My Story

I was born in Montreal, Canada in 2001 into a family with two older brothers and two loving parents who were happily married. From as early as I could remember, I felt different, like an outsider, especially in my own home. I quickly compensated for this by the way I acted around friends and at school. I was a ring leader, a bully, a troublemaker. I was also good at sports and others, especially my mom, would describe as having a lot of academic potential. At home, my two older brothers would constantly pick on me, mostly trying to get a reaction out of me. And a reaction is what they got, a reaction in the form of raw, unfiltered anger. Anger that mostly stemmed from sadness and confusion as to why I felt so different. Every time this happened, I would get in trouble, and most of the time, got locked in my room. This was my normal. I was a sad, lost kid who expressed himself in the form of anger because I didn't know any other way. At school, I often took the role that my brothers took with me at home, the bully.

By the time I hit eighth grade, nobody wanted to hang out with me anymore. Everyone had enough of the way I treated others. This left me not only feeling like an outsider at home, but at school as well. This overwhelming feeling of loneliness, misery and hopelessness lasted for two years until something I took so for granted was taken away from me forever. The one thing that felt "normal" in my life. When I was 15 years old, my mother suddenly died from an allergic reaction. My safe place, my best friend, the person I confided in gone, just like that. For two years, I was in a manic shock. Those two years were two of the best years of my life. Immediately, I started spending my whole days in the library studying. I remember never wanting to go home to a house where my mother's passing left a huge void. I thought that I was honoring my mom by studying and excelling in school, something she pushed me so hard in my whole life, but really it was the first form of escapism that I found. I went from a trouble maker student who didn't care about his grades to getting straight As. At that time, I had also already started smoking weed. All my friends who had pushed me away before had let me back in. Quickly, we formed a group of us who would get together all the time and smoke. We even had a name for ourselves. I'd never felt so accepted before. This was also when I was introduced to drinking and met my first girlfriend. I finally found my solution to my deep rooted problems of feeling like an outsider, not feeling good enough. The solution was drugs, alcohol, studying and a relationship. What at the time felt like a solution slowly started turning into a problem, but I was too blind to see it. I started blacking out weekly, smoking daily and all of this was paid for by stealing money from my dad. My anger from my childhood started to seep back out, but this time more intense and not only directed at my family but also at my friends. Who was once just a sad kid who was trying to express himself became a sad adolescent who was black out drunk. It became violent; verbally and sometimes physically. Eventually, I had stopped hanging out with all of the people I once called my friends., I had pushed them all away. Once again, nobody wanted to hang out with me. My mental health was starting to take a turn; I was constantly filled with anxiety and depression. Suicidal ideations started. I continued to use what I thought was my solution. My sense of self was entirely consumed by the grades I was getting in school and my relationship with my at the time girlfriend. Even though I thought this was working, things continued to crumble around me. That was when I decided I needed a new out and I decided to move away for school.

