Part 2 of “Building From Broken: The Practical Guide to Rebuilding Your Life”
I had lied to myself for years. I convinced myself I didn’t need drugs to get high—I needed them to regulate. Nothing more. That I wasn’t hiding anything, or using drugs to cope with some unknown trauma. “I’m functional,” I’d tell myself. “Look at everything I’m accomplishing.”
And I was accomplishing things. I had lived a horrific tale, but that was what I knew. I never felt my life was particularly bad—it just was what it was. I had nothing else to gauge it against.
As time passed, I realized something: the times never actually got easier. I just got stronger. And each time I got stronger, I needed more drugs to maintain the facade.
The Tears That Made No Sense
All my life, I would have unprompted outbursts of tears and never understood why.
I’d be driving to work, listening to a normal song on the radio, and suddenly be crying so hard I had to pull over. I’d be cooking dinner for my daughter, and a memory—not even a specific one, just a feeling—would wash over me, and I’d have to excuse myself to the bathroom.
“It’s nothing,” I’d say. “Just tired.”
But it wasn’t nothing. It was everything.
It was only when I started putting the pieces together—when I made a hobby out of discovering myself—that I was able to see the real picture. I’ve written about [mindfulness(https://joshuagoth.com/blog/parenting/ many times before, and if you’re serious about wanting to understand yourself, I encourage you to read it. Because I followed these steps to a tee.
This had gone past a want. I needed to find the source of every mannerism, every trait or habit I had. I needed to understand why I continued to use drugs. I needed to know who I was as a person, and be able to identify each trait by an event in my life that crafted it.
The Functional Addict
Drugs had been such an intricate part of my life, I never imagined what it would be like without them.
And here’s the dangerous part: I was functional. More than functional—I was succeeding.
I held high-paying tech jobs. I was a good father. I did all the housework after work. I took my daughter to the beach every day after daycare in the summer. I cooked dinner. I paid bills. I showed up.
I thought I was in control.
I was as proud of my accomplishments as I was empty. Unhappy. Filling the void of my lack of understanding with more drugs.
What I learned was this: the longer I delayed trying to find the reason, the harder it was to face what the real problem was. And those unscripted depressive fits? Those short bursts of agony I wouldn’t allow anyone to share or help with?
They were messages. Messages I’d been ignoring for decades.
The Cup That Could Hold No More
My life had been a series of one trauma after the next. And while I thought I was some invincible little child immune to trauma, I came to realize I never had a moment to breathe.
I never took the time to process the events in my life—events that were nothing short of a series of systematic abuses.
So they kept building. And building.
My drug addiction wasn’t about getting high. It was about staying numb. It was keeping me from facing that pain. It was keeping me from processing all the events in my life that made me who I was.
It wasn’t just strength that allowed me to endure what I did. It was fear. The fear of feeling and reliving that pain.
I didn’t know what those outbursts were then, or why they happened. My cup had filled up with unprocessed events, and they would seep out without any prompt whatsoever.
I was, quite literally, filled to the brim with unprocessed pain.
The Liberation of Feeling
Once I discovered this, I knew what must be done.
It was time to relive those moments that my self-defense mechanisms never allowed me to process at the time.
This didn’t happen overnight. The more I learned about myself, the more I would run into these unprocessed events. But one at a time, I was able to heal.
Each event felt liberating. Like removing a brick from a wall I’d built around myself.
The memory of my father’s rage? Processed.
The loneliness of those basement days? Processed.
The betrayal of finding my belongings by the trash? Processed.
The shame of addiction? Processed.
Each brick removed brought me closer to the constant inner peace I feel today.
The Foundation of Rock Bottom
People talk about rock bottom like it’s the end. For me, it was the beginning.
That moment in the car—that feeling of my heart stopping—wasn’t the conclusion of my story. It was the foundation upon which I would rebuild everything.
Because here’s what I know now: you can’t build a stable structure on unstable ground.
All those years of “functioning” while numb? That was building on quicksand. The more I achieved, the faster I sank.
Rock bottom became my solid ground. The pain became my blueprint. The tears became my mortar.
One can never know freedom until one is free from themselves. And freedom begins when you stop running from what you’re feeling and start listening to what it’s trying to tell you.
Your cup might be full too. Those unexplained emotions? Those moments of overwhelm that seem to come from nowhere? They’re not random. They’re messages.
Start listening. One memory at a time. One tear at a time.
The foundation you’re looking for might just be buried beneath everything you’ve been trying not to feel.