, I could drink an excessive amount of liquor and still walk a straight line. I remember being so proud of that back then. One night her boyfriend brings a friend over with him and the four of us are drinking in our kitchen and having a good time. I wasn’t interested in his friend, but I could tell they were hoping to hook him and I up. I walked away to use the bathroom and came back to new drinks being served. After I downed the drink, I immediately knew something wasn’t right. My vision was off, I felt dizzy and I couldn’t stand right. I got myself back to the bathroom, locked myself in and started throwing up. I don’t remember a whole lot after that – just that there was a lot of banging on the door at first and then it got eerily quiet after a while. I had managed to call my boyfriend at some point and when he came over, I finally came out of the bathroom. We found my roommate naked on the dining room floor. They had left her there naked with nothing but an alarm clock next to her head so she would wake up for work the next day. When I woke her up, she couldn’t remember what happened. Her body didn’t feel right, and she was ashamed. She wouldn’t go to the hospital and didn’t want to talk about that night again. From then on, I didn’t take so much as a sip of alcohol again for over a year. Scared me straight.

I was never completely sober though. I had also smoked a lot of weed. I would eventually go back to alcohol for a while. I would get so drunk that I would slur my words and be a hot mess, making these super strong drinks all the time at barbeques and parties, but it wasn’t something that ever became a real problem where I had to drink every day. Weed though? I would smoke every day. All day. It became the replacement for alcohol and I would be proud of the amounts I could smoke. How I would keep going, wouldn’t choke on the inhale, and I would smoke these enormous blunts like it was no big deal. My dad smoked for as long as I can remember. So I never thought it was a big deal.

Now, I’m going to pause for a minute here. I know weed is probably considered one of the least problematic drugs. Weed had become a problem for me though. I’m not talking about relaxing after a long day and smoking a joint to relieve some anxiety – I’m taking about smoking 2-3 blunts a day, another at night to go to sleep and not wanting to really do anything. In the last 10 years there was never a time you didn’t see me high. I would laugh about it and say I was a functioning pothead but think about that. A decade with my head in a cloud of smoke. I wasn’t doing this to relax occasionally or using it as the plant medicine it really is, I was abusing the shit out of it to run and hide from myself. It would numb me so I wouldn’t have to really look at things in my life and make changes I knew needed to be made and it allow me to hide myself so I wouldn’t have to face the parts that I didn’t necessarily like. I made no attempt to hide my smoking; I would go out with friends and light up and think it was no big deal. I didn’t care what people thought about it either. If you didn’t like it, oh well. My kids knew I was smoking all the time – they could always smell it on me. I would never smoke in front of them so I was constantly sending them away from me so I could get high. As they got older, they started to figure it out and would get mad or impatient with me. You would think that would have triggered some sort of change, but it didn’t. I always had this attitude of: It’s just weed. Maybe it is for some people, but for me, it became something that would take over a big part of my life. I never realized how hazy my brain was until COVID hit. The first time I got sick, I still tried to smoke. How crazy is that? I got myself all worked up though and it backfired on me. From then on, every time I would get sick, I would forego smoking. Once I started to feel better, I would go right back to it. This last time though? In December? I don’t know what it is about that particular time. Maybe it was a combination of things going on. The anxiety, the holidays and then the events after.

I’ve been sober for 4 months as of today.

I’ve decided that I’m tired of not having a clear mind to tackle this phase of my healing. How can I really face life if I’m constantly trying to smoke it away? There were even several times throughout the last decade where I couldn’t even get high. It wasn’t because the weed wasn’t good enough – I just wasn’t getting the same buzz off it anymore. I would get the side effects of course. Sleepiness, munchies, shit like that, but no high. Looking back, that should have been my first sign that I’d had enough. I have no desire to go back to weed right now either. I don’t know if I’ll ever smoke again; I haven’t put a time limit on this. I could see potentially smoking again but in the right setting. Using it in ceremony maybe to help me connect in, but not right now.  It’s funny because I always said I was a function pothead, but I’m realizing now just how much I didn’t really function. I have more ambition to go out and do things that I would never normally do because I don’t have something holding me back. I’m less apt to stay home and do nothing and more likely to go out and explore. Do things by myself. Meet new people. The world around me is so much clearer because it’s not covered in smoke and I’m enjoying the new view.

I know some of you reading this will say “it’s just weed.” And maybe you’re right. It IS just weed. But not for me. To me, it was something that facilitated me running away from myself. It would numb me out so I wouldn’t have to feel things, face issues or deal with life. The same way an alcoholic would go to booze or like a coke addict uses. I became an addict myself where if I didn’t have anything to smoke, my personality would change. I would become mean, irritable, and hard to be around. That’s a major red flag and where you know you have a real problem and why I decided to put my blunts out.

Sobriety.

It looks good on me. So, I’m going to keep this going.

For those of you who turn to something every day to numb out the pain, I encourage you to take a look at your daily habits. I’m also happy to recommend some people within my circles that I run in that can help you get sober. Life is meant to be felt. Seen. Heard. LIVED. Don’t let the years go by in a blur. You’re missing out on way more than you think.

Always love,

T