Nick - Alcohol, mood swings, rejection, emotional instability.

The Breaking Point
I used to tell myself I just liked drinking. I liked trying new rums, messing with different cocktails, and showing my buddies whatever bottle I had “collected” that week. It felt like a hobby, something harmless. But looking back now, a year and a half sober, I can see what was really going on. I wasn’t sharing drinks with friends. I was drinking alone, and I was doing it a lot.

Every day felt different inside my head. One morning I’d wake up sad for no reason, and the next I’d turn into someone no one wanted to be around. My moods ran my life, and I had no control over any of it. Little by little, I drove my wife and my son away without even meaning to. And that’s when it hit me that something had to change.

The Search
Before I ever found The Work, I spent years trying to hold myself together with whatever was handed to me. Medications started in 2011 after a breakup that knocked the wind out of me and landed me in a psychiatric hospital. From there it was a long cycle of different prescriptions, different doses, and then trying to quit everything cold turkey, which just made me drink even more. I kept telling myself I was fine. But inside, things were falling apart.

Eventually, what I refused to face on the inside became something I was taking out on everyone around me. The people I loved most were getting hit by the emotional stuff I didn’t understand or know how to stop. I tried therapists. I tried group therapy. Nothing clicked. I always left feeling like I was stuck in the same loop, talking about the same problems without ever actually changing.

The Work
The real shift didn’t show up as some big dramatic moment. It came in quietly, like a slow reset happening underneath everything. I started feeling like myself again, or maybe for the first time. I realized how much of my life I had spent trying to be who I thought other people wanted me to be. I acted like a character because I thought that was the only way to feel accepted. I ignored my own instincts for years.

About halfway through The Work, something inside me woke up. It hit me all at once, like snapping out of a long dream I didn’t even know I was in. The only way I can describe it is like the red pill moment in The Matrix. Suddenly I could see all the ways I had been living on autopilot for nearly thirty years. And right then, I knew I didn’t want to go back.

The Return
Now I feel grateful every single day. I feel calm. I feel present. My life isn’t perfect, and I still have tough moments, but I actually know how to handle them now instead of getting swallowed by them. I think of it like a muscle I’ve built. I can stay aware of what I’m feeling, instead of letting it take me over.

And my family feels the difference. With a toddler running around and my wife pregnant, there are plenty of stressful moments. But now I can be the steady one. I can be the calm, comforting presence they need. That alone makes every bit of this worth it. More than anything, I finally feel like myself. And I actually like the man I’m becoming.