My creative journey toward sobriety

CONTENT WARNING: This article contains talk about drug and alcohol use since teenage years, smoking, childhood sexual trauma and suicidal thoughts. If you are having a hard time with any of these, please turn away from this article. Dial 988 for the National Suicide Hotline, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Hotline is 1-800-662-4357.

I spent a lot of my young adult life in a perpetual state of fucked up. It sounds backwards, but if I hadn’t been dabbling in extensive drug use, I might never have made art. I may have given up on all my dreams of pursuing theatre. I would never have learned to know or love myself, or heal my way through extensive trauma. I hate to say, “Thanks, Drugs! You changed my life for the better!” but… I kind of mean it.

Disclaimer: This path IS NOT and SHOULD NOT be for everyone. I am merely sharing my story. DO NOT pursue psychedelic therapy without consulting your doctors.

I’ve dabbled in psychedelic therapy without knowing it, but the truth is, I was addicted. The National Institute on Drug Use says that a lot of addictions have a similar root cause from factors such as biology and our environment during our developmental stages, and I am no exception. I was desperate to escape the horrors of the past and to numb the bad feelings inside of me, anything to avoid myself. If you knew me at any point before the age of 30, I’m sure you would agree that I was almost always a fun person to party with, but not a great person to be around.

I started drinking and smoking when I was 14. And once I realized it was both cool AND helped me run away, I did it all the time. I drank at school. I smoked in my car over lunch. I partied all the time, getting myself two underage drinking tickets, and I had to take a class about the terrible affects drinking. Did that stop me? NO! It encouraged me, really. If someone asked me to go party, I’d go, and I’d party hard. I’d do anything — ANYTHING — to run away.

Theatre helped in both respects: I was able to party and get messed up with my friends, and I was able to step into characters. This was how I learned I could live a life that was different than mine, that there was a world out there without trauma or abuse. Win-win. I thought I’d just keep doing that forever until I died, which, at that point, I hoped would be sooner rather than later.

In college, one of my friends introduced me to marijuana. And a few years later, that same friend took me to the party in Renee Row, where I took LSD for the first time.

All the lights turned on. The dark, shadowy recesses of my subconscious were lit, the doors unlocked and swung open, banging against the walls and letting sunshine into the rooms. New neural pathways instantly formed. I was one with the universe and she with me. As I sat in the courtyard of my university, I could see myself as every version of me I’d ever been in every lifetime mirrored in the robot I’d become.

I finally, finally took a breath. inhaling that good shit, exhaling the bullshit.

It was then, and only then, that I finally picked up my pen and started drawing again.

The art I made that night was bad. No, really, I mean it. It wasn’t great. I hadn’t drawn anything since I was much younger, a trick the family therapist taught me to help cope with my parents’ divorce. So even though it was bad, I was content to begin exploring that side of myself under the influence of this drug, because I finally started to see. And that was a beautiful first step, but a scary one. After that first acid trips, I started slamming those doors of my subconscious shut again. I returned my attention to my senior year of college, and I exchanged my sketchbook and pen for scripts and rehearsals, and got back to work. I graduated and focused on getting a job so I could escape my hometown and my past forever.

I was an ARTIST, dammit. I was YOUNG and INVINCIBLE and POWERFUL BEYOND MEASURE, especially with the little help of my friend, Mary Jane. Nobody could touch me! I was in charge of my body and I was ready to go out and CHANGE THE WORLD. All by myself!

Well, I got a job, and of course, I met someone. Instantly, curiously, infuriatingly — I fell madly in love.

And THAT, my friends, was when I started making the most beautiful, trippy, introspective art of my life…. as love oft does to a person (see the Gallery below for examples). With the aid of psychedelics and weed and the mysterious power of love, I was able to begin slowly turning those lights back on. I created some of my best drawings while I was high as a kite. It was awesome, for a while.

That’s when The Bad Childhood Memories finally resurfaced.

I got very sick. My drug addiction helped me through this, weirdly enough, but I won’t ever advocate for anybody to start doing drugs. I was 22 years old and a self-destructive, suicidal idiot. Please, for the love of God, if you resonate with this story, GO SEE A THERAPIST. Save yourself from the 10+ years of debilitating pain and agony I went through and get the help you need. I wish I had done so.

The difference, for me, between weed or psychedelics and harder drugs, like cocaine or Ecstacy (which I have sampled), is that it forced me to turn inward. A lot of people turn to drugs to run away from themselves, and I did, when I was drinking. But these drugs, and love, asked more from me. If I was going to sit around and get messed up by myself all the time, what was I going to do about it? The Universe demanded me to be better, and after a while, I demanded that of myself, too. I picked up my pen and got to work.