I enrolled in the University of Wisconsin, Madison with a major in Mechanical Engineering. I thought that I could run away from everything. For a very short amount of time, it worked. I instantly started making new friends, bonding over drugs and alcohol. I even started experimenting with new drugs. Right away, I fell in love with them. It actually scared me how much I liked them, so much so that I promised myself I would never do them again. Very quickly, the same behaviors came back and I started pushing everyone away, the exact same way that I did before I left. The blackouts started piling up, rather than weekly, it was happening multiple times per week. While I still had some friends, I continued to have this underlying feeling of being an outsider and like I wasn’t good enough. I felt like I didn't fit in. It was almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy that I didn't think I deserved friends so I continued self-destructing everything around me. Eventually, the substances took over. I found what I had been searching for my whole life in them. Up to this point, I was smoking weed every second of every day. Eventually it stopped working, I stopped getting high. I quit smoking weed. That’s when the daily drinking took over. A few months later, I broke my promise to myself. I started doing Xanax again. The combination of Xanax and alcohol was a match made in heaven for me. They cut my days short as when I would take them it would effectively end the day for me. I wouldn't remember anything 30 minutes after ingestion. Though it worked for a little, the volatility of my actions when I was on this combination became a massive problem and I had to stop. So I continued with just the alcohol for a while, until I started doing cocaine daily. The cocaine made me feel a way that I had never felt in my whole life. It made me feel okay. Like I could just relax, lay on my couch, watch TV, not care what others thought. It made me feel comfortable, but still conscious, not so volatile. It wasn’t long until I experienced my first episode of psychosis. At first, I made an excuse for my delusions and hallucinations, but then they started to come back and I could no longer ignore them. I loved them, I wanted more of them. It brought me back to the feeling that Xanax and alcohol gave me, like I was no longer in living in reality. Eventually, things got really bad and I flirted with the idea of quitting. This one though, I couldn't put down as quickly as I did with the Xanax. The hooks were in deep. I continued the use cocaine isolated in my room daily for another 6 months until it became unbearable, my life became unmanageable, I hit my rock bottom. My rock bottom came in the form of failing my final class before I was supposed to graduate along with the fact that I thought my nose was going to collapse. I told myself that if my nose collapsed, I would finally have a good reason to kill myself. Despite the consequences, still could not stop. I was isolated in my room for 6 months, no longer going to classes, not connecting with anybody, not sleeping, going in and out of psychosis. My brothers, who I had been so close with since my mom died, stopped talking to me. Up to this point, I did not understand what addiction was, I had never met anyone who had gone through it before. But now, I could no longer ignore it. Addiction was staring me right in the face.

I got connected with another addict who was in recovery for 6+ years, an interventionist and sober coach. The first person I ever met that truly helped me feel like I was not alone. He understood me, validated me. This person saved my life and showed me the steps that I needed to take in order to get better, similar steps that he took to get from where he was to where he is. He told me that I could either go to treatment and learn to live and deal with my problems or I could continue to run away from them the way I had been my whole life. That clicked for me. It seemed so simple for the first time ever. Going to treatment would give me the tools that I've been looking for my whole life. With a lot of fear and months of deliberation, I finally agreed to go. That was May 10, 2024. I have been sober since. While there, I learned so much about myself, but most importantly, I learned how to allow others to help me and how to help myself. I learned to take responsibility for my life and no longer live with a victim mentality.

Once I got out of treatment, I went back to school to finish my undergraduate degree and also took additional psychology classes. When I was in treatment, I realized that I had been pursuing a career because that is what I thought my mom would have wanted for me, rather than what I actually wanted. Throughout most of my mental health crisis, I always hoped that one day I would be able to help others who had lost a parent or who were dealing with the things that I was dealing with. I wanted to use my experience to help others. I wanted to find purpose in my life. I never thought I would get out of the misery myself, but now that I did, this idea of helping others finally became a reality. I feel I went through what I went through in order to help others. I was given a gift, even though at the time I did not see it as that. Once I graduated, I went to work at a rehab as a support staff and I found so much joy in sharing my experience with other people, the same way the person who helped me get sober did with me. I woke up every single day wanting to die and today I truly get excited to start my days. I no longer have the mental obsession over drugs and alcohol and have no interest in ever going back to using substances. It truly is a miracle, but it is possible. One day at a time, I continued to work on myself, connect with others, work a recovery program and because of that, I am where I am today.

Today, I turn to spirituality as a means of living. Something I did not understand before I got sober. Spirituality is something that I have learned through 12 step programs as well as self-help books that I have read, along with talking with others who have adopted this means of living themselves. To me, spirituality means searching internally to heal the voids that I have in my life as a result of trauma, rather than searching for the solution through drugs, alcohol, material things and other people. I have practiced and continued to progress through loving myself and realizing that I am enough no matter what. Unconditional acceptance of who I am as a human being. This is so different from where I was when I was in active addiction. It is not something that I have perfected, not even close. It is something that I continue to work on every day.

I am currently pursuing a Master's of Counselling Psychology and am hoping to help others get from where I was to where I am now.

Jason Schwartz