Addicted to Escape

I never set out to destroy myself. It started small—a few drinks to numb the edges, a pill to help me sleep, a line to keep me going. One turned into two, two turned into habits, and before I knew it, I had built my life around the one thing that let me forget.

I told myself I was fine. That I was in control. That I could stop whenever I wanted. But deep down, I knew the truth—I didn’t use to have fun. I used to disappear.

It wasn’t just about the substances. It was about the silence they gave me. My father made sure my body was never safe, and my mother made sure my mind was never still. I grew up in a house where fear lived in every corner, where footsteps in the hall could mean pain, where love was a weapon, not a comfort.

My father had a short temper and heavy fists. The wrong word, the wrong look, the wrong breath at the wrong moment could set him off. He never needed a reason. Sometimes, he would hit me so hard my ears would ring, and my mother would just watch. She never lifted a finger to stop him. But her words hurt in a way even his fists couldn’t. “You probably deserved it,” she’d say. “Stop being so weak.” “No one will ever love you if you cry like that.”

I believed her. I believed both of them. I believed that I was weak, unlovable, and broken. That the pain was my fault.

By the time I was a teenager, I had learned how to make myself invisible. I stayed quiet, made myself small, tried not to exist. But no matter how careful I was, I couldn’t stop the fear from seeping into every part of me. When I found alcohol, it felt like magic. The first time I got drunk, I remember thinking, This is it. This is what I’ve been looking for. The world blurred at the edges, and for the first time, I didn’t care.

Drinking turned into pills. Pills turned into whatever I could get my hands on. By my mid-twenties, I had lost jobs, ruined relationships, and burned bridges I didn’t even remember setting fire to. But it still didn’t feel like rock bottom. As long as I could outrun my thoughts, I could convince myself I was fine.

Then, one night, I saw my reflection in a store window. Gaunt. Hollow-eyed. A stranger wearing my face. I barely recognized myself. It hit me then—not in a dramatic, life-changing way, but in a quiet, sinking way. I had been running so long, I didn’t even know where I was running to anymore.

The next morning, I checked myself into rehab.

The first few days were hell. My body ached, my skin crawled, and my mind screamed for an escape. But there was nowhere left to run. The counselors told me I had to sit with my pain, to feel it, to face what I had spent years drowning. It sounded unbearable. But the truth was, I had already been suffering—only now, I had to do it without a chemical shield.

Therapy was the hardest part. I had spent years pretending my past didn’t affect me, convincing myself I was just someone who liked to party. But when my therapist asked me why I felt the need to escape, I had no answer. Only tears I didn’t realize I had been holding back for years.

I started to unpack it all—the fear, the shame, the feeling that no matter what I did, it would never be enough. I learned that addiction wasn’t just about willpower, that my brain had been rewired for survival, that the substances weren’t the problem but the symptom. I had to learn a new way to live, a new way to cope.

At first, I felt empty without the highs. I didn’t know who I was without them. But slowly, I filled the space with better things. I reconnected with my younger sister, the one person who had never given up on me. I started cooking, something I had never done before—learning to nourish my body instead of poisoning it. I found a support group, a place where people didn’t judge, where I didn’t have to pretend.

The hardest part was learning to rewrite my inner voice. My mother’s words were still there, buried deep, whispering that I wasn’t enough. My father’s rage still echoed in my bones, reminding me what it felt like to brace for impact. But I learned that I didn’t have to believe them. That I could replace them with something better.

There were dark days. Days when the cravings hit so hard that I could barely breathe, when my mind whispered that just one drink, one pill, wouldn’t hurt. On those days, I turned to my journal—the one I had started in rehab, the one filled with desperate scribbles and letters to myself.

I flipped to a page from my worst night—the night I nearly left, nearly gave up.

“You are more than this pain. You are more than what they told you. You have survived things that should have broken you, and you are still here. Don’t let their voices win. Don’t let this sickness take you away from yourself. Keep going. One more hour, one more day. Keep going.”

Reading those words—my own words—reminded me that I had been here before, that I had felt this hopelessness and fought through it. It reminded me that I could survive it again.

One day in therapy, my counselor asked me if I had ever thought about my parents’ own pain. I wanted to scream that I didn’t care, that they didn’t deserve my understanding. But the truth was, I had spent my whole life trying to understand them. I knew my father had been beaten as a child. I knew my mother had grown up in a house where cruelty was normal. They were broken, too. That didn’t excuse what they did. But it helped me see something I never had before—they weren’t right about me.

I wasn’t weak. I wasn’t worthless. I wasn’t doomed to be like them.

It wasn’t easy. There were days I wanted to disappear again, moments where the weight of reality felt too much to bear. But I kept showing up. I kept choosing life, even when it felt unbearable.

Now, I help others who are where I once was. I tell them the truth—that recovery isn’t a straight path, that some days feel like falling backward, but that every step forward is worth it.

I used to think addiction was my identity. Now, I know that I am so much more.