Oh yes. When I drew each of those works above, I was super high and thinking about how to put all the puzzle pieces of my life back together. Having no memory of childhood beyond The Bad Ones, making art was a way for me to reconnect with that innocent child, who didn’t know if or how or when she would be safe again.

The first drawing, the Tree of Life, taught me how abundant I was, and I’d always have the fruits of my labor. The second, that my mind had split in three to save myself from my trauma in childhood, and I had to address each of those faces, or masks, before I could move forward. The third, a ghost that haunted my dreams, which I now have tattooed on my arm. The fourth, a self-portrait, when I started to figure out I was Not Cisgendered. The last, a vision of myself, when I knew I was using too much and couldn’t see straight.

My art told me about myself before I knew.

I’m very grateful to have already had a creative practice brewing by the time I got deeper into this addiction. I don’t have any idea where I’d be if I hadn’t. Every day, I was able to have a conversation with myself through these drawings. My inner child needed protection. My inner teenager wanted to rage. The adult in me needed to re-parent them both, love who I’d become, and heal, so I could face it. I wanted to spread love, not hate. Share joy, not sorrow. I often used to put on a show to please others: tell jokes, force a smile, have fun at the party until it was time to go home and then I’d collapse into a puddle of tears. I didn’t want to be that person anymore.

It took many, many years. I’ve done LSD more times than I can remember, but each time brought with it a profound shift in my experience. A breakthrough. A spiritual experience. Every time, an epiphany! The doorways opened, and I walked through them, ready to fight the demons inside, with a pen in my hand and a story on my heart. It sounds cliche, but it’s true.

I used my drug addiction as a shield to face my demons, and I conquered them with my art.

From drawing and painting, to writing and theatre, even to that time I posted spicy photoshoots on my OnlyFans, I used my creative practice to face myself and my trauma and my ego head on. Luckily, I won. And just like that, I healed. Almost overnight. Once I figured out what was wrong with me — COCSA, BPD, suppressed sexuality, adult SA, CPTSD, autism, ADHD, among a million other genetic things, I’m sure — I was able to sit down and actually process it. The process was hard. It was grueling, difficult, painful work, and if I’m being honest, I hurt a lot of people on my journey to healing. Doing drugs and drinking all the time doesn’t exactly put you in a good headspace to, say, run the theatre company you co-founded. For example.

After a few years in what I sometimes call A Spiritual Time-Out in my childhood home, where I’ve spent years healing all this generational and childhood trauma and helping my family do the same… I woke up and suddenly didn’t need the drugs anymore. I didn’t even want to have a social drink. I hadn’t been sober since I was a child, but here I am, free to play again.

It’s been almost three years now without any mind-altering chemicals. There are days, like today, when I really miss that version of me, who was fun, and unconquerable, and fearless, and ice cold. But I’m softer now. It’s better to be warm. There’s a peace and a light I have now that I didn’t think I’d ever be able to find, and that’s worth letting go of the wild, whimsical, disastrous art I was once able to create.

My art has changed, but so have I.

I hope one day the healing power of these drugs comes to the public light in the same way Ram Dass — aka Harvard psychologist Dr. Richard Alpert, PhD. — once saw it: a chance to change ourselves, and thus, change the world with our internal transformation. Even now, they’re experimenting with psychedelic therapy in Oregon and many other places in the world abroad in a way we haven’t seen since the 1970s. When we come together with people who are determined to heal and grow and change, the drugs aren’t really necessary. They’re just one trail in a forest with many paths.

I like to say that psychedelic drugs will show you the same door over and over and over again. You’re the one who has to walk through it.

There is no one way to face yourself. But this is how I started. And while yes, I do sometimes miss the party scene, I’m glad it’s over. I can’t wait to see where my creative practice goes next, now that I’m without the restrictions of my closed consciousness. I am open. I am changed. And I AM FREE!

Be careful out there. Find people you trust. Don’t get lost in the sauce. If you’re making art, keep going. If you’re like I was, getting high all the time, try turning on some soft music and sketching, or doing some stream-of-consciousness writing, like Julia Cameron suggests in The Artist’s Way. You may find your way out of the dark. And best of all, you never know where this new practice might lead you. What if someday you sell your art to thousands of adoring fans, or turn your story into a full-length musical? Or, your art may truly change someone’s life for the better, even if you never get famous or make money off of it. How magical might that be? You never know until you try.

So please do yourself (and the world) a favor and try. You can heal, you can change, and you can be anyone you want to be. I’ll be right here with you.

If you are having suicidal thoughts, dial 988, the National Suicide Hotline.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Hotline is 1-800-662-4357.

If you need help, don’t wait. get it today!