Through the Fog

Tag: sobriety

  • Tolls on Burnt Bridges

    The hardest part of getting clean

    are all the damn apologies—

    the ones I owe,

    the ones I can’t say,

    the ones that taste like regret

    and old habits.

    It’s paying tolls on bridges

    I’ve already burnt,

    walking back through smoke

    I started myself,

    trying to make peace with ghosts

    who remember me at my worst.

    Recovery isn’t just staying sober.

    It’s swallowing pride,

    owning the wreckage,

    and learning how to rebuild

    with hands that once only knew

    how to destroy.

    And God,

    some days it feels impossible—

    but I’m still here,

    paying the tolls,

    crossing the ashes,

    trying anyway.

  • Happiness in Sobriety (I Still Miss the High)

    Photo Credit: Frankie Cordoba

    They don’t tell you this part—

    sobriety doesn’t erase the memories.

    I still miss the high.

    I miss the numb,

    the blur,

    the way the world melted just long enough

    for me to forget I was hurting.

    There are days I crave the nothingness,

    days when pain feels louder than progress,

    when the urge whispers,

    “One more time won’t kill you.”

    But I know better—

    it almost did.

    More than once.

    Sobriety isn’t a clean break.

    It’s a war with the version of myself

    who still thinks relief comes in liquid,

    in powder,

    in pills,

    in poison that used to feel like peace.

    I don’t stay sober because I stopped wanting the high.

    I stay sober because I finally realized

    the high never loved me back.

    It just made the fall quieter.

    It made the pain delayed—

    not gone.

    Now happiness is different.

    It’s small.

    Subtle.

    Hard-earned.

    It comes in mornings I don’t regret,

    in nights I remember,

    in breathing that doesn’t taste like escape.

    I don’t always feel strong.

    But I feel present.

    And maybe that’s what living really is—

    missing the high

    and still choosing the heartbeat.

  • Drugs or Me

    Photo Credit: Mishal Ibrahim

    It was always drugs or me.

    And most days, even I would’ve chosen the drugs.

    They were easier to love. They didn’t need anything from me — just my time, my body, my sanity. They didn’t ask for truth, didn’t care about promises. They just made everything quiet for a while.

    I used to think they made me feel alive. But really, they just made me forget that I didn’t want to be. The high wasn’t joy — it was escape. A few seconds of peace borrowed from tomorrow.

    And every time I swore I’d stop, I meant it. Until I didn’t. Because the pain always came back louder, meaner, hungrier than before.

    You can’t love someone who’s already halfway gone.

    And I was disappearing one hit at a time — not dying fast, just fading slow.

    They say recovery is choosing yourself. But no one talks about how hard it is to love the person you became in the process. The shame, the memories, the wreckage you can’t sweep clean.

    It was drugs or me.

    And for the longest time, I didn’t think I was worth choosing.

    But maybe now — shaky, sober, surviving — maybe I’m learning that I am.

  • Fragile

    Recovery isn’t the clean, steady climb people imagine it to be.

    It’s not a straight line, and it’s not always inspiring.

    Sometimes it’s messy and painful — full of steps backward, relapses of thought, and nights spent questioning whether I’m really getting better or just getting used to the ache.

    I’m fragile in recovery.

    I wake up some days full of hope, and by nightfall, I’m drowning in doubt again. The smallest thing — a memory, a song, a smell — can pull me back into the dark, and I hate how easily I break. But breaking is part of it. Healing doesn’t mean the cracks disappear; it means learning how to live with them.

    People think recovery is about strength, but I’ve learned it’s mostly about endurance — about showing up when your hands are still shaking. About forgiving yourself when you fall apart again, even after promising you wouldn’t.

    There’s no finish line here.

    No moment where I suddenly become whole again.

    There’s just me — fragile, trembling, trying.

    And maybe that’s enough.

    Maybe being fragile in recovery means I’m still fighting,

    still choosing life,

    even when the weight of it threatens to break me.

  • Why Is Sobriety a Big Fucking Deal, and Why Do I Not Care to Have It?

    People talk about sobriety like it’s the prize at the end of some brutal marathon. You crawl through addiction, you drag yourself through the mud, and if you’re lucky enough to survive, you get to hold up sobriety like a trophy. And I get it. For families, for doctors, for the people who almost lost you, it is a big fucking deal. It means they don’t have to bury you. It means you live to see another day.

    But living and wanting to live are two different things.

    Sobriety is supposed to give you your life back. What no one tells you is that sometimes the life you get back isn’t the one you want. You’re suddenly left without the rituals that made the hard days bearable. No glass of whiskey to unwind. No chemical escape hatch when the walls close in. Just you — sober, raw, restless. And if you didn’t like yourself much to begin with, staring that person in the face every day without a buffer feels like punishment, not freedom.

    That’s the cruel irony: sobriety is celebrated because it saves lives, but it doesn’t always feel like living. It feels like existing. Like standing still in a world that keeps moving. Like being handed back a version of yourself that’s patched together but missing all the edges you thought made you interesting.

    And maybe that’s what pisses me off the most. People expect you to be grateful. To glow with this new appreciation for mornings and coffee and “clarity.” But sometimes sobriety feels like sitting in a quiet room while everyone else is at the party. Sometimes it feels like being alive when you don’t know what to do with the days you’ve been given.

    So why is sobriety a big fucking deal? Because it saves lives, and that matters. Why do I not care to have it? Because I wanted more than just survival. I wanted to feel alive, even if it burned me